In our previous post, we explored the global trend of AI becoming central to the customer journey, along with key insights and a successful case study from GEO that demonstrated how AI can drive traffic and conversions.
I’m sure some of you are wondering about this!
I understand that it’s important to become a brand that AI chooses, but what kind of strategy should we develop for next year?
So, in this second part, we’ll explore the core concepts of GEO in the AI era, as summarized by Elephant Company, and outline a GEO strategy roadmapthat brands should implement in preparation for 2026.
We’ve also included a Q&A section that gets right to the heart of the matter, so please stick with us until the end!
2026 Roadmap: AI Visibility Drives Marketing Performance
Now that AI has become central to search, this GEO roadmap holds the answer to how brands should present themselves and how they can be “chosen.”
In the age of AI, what is the fundamental concept of GEO?
Ultimately, GEO is about how we shape AI to understand and evaluate our brand.
The key points can be summarized as follows:
- Brand Entity
- Website Optimization (On-site)
- Knowledge Graph Creation & Expansion (Off-site)
- Content Strategy (On-page)
Ultimately, GEO is the process of consolidating brand informationscattered across the internet into a single entity and organizing it into a format that AI can easily understand.
If SEO was a strategy for getting our brand to appear in search results, GEO is a strategy for getting AI to include our brand in its answers.
CEP: The Key Language for Connecting Brands to AI
💡Category Entry Point (CEP)
The ‘needs,’ ‘situations,’ and ‘motivations’ that prompt consumers to think of a specific product category
Internal and external ‘triggers’ that prompt purchasing behavior
The reason CEP is so important in the age of AI is simple. People no longer ask for specific product names; instead, they ask, “What would be good for this situation?” And AI immediately recommends the brand that best fits that situation.
So, there’s one key question: “In what situations should our brand come to mind?”
This connection must be established not only in the customer’s mind but also within the AI’s knowledge base in order to result in actual recommendations. Furthermore, since customers move between various channels when making purchasing decisions, it is also important to place content tailored to each Customer Experience Path (CEP) on the appropriate channel.
In other words, a clear definition of the CEP is essential for AI to identify the brand and drive the entire conversion process within a single conversation.
So, how would you define CEP? Try defining CEP using the seven questions below.
- WHY – Why are you looking for this category?
- WHEN – When do you think of this category?
- WHERE – Where does this need arise?
- WHILE – What are you doing when you feel this need?
- WITH/FOR WHOM – With whom? For whom?
- WITH/FOR WHAT – Which product or service?
- HOW (feeling) – In what emotional state?
On-site observations are facts; off-site observations are evidence.
In the age of AI, we must distinguish between the objectives of online and offline channelsand redefine our strategies accordingly.
On-site contentrefers to sources of accurate information provided directly by the brand—such as websites and blogs—and serves as a key data source for AI. Itprimarily consists of structured facts, such as product information, feature descriptions, and guides, all aimed at driving conversions.
Off-site platforms—such as news sites, social media, and online communities—are spaces where third-party mentions accumulate, serving as evidence that a brand is genuinely trustworthy. In other words, you can think of them as channels for building a track record of trust to present to AI.
In other words, when onsite content provides reliable facts and offsite content supports those facts, AI can understand and reference the brand with greater accuracy.
Content strategy and performance monitoring are important
In the age of AI, content strategy and performance monitoringhave become even more critical. As we discussed in our previous post, Elephant Company categorizes content into three types—AI-cited content, conversion-oriented content, and core content—and the performance metrics we track differ for each type.
For AI-generated content, key metrics include AI Overview, AI mentions/citation monitoring, and changes in brand search volume; for conversion-focused content, they include AI-driven traffic, landing pages, and conversion rates; and finally , for core content , long-term metrics such as organic lead conversion rates and increases in domain authority are crucial.
Ahrefs is the key tool for comprehensively monitoring these results; it even allows us to track how frequently major AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity mention our brand, making it an essential tool for our GEO strategy.
Ensuring Your Brand Is Visible to AI and Properly Recognized
Are you starting to get a sense of your strategy moving forward?
To summarize, a GEO strategy in the age of AI ultimately boils down to making our brand “visible” to AI and ensuring it is “recognized” as a trustworthy brand.
First, visibility—that is, “making things visible”—begins with structuring web and digital assets in a way that’s easy for AI to read. This involves clearly organizing page structure, logically arranging headings, and applying schema markup to help AI quickly understand the meaning of each page.
Next is Validation, or “gaining recognition.” When evaluating a brand, AI also examines what external sources are saying about it and how they are saying it. As third-party voices—such as news articles, interviews, social media posts, community mentions, reviews, and web documents—accumulate, the AI grows to trust and recommend the brand more. Ultimately, these external mentions serve as evidence of the brand’s trustworthiness.
