How Apex House Won Its Biggest Deal from a ChatGPT Recommendation
About three weeks after Apex House began ranking first in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for a narrow target-market query, a new prospect contacted us.
They had found Apex House through a ChatGPT recommendation.
After a few weeks of discussion, that lead has become our biggest deal to date.
We've only been collecting this data for a short time, so we're not claiming that one lead proves AI search will outperform traditional SEO across every business or industry; Although, this sales process felt noticeably different from many of the leads that have arrived through traditional organic search results.
This prospect appeared to come into the conversation with a higher level of confidence. There was less hesitation, less time spent establishing basic credibility, and a much easier path toward closing the deal.
That experience is changing the way we think about generative engine optimization (GEO).
Traditional SEO is still essential, but businesses should also begin considering whether AI platforms can understand their websites well enough to mention, cite, and recommend them.
What Is Generative Engine Optimization?
Generative engine optimization is the practice of improving a company’s digital presence so that AI-powered search and answer platforms can more easily understand, retrieve, cite, and recommend its information.
You may also hear related terms such as:
AEO: answer engine optimization
AI search optimization
LLM visibility
While the terminology is still evolving, the underlying objective is straightforward: make it easy for both people and machines to understand who your company serves, what it offers, where it operates, and why it’s credible.
ChatGPT search sometimes uses current web sources and provides links/citations in its responses. OpenAI also states that public websites can appear in ChatGPT search and identifies OAI-SearchBot as the crawler used to surface websites in its search results. (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots)
This means your website is no longer competing only for a position in a traditional list of search results, it’s also competing to become one of the sources an AI system uses when answering questions.
Why a ChatGPT Recommendation May Create More Trust
A person using Google typically receives a list of options. They may visit several websites, compare providers, read reviews, and decide which company seems credible.
An AI recommendation feels different to consumers right now.
The user asks a specific question: "Who is a good B2B marketing agency for a technology company in Orlando?"
The platform then synthesizes information and presents one or more businesses as relevant options.
Our working hypothesis is that this creates a form of transferred trust. The prospect may feel that an independent system has already completed part of the research and comparison process better than if they had done it themselves.
That doesn’t mean every AI-generated recommendation is correct, and it doesn’t guarantee that an AI lead will close; however, in this case, the prospect arrived with a level of trust that felt closer to a personal referral than a conventional website inquiry.
For a small or growing company with a limited marketing budget, this is extremely valuable.
The Visibility Came Before the Lead
Approximately three weeks before this prospect contacted us, I shared that Apex House had reached the first position in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for one of our target markets.
The phrases were narrow. They were closer to:
B2B technology marketing company in Orlando
marketing agency for a B2B technology company in Orlando, Florida
Orlando marketing support for technology companies
That narrow focus was intentional.
A smaller business is unlikely to become the default answer for a broad query such as “best marketing agency” immediately. It is often more realistic to begin with a clearly defined combination of:
service
audience
industry
problem
location
In our case, the website already made it clear that Apex House provides B2B marketing support, works heavily with technology companies, and operates from Orlando.
Within several weeks of seeing that AI-search visibility, we received the lead and closed the deal.
The relationship between the ranking and the sale is anecdotal, but it was strong enough to influence our strategy: we are continuing to invest in both traditional SEO and AI visibility.
Two Places to Start Improving Your GEO Visibility
There is no button that guarantees a ChatGPT recommendation, and just because you gain 1st position one month, doesn’t mean you’ll have 1st position again next month. The work begins with making your website clearer, more useful, technically accessible, and more credible across the web.
Two priorities stand out.
1. Optimize Your Website for AI Readability
AI systems need to extract meaning from your website efficiently.
That means organizing useful content clearly.
Google’s current guidance for generative AI search continues to emphasize foundational SEO, clear technical structure, and original, expert-led content rather than a separate set of tricks for AI visibility. (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)
Answer important questions directly
Build pages around the questions your buyers actually ask. For Apex House, those topics look like:
What does a B2B marketing agency do?
How much does B2B marketing support cost?
What marketing services does a software company need?
How can a small technology company generate more leads?
Should a business hire an agency or an internal marketing employee?
Provide a concise answer near the top of the page, then expand with more context, evidence, examples, and related considerations.
Use a clear page structure
Help readers and retrieval systems understand the hierarchy of the content through:
one descriptive page title
logical H2 and H3 headings
short paragraphs
descriptive bullet points
clearly labeled services
focused FAQ sections
internal links to related pages
Google recommends using the words people use to find information in prominent places such as page titles, main headings, alt text, and link text. It also stresses crawl-able links and helpful, reliable content. (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable)
Make each page answer a specific need
Avoid creating a single generic services page that tries to rank for everything.
