How To Do GEO For A Website: Nine Free Steps, Then The Models That Power The Agent

If you're asking how to do GEO for website growth, the answer is nine steps, starting with a free Google Search Console export and ending with a human fact-check.

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, which is the work of making your business the name that Google AI, Gemini or ChatGPT gives when someone asks a question.

In my latest video I run the whole thing with free tools, using Hermes Agent to read my Search Console data and write case-study pages with an SEO skill.

If you'd like my team to look at your site first, you can book a free one-to-one GEO, AEO AI audit and get a custom game plan.

Near the end, I'll show which AI models make a good brain for the GEO agent on this leaderboard, and why that's a separate question.

The nine steps to do GEO for a website

This table is the full method, so you can see every step before the detail.

Steps two to four are my Hermes workflow, and steps four to six are the three moves I call the answer engine.

What is GEO, and why does it matter for a website?

Old SEO gave ten blue links, and if you ranked seventh you still got some clicks.

AI answers usually give a short list of maybe one to three names, so there's no room for number seven.

The AI reads the pages that rank and sums up what they say.

I compare it to five friends recommending the same restaurant, because if five good pages say the same name, the AI repeats it.

Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features says that, from Google's point of view, this is still SEO.

So GEO doesn't replace good SEO, because it builds on the pages that already rank.

What does my own GEO proof look like?

These are my results from my own screens in the video, not a promise for your site.

For "best geo expert", my content appeared in the Google AI answer at the top and in the first organic spot, and in AI Mode as well.

For "best AI community", my community ranked first inside Google AI and was listed twice.

When I asked AI Mode for the best GEO experts to follow in 2026, it listed me first and linked to my sites.

Perplexity also listed me among GEO experts, although I don't really use Perplexity.

One of my sites went from zero to more than 1,300 clicks a day, and two other sites are on the same trajectory.

How do you get a baseline of your AI visibility?

Write ten to twenty questions a real buyer would ask.

Run each one in Google AI Mode, check for an AI Overview, and ask ChatGPT and Gemini too.

Log the names each answer gives, the pages it cites and whether you appear.

That log is what you'll compare against in step nine.

How do you export Search Console data for GEO?

Search Console is what Google calls a free service.

Open the Performance report, pick a date range and use the export button to download the chart and table data.

Export both queries and pages, because the agent needs to see what people typed and which URLs earned the clicks.

This is Google organic data, and Google and the AI engines still don't report AI traffic in much detail, so treat it as your best proxy.

How does Hermes turn the CSV into GEO topics?

Hermes Agent is an open-source agent from Nous Research, released under the MIT licence.

I use OpenCode as its brain, which says it includes free models, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash was free in it when I recorded.

My prompt is close to "can you analyse this and, based on what's actually working, give me keyword and topic ideas to rank inside AI search engines?"

Hermes built a report artifact in my workspace with total clicks, the brand share of clicks, non-brand click-through rate and my September clicks.

It listed what was working, such as comparison articles, my Agent OS clusters, the free AI community topic and my Antigravity and Hermes topics.

It ended with averages and a verdict on my best pages, which is where your first GEO topics come from.

You can do the same job without an Agent OS, because Hermes on its own runs the same process.

📞 Want a strategist to read your Search Console data with you?

Book a free AEO SEO strategy session and my team will look at your site, your competitors and the keywords you're closest to winning.

→ Get your custom game plan for Google and AI search

How do you write GEO pages that get cited?

I give Hermes my SEO skill and access to my sites, such as WordPress or Netlify, so it can draft and publish.

The skill is roughly a 100-point checklist, and it writes everything from a case-study angle.

My demo prompt asks it to "create an SEO article using your SEO skill and the keyword 'GEO examples' and publish to aiprofitboardroom.com".

AI Mode describes me as widely recognised as a top practitioner because of public testing and deployment, and that's on my screen.

To be named as the expert, you have to show that you've actually used the thing you're writing about.

Your case study is whatever you work on day to day, and if you experiment in Claude you can export it to Hermes or write inside Claude.

How do you be everywhere without spamming?

I run multiple websites, each with a different angle, all pointing to the same answer.

That's how I can show up two to four times on page one for one search, and my subreddit, AI SEO Insider, ranks on page one too.

Every version must be genuinely useful on its own.

