From a foothold in AI answers to the #1-cited agency in our category
Buyers now ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for an agency shortlist before they contact anyone. We build fast websites for a living, and we were already showing up in AI answers, just far less than we could. So we ran our own GEO, SEO and copywriting playbook on naturaily.com. Here's what changed in twelve months.
Results at a glance
#1
Most-cited agency
in AI answers across a 17-prompt US buyer set
+518%
Top-3 rankings
62 → 383 organic keywords in 12 months
28,970
AI citations
in Bing/Copilot AI over 120 days (~241/day)
38%
Share of AI voice
vs. every named competitor in the set
What we needed from our own site
Naturaily already had the fundamentals: 13+ years of builds, a Domain Rating of 55, and content ranking for the exact topics our buyers research. AI answers had quietly become the new shortlist, and while we were already showing up, we were nowhere near the visibility we knew we could reach.
When we checked, two things stood out: our overall coverage was low, we appeared in only a small slice of category answers, and entire service lines returned nothing at all. Plenty of headroom. We set five goals:
Measure exactly where we stood in AI answers versus competitors - numbers, not guesses.
Find which of our pages AI already cites, and where the gaps are.
Grow citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Copilot.
Turn strong-but-underperforming pages into ones that both rank and get quoted.
Do it with content that reads like people wrote it - copywriting, not AI filler.
Why SEO strength alone doesn't win AI answers
The data made the gap obvious. The biggest names in our category dominate traditional SEO yet were completely absent from AI answers - one with a Domain Rating of 78 and 21.5k organic visits a month among them. AI visibility, it turned out, is not the same as raw SEO size. That was the opening.
Marcin Sulikowski
co-CEO Naturaily
We didn't want to guess whether AI recommended us, but we wanted the same thing we give clients - a measured baseline, and a method to move it.
At the same time, our own coverage sat at roughly 9%: we appeared in a small slice of category answers, and every Shopify / ecommerce replatforming prompt returned zero Naturaily mentions. A whole part of what we sell wasn't surfacing in AI answers yet.
How we ran GEO, SEO and copywriting on ourselves
A repeatable, tool-based pipeline - the same one we run for clients.
Sandra Wróbel-Konior
Senior Content Manager, Naturaily
The unlock wasn’t writing more. It was writing in a way that lets a machine lift a clean answer while still making the page worth reading for a buyer. Once we structured content that way, the citations started following naturally.
1. Benchmark AI visibility
We ran 17 buyer-intent prompts - headless, Jamstack, Next.js, Shopify - across all major AI engines in the US, tracking mentions, share of voice, average position and the exact URLs each answer cited. Result: #1 by mentions (6), 38% share of voice, Leader in the visibility index, ahead of every other agency in the set.
2. Map what AI already cites
naturaily.com was already cited 9× across the set - our /services/headless-cms-agency page (3 citations) and /blog/hiring-jamstack-agency post (3) doing the work. We mapped the domains AI leans on in our category - Shopify docs, Reddit, gitnation, designrush - as citation targets to earn.
3. Strengthen the SEO foundation AI pulls from (Ahrefs)
AI engines quote what already ranks. So we compounded the base: over 12 months, top-3 rankings grew from 62 to 383 +518%, organic traffic roughly doubled (2,158 → 4,334/mo), and Domain Rating climbed from 48 to 55 across 1,037 referring domains.
4. Win the keywords that trigger AI Overviews
Pages ranking for "what is a headless cms" (54k, #24) and "how much does shopify cost" (2.1k, #15) already surface Google AI Overviews. Those are the raw material AI quotes, so we prioritized pushing them onto page one, where they get lifted into answers.
5. Rewrite for extraction and for humans (Copywriting)
Every priority page was restructured for how machines read and how buyers decide: clear definitions, cited statistics, comparison tables, FAQ and schema so engines can lift a clean answer, written and fact-checked by people, because AI filler doesn't rank, doesn't get cited, and doesn't convince a buyer.
6. Close the gaps
Finally, the zero-mention service lines: we began building the Shopify / ecommerce replatforming content that answered the prompts we were missing entirely, turning unseen service lines into citable ones.
Want the full playbook behind this?
Download our AI Search Visibility report - the methodology, the numbers, and the competitive set, with sources you can inspect.