In summary,
Visibility = The process of enabling AI to discover and understand our brand
Validation = The process of giving AI a reason to validate and recommend our brand
Brand success in the AI era depends on how effectively these two pillars are balanced.
Q&A
The seminar also included a Q&A session to address any questions based on the content covered so far, and we received so much interest that it was difficult to answer everyone’s questions. Check out the most frequently asked questions from the event to get practical tips on brand marketing!🔥
Q1. Is it appropriate to focus solely on conversion when using AI?
You need to define your objectives and goals based on your business.
It depends on the brand’s objectives. If brand awareness is the goal, focusing on conversion pages may actually be counterproductive. However, if online conversion is the core objective—as is the case with D2C—it makes sense to design the AI to prioritize conversion pages such as the Product Detail Page (PDP).
Ultimately, the key question is, “What role should AI play in our business?”
Q2. What is the basis for the figures on traffic, conversions, etc., in the data? Also, are there any tools available to measure AI citation rates?
We track traffic and conversion data using marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics, and backlink data using tools like Ahrefs.
We track metrics such as traffic and conversions using Google Analytics. As for AI traffic, since Google Analytics doesn’t automatically categorize it, we manually separate and track it by domain and referral.
While there is no raw data that provides exact numerical values for AI citation rates, you can use monitoring tools like Ahrefs to track citation trends and compare them with competitors. There is currently no tool that can perfectly quantify “AI citation rates” in real time; instead, all platforms provide estimated data based on sampling.
Q3. What benefits does a corporate website’s newsroom offer? Could you also share some tips on creating content?
The Newsroom focuses on strengthening brand trust, while our content focuses on solving customer problems.
Newsrooms boost a brand’s domain authority, yielding positive results in AI and search. They play a key role in reinforcing the perception that “this brand is trustworthy.”
When creating content, it’s most important to tailor your explanations to the customer’s level of understanding. You need to plan your content based on the customer’s search intent and the problem they’re trying to solve.
Q4. AI systems usually cite English-language pages first, so how was the Korean page of a global company like L able to be cited ahead of the English-language pages?
I suspect this is the result of a combination of page quality, structure, and brand credibility.
Although the exact algorithm is unknown, it is believed that as the SEO and structural quality of Korean websites have gradually improved, leading to increased brand authority, AI has begun to prioritize Korean pages.
That's because AI takes into account page quality, structure, and brand credibility—not just the text itself!
Q5. When I look at the queries provided by Ahrefs, I’m skeptical because many of them don’t seem like questions actual customers would ask.
For now, we recommend using AI monitoring tools primarily to identify trends.
We completely agree. This seems to be a limitation shared by all current AI monitoring tools. Please keep in mind that, for now, these tools do not display actual customer questions verbatim, but rather show trends based on sampling.
So, rather than absolute numbers, it’s better to use relative metrics such as trends compared to competitors and changes in brand entity exposure.
Q6. Is it worthwhile for B2B companies to have product sales pages, such as those detailing pricing plans?
While AI training is important, any information that enhances the customer experience is essential.
It's best to make it if possible.
Even if the sales page doesn’t directly lead to a purchase, it can still yield various benefits, such as increasing time spent on the site, generating leads, and creating data for AI training.
Especially in B2B, all it takes is a single form to get your business up and running.
Q7. We’ve implemented various strategies, and while traffic has increased, our conversion rates haven’t changed. What’s the best way to approach this?
Please check the content type and the validity of the session.
- Content Type
: Definition of the Concept: While this content generates a lot of traffic, it doesn’t lead to conversions. We need to increase the proportion of conversion-focused content that actually solves real problems.
If you analyze only meaningful sessions—excluding bounce sessions—rather than total traffic, the points where conversions are stalling become clearly apparent.
Let’s become a brand that provides AI-powered ‘answers’!
The shutter sounds were particularly constant throughout this seminar. The event was marked by high levels of engagement and satisfaction, with many participants providing feedback that it was “exactly what they needed to hear.”
Now that AI has become the starting point for search, I could once again sense that everyone is seriously grappling with the question of “how brands should present themselves to AI and how they should be selected.”
And the conclusion is clear: in the age of AI, brands must become “AI responses” rather than mere “search results.” To achieve this, a GEO strategy is no longer an option but a necessity, and—most importantly—the specific GEO strategy required for each brand can vary significantly.
Elephant Company designs GEO roadmaps tailored to each brand’s industry, products, and customer context. From website restructuring to content strategy and AI-driven optimization, we work with you to build these solutions based on real-world data.
If you want to proactively drive change without being swept away by the rapid growth of AI during these turbulent times, now is a critical turning point.
If you need a GEO strategy, feel free to reach out anytime. 🚀