Google's guide warns that separate pages for every search variation, made mainly to manipulate rankings or AI answers, break its scaled content abuse policy.

How fast should you publish on new topics?

I try to publish within 24 hours of a topic appearing.

When Jev AI dropped, I covered "Jev architecture" and "Jev waitlist" that same weekend.

The first good answer is often the only one the AI can find.

What technical checks does GEO need?

Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, but the page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet.

Make sure robots.txt doesn't block Googlebot from the pages you want named.

OpenAI's bots page says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers.

Perplexity's bots guide says PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in its search results.

Search Console's Search generative AI control includes your site by default, so just check nobody switched it off.

Google's guide says there's no special schema for its AI features and that Google Search ignores llms.txt files, although structured data still helps with rich results.

Why does the fact-check come before publishing?

Google updated its page on using generative AI content on 1 October 2026.

It says it's "critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content" before publishing, including titles, descriptions, structured data and alt text.

Google explains that generative models predict likely words rather than retrieving facts, which is why they sometimes get things wrong.

So the agent drafts, but a human signs off every number, name and meta field before a page goes live.

I'm adding a manual fact-checking list inside the AI Profit Boardroom for this step.

How do you measure GEO results?

Re-run your step one questions every couple of weeks and compare them with your log.

Search Console's Generative AI performance report shows impressions from Google's AI features, and Google says it rolled out to all sites as of 31 August 2026.

AI Mode does send traffic, and I show it on screen.

Then the new CSV goes back into step three, and the loop starts again.

What mistakes stop GEO from working?

Skipping the baseline is the first mistake, because without it you can't tell whether anything changed.

Publishing generic pages with no case study is the second, because it gives the AI nothing worth citing.

Copying one page onto several sites is the third, because Google's guide says pages made mainly to manipulate rankings break its scaled content abuse policy.

Buying "GEO hacks" such as llms.txt files is the fourth, because Google says its Search ignores them.

Letting an AI draft go live without a human check is the fifth, because it goes against Google's 1 October 2026 guidance.

What are the limits of doing GEO yourself?

Nobody can guarantee what an AI answer will say, and that includes me.

Search Console covers Google, so it won't show you everything ChatGPT or Gemini is doing.

The method needs real experience, so if you have no results yet, your first job is to go and create some.

One page rarely changes an answer on its own, which is why the loop matters.

📞 Want your first GEO topics picked for you?

Claim a free strategy session and leave with a plan to rank in Google and AI search.

→ Book the free call

Which models make a good brain for a GEO agent?

GEO itself doesn't ship its own model, and neither does Hermes Agent, because Hermes runs on whichever model you plug in.

In my video the brain was DeepSeek V4.1 Flash inside OpenCode, but DeepSeek V4.1 Flash isn't on this leaderboard.

The closest entry is DeepSeek V4 Flash, which is on the board but has no scored tasks on its live page yet, so I can't give it a number.

Here's how some other models and setups you can run Hermes on score on their live GoldieBench pages today.

Claude Opus 5 is the highest of these at 8.27, with Hermes MoA at 8.17 and GPT-5.6 Sol at 8.16 close behind.

GLM-5.2 scores 7.77 and is listed on its GoldieBench page as open weights.

Why model scores and GEO are different questions

GoldieBench scores one-shot builds, which is a different job from writing a case-study article or reading a CSV.

A stronger model doesn't make an AI answer mention you, because the answer depends on what good pages across the web say.

Where the model does matter is steps three and four, because a model that follows a long checklist closely writes cleaner drafts.

Even the best model still needs the human fact-check in step eight, because Google's guidance applies whatever writes the draft.

Related reading on GoldieBench

My GEO examples post shows four real AI answers that name me or my agency.

My free GEO audit post helps you check your site before step one.

My AEO audit post covers the prompt log in more depth.

If you want expert eyes on your plan, book a free strategy session and see the keywords you're closest to winning.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe operator walkthrough with every prompt and check
• AI Income Deskhow a local business or agency runs each GEO step
• AI Tool Verdictall nine GEO steps scored for impact and effort
• agentos.guidea quick start for running GEO from an Agent OS
• aiprofitboardroom.commy guide to ranking in Google AI Mode

Export your Search Console data, run the nine steps and fact-check every page, and you'll know exactly how to do GEO for website growth.