If you have ever wondered what actually happens after you sign up for an SEO or GEO campaign — the real week-by-week work, not the polished agency pitch — this post is for you. At Choco Media, we think the biggest mistake agencies make is treating their process as a trade secret. The seo geo process we run is not magic. It is structured, repeatable work, and the more you understand it, the better results you get from it.
This is especially for founders, marketing managers, and small business owners who are evaluating whether an SEO + GEO campaign is right for them — or who have already started one and want to know what is happening under the hood. We will walk through all four steps, explain the reasoning behind each, and show you what outputs you can expect at every stage.
No agency mystery. Just the work.
Why We Made the Process Transparent
There is a tendency in agency life to keep the methodology vague. If clients do not know what you do, they cannot compare you