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Designing SEO for the AI Era:
Powering 5-Figure Deals

Product Strategy

Enterprise SaaS

Revenue Growth

About the client

About the client

Writesonic is a marketing tech product that helps businesses grow through organic marketing. Before GEO, we were best known for our SEO-ready AI article writer and Chatsonic marketing agents—tools that do all the research using real data pulled from Ahrefs and suggest a plan.

But we noticed something changing.

The way people search is changing. They no longer go to Google first—it's ChatGPT first. Or Perplexity. Or Claude. And if your brand isn't showing up in those AI answers, you're invisible in the new search landscape.

Goal

Goal

Create a platform where brands can monitor their AI presence and take action to improve it.

Responsibilities & duration

Responsibilities & duration

User research, usability testing, user flows, wireframes, prototyping, and impact tracking.
12 weeks

72% of AI platform users rely on AI as their primary tool for researching products and brands

72% of AI platform users rely on AI as their primary tool for researching products and brands

Adobe, 2025

The Challenge

The Challenge

This was a new niche. A new market that's still emerging. AI platforms are changing every day, and so are the tools to monitor them.

We had no playbook. No existing mental models. Users didn't even know what GEO was yet.

How we overcame it

How we overcame it

We went back to basics—user research and empathy. First principles thinking: What does the user actually want?

The answer was clear: They want to be mentioned by AI. They want to be cited as a credible source. They want to know what people are searching for on AI platforms, and they want to show up in those answers.

Phase 1
Phase 1

The process

The process

The process

Our process was messy but quick. We used AI platforms like Claude and V0 to prototype and dive deep into what the future of GEO might look like—not just the current state of competitors, but what a mature enterprise GEO platform could be. Think Ahrefs and Semrush, but for GEO.

Our process was messy but quick. We used AI platforms like Claude and V0 to prototype and dive deep into what the future of GEO might look like—not just the current state of competitors, but what a mature enterprise GEO platform could be. Think Ahrefs and Semrush, but for GEO.

Core features

Core features

Core features

Configure your competitors and prompts

Configure your competitors and prompts

Set up what you want to track and who you're competing against.

Set up what you want to track and who you're competing against.

Track AI visibility and citations

Track AI visibility and citations

See citations, prompts, and answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.

See citations, prompts, and answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis

Get data on how AI is talking about your product - positive, negative, or neutral.

Get data on how AI is talking about your product - positive, negative, or neutral.

Progressive disclosure

Progressive disclosure

High-level reports for quick insights, with the ability to drill down into responses for deeper analysis.

High-level reports for quick insights, with the ability to drill down into responses for deeper analysis.

Learning & Iteration

Learning & Iteration

Learning & Iteration

After Version 1, we waited for feedback from the sales team, customer success, and keeping an eye on the GEO horizon for the latest changes.

After Version 1, we waited for feedback from the sales team, customer success, and keeping an eye on the GEO horizon for the latest changes.

The answer was obvious: "I have all these reports. Now what? How can I actually influence my AI visibility? What are the next steps?"

The answer was obvious: "I have all these reports. Now what? How can I actually influence my AI visibility? What are the next steps?"

Phase 2

Action centre

We used AI to make it as easy as possible for the end user to take action. The Workflows feature is a testament to that. While other competitors are building complex node-based workflows, we took a chat based approach inspired from tools like Claude Code and Open Claw.

Core features

Core features

Core features

Boost AI Citations

Boost AI Citations

Create new, high-authority articles specifically designed to be "picked up" and cited by LLMs.

Create new, high-authority articles specifically designed to be "picked up" and cited by LLMs.

External Authority Building

External Authority Building

Identify and reach out to relevant blogs or engage in Reddit communities to secure brand mentions in
the places AI models crawl most

Identify and reach out to relevant blogs or engage in Reddit communities to secure brand mentions in
the places AI models crawl most

Content Refresh

Content Refresh

Instantly update your existing web pages to make them more "AI-friendly" and readable for
generative crawlers.

Instantly update your existing web pages to make them more "AI-friendly" and readable for
generative crawlers.

Competitor Intel

Competitor Intel

Analyze exactly why your competitors are winning AI citations and generate a plan to bridge the gap.

Analyze exactly why your competitors are winning AI citations and generate a plan to bridge the gap.

Technical Health Check

Technical Health Check

Automatically find and fix hidden technical issues, like robots.txt files that are accidentally blocking
AI bots from seeing your site.

Automatically find and fix hidden technical issues, like robots.txt files that are accidentally blocking
AI bots from seeing your site.

Impact

Impact

GEO became one of Writesonic's fastest-growing products—and a competitive advantage.

We started closing five-figure deals with enterprise customers. Marketing agencies and Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Unilever, Zoho, and Acer came on board. These weren't just sales—they were validation that we'd solved a real problem.

The team expanded to support the growth. New customer engineers, and customer success folks joined to scale what we'd built.

Reflection

Reflection

Teamwork shined here

Without the product vision, the engineering team's experiments to stubbornly work on a UX-friendly product, and the sales and CS teams' constant feedback—none of this would be possible.

I learned that a solid feedback loop is so important at every stage: discovery, design, and development.

Product thinking

I learned to not just focus on what other competitors are doing, but to think deeply about an industry and look beyond it into the future.

GEO isn't just about tracking AI citations. It's about understanding where search is going and helping brands stay ahead.