The AI-named competitive set
AI mentions set against organic strength - two very different pictures.
| Brand | AI mentions | Skare of voice | Organic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naturaily | 6 | 38% | DR 55 · 4.6k/mo |
| Competitor A | 4 | 25% | DR 53 · 6.4k/mo |
| Competitor B | 4 | 25% | DR 43 · 0.9k/mo |
| Competitor C | 2 | 13% | DR 61 · 0.15k/mo |
On the radar - but zero AI mentions: several much larger agencies, including one at DR 78 with 21.5k organic visits a month and a well-known Jamstack pioneer. Far ahead on classic SEO, yet unnamed in these AI answers - the category isn't locked. First movers win the citations.
Sandra Wróbel-Konior
Senior Content Manager, Naturaily
Seeing our own pages quoted in AI answers changed how we brief every article. We don't write to rank a URL anymore, but to be the sentence the AI repeats.
Outcome
Where we landed
Today Naturaily is the most-cited agency in its category's AI answers. Google's own surfaces cite us 43 times in AI Overviews and 105 in AI Mode; Bing/Copilot's AI has cited us 28,970 times in 120 days. In Google Search Console, average position climbed from 33 to 7 over the year, on 16,015 clicks from 31.4M impressions. The method that produced this is the one we now sell.
Before
Strong websites, solid classic SEO, and already appearing in AI answers, but at a fraction of the visibility we could reach, with whole service lines returning zero AI mentions and no way to measure the gap.
After
The #1-cited agency in the category's AI answers: 38% share of voice, citations across every major engine, top-3 rankings up 518%, and a repeatable GEO + copywriting system we run for clients.
Beyond the numbers
01
A measured baseline
We know exactly where we stand in AI answers, by engine, and can track it monthly instead of guessing.
02
Citations across every engine
Named in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews & Mode, Copilot and Grok, not just one.
03
Content that ranks and gets quoted
Pages restructured for extraction and rewritten for buyers do double duty in search and in AI answers.
04
A repeatable methodology
The exact pipeline - benchmark, map, strengthen, rewrite, close gaps - is what we now deliver to clients.
05
Proof we practise what we sell
Every number here is our own domain, with the sources named - the strongest sales asset we have.
06
A roadmap that compounds
Closing the Shopify gap and deepening the headless hub keeps adding citable surface area month over month.
What you get when we run it for you
Measured
An AI-visibility baseline and share-of-voice vs. your named competitors.
Cited
Content structured with schema and data so engines lift it into answers.
Human-written
Copywriting and UX writing that convince buyers, not AI filler.
Built-in
We implement the schema, structure and site changes ourselves, not just advise.
— ABOUT NATURAILY
The agency that builds the site and gets it cited
Naturaily is a Poland-founded web development and digital agency with 13+ years building fast, headless websites on Next.js, Nuxt, Shopify and headless CMS platforms - for clients including n8n, Volt.io, Taboola and FGS Global.
What makes the GEO work different is that we don't stop at the recommendation: when the analysis says "fix your schema, restructure this page, rewrite that section," we're the team that ships it. Strategy, copywriting and implementation, from one partner.
Project
GEO / SEO + Copywriting
Industry
Web development & digital agency
Services
AI visibility, SEO content, copywriting & UX writing
Rating
4.9 / 5 on Clutch · 200+ projects
The strongest proof that we can make you visible in AI is that we did it for ourselves - with the numbers to show it.
Marcin Sulikowski
Co-CEO, Naturaily
— MORE CASE STUDIES
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of making your brand visible in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Where SEO earns rankings, GEO earns citations - your brand named and linked as the source when AI answers your customers' questions.
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FAQ
Questions teams ask about GEO
GEO is structuring content and authority so AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews name and cite your brand in their answers - not just rank a page in a list of links.
SEO gets a page ranked in a list of links; GEO gets it quoted inside an AI answer. A page can be cited by AI even when it ranks on page two, because AI selects sources on structure and authority, not position alone. You need both - strong SEO is the foundation AI builds on.
We benchmark buyer-intent prompts across the major AI engines with Otterly.ai (mentions, share of voice, citations), pair it with Ahrefs for the SEO foundation, and read first-party AI-citation counts from Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console where you grant access.
First movement usually appears in 6-12 weeks - new citations on long-tail questions and better brand descriptions. Competitive commercial queries take 3-6 months, because AI weighs authority signals that compound over time. We report citation changes monthly from week one.
No honest provider can guarantee specific AI citations. What we guarantee is a measured baseline, a proven methodology, and transparent monthly tracking of your citation share against competitors.
We use AI for research and analysis and human experts for writing. AI filler doesn't rank, doesn't get cited and doesn't convince a buyer. Every piece is written and fact-checked by specialists and structured to GEO best practices.
Want to be the name AI recommends?
We'll show you, on your real category prompts, where you stand in AI answers today, who's cited instead of you, and what it takes to change that.