A technology founder looking for website content has a different need from an insurance executive seeking sales enablement support. Dedicated pages make those relationships more explicit.
For example:
B2B marketing for technology companies
SaaS website content services
B2B sales enablement materials
email marketing for professional services firms
Orlando B2B marketing agency
Each page should clearly explain the audience, problem, service, process, and expected business value.
Add original experience
AI systems will summarize generic advice without using your website.
Your content becomes more valuable when it contains something it can’t generate independently, like:
first-hand business lessons
original frameworks
client examples
specific processes
benchmarks you have collected
expert opinions
practical templates or calculators
Google’s AI-search guidance specifically encourages unique, expert-led, non-commodity content that adds value beyond common information. (https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/05/succeeding-in-ai-search)
The story in this article about winning business from a ChatGPT recommendation is one example. It shares a real outcome, a timeline, a hypothesis, and lessons drawn from direct experience.
2. Build a Clear Brand Entity Profile
Your website shouldn’t be the only place where information about your business exists.
AI systems and search engines need consistent signals that connect your company name with its services, location, leadership, industries, and areas of expertise.
Keep your business information consistent
Make sure your company’s name, address, phone number, website, and description are accurate across:
your website
Google Business Profile
LinkedIn
reputable business directories
local listings
industry memberships
partner websites
Your business shouldn’t be described as a general studio in one location, a specialized agency in another, and a B2B consultancy somewhere else unless those descriptions fit into a clear and coherent brand identity.
Add relevant structured data
Structured data provides explicit information about a page and the entity it describes. Google supports Organization and LocalBusiness structured data for details such as company name, address, contact information, logo, and other business identifiers.
Depending on the page, a business may consider markup such as:
Organization
LocalBusiness
Service
Article
Person
BreadcrumbList
The markup must accurately reflect visible page content. Schema is not a substitute for strong content, and it doesn’t guarantee a ranking or citation, but it does give search systems clearer machine-readable information.
Earn credible third-party mentions
A company describing itself as an expert is useful, but other credible websites recognizing that expertise is more persuasive for GEO.
Look for legitimate opportunities to earn:
industry publication mentions
podcast appearances
local business coverage
association listings
partner profiles
expert contributions
relevant awards
client case studies and testimonials
The goal isn’t to collect hundreds of low-quality links, it’s to develop a consistent digital footprint that confirms what your company does and why it is credible.
A Lesson About Broadening AI Rankings
After gaining visibility for narrow Orlando-focused phrases, our next instinct was to broaden Apex House’s reach.
We wanted the company to appear for questions related to marketing support across Florida, not only for B2B technology companies in Orlando.
The lesson was that you can’t simply declare that you want to rank for much like with SEO. You need to establish genuine relevance for whatever you want to rank for.
So keep the narrow pages that are already working to preserve established relevance, and build new, additional layers around it.
A Practical GEO Checklist for B2B Companies
A business beginning its GEO strategy can start by reviewing these questions:
Does the website clearly explain what the company does in the first few sentences?
Is it obvious which industries, audiences, problems, and locations the company serves?
Does each important service have its own focused page?
Are common buyer questions answered directly?
Does the content include original experience or evidence?
Is company information consistent across the web?
Does the site use accurate organization and local-business structured data?
Can search crawlers access the important pages?
Do credible third-party websites mention the brand?
Is the company measuring visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI features, and traditional search over time?
For ChatGPT specifically, website owners should confirm that they are not unintentionally blocking OAI-SearchBot if they want their public pages to be eligible for ChatGPT search visibility. (https://www.npws.net/blog/chatgpt-ai-crawler-website)
GEO Does Not Replace SEO
One of the most important lessons is that GEO and SEO shouldn’t be treated as opposing strategies.
Strong AI visibility is still built on many familiar foundations:
useful content
technical accessibility
clear site architecture
accurate business information
relevant authority
credible external references
strong user experience
Traditional SEO helps search engines discover and understand your company. GEO extends that work into AI-generated answers and recommendations.
What Winning a Deal Through ChatGPT Changed for Apex House
Closing one deal doesn’t provide enough data to make broad claims about AI lead quality, but it does provide a meaningful signal.
It showed that AI visibility can move beyond impressions, experimental rankings, and screenshots. It can produce a real conversation with a real buyer and, in this instance, meaningful revenue.
A website should do more than just describe a business, it should create clarity, evidence, and trust so another machine-system can confidently describe and recommend the business.
This is the new challenge, and there might be a significant opportunity for the companies that invest early in GEO
Want to improve how your business appears in traditional and AI-powered search? Schedule a consultation with Apex House to discuss your SEO, website content, and GEO visibility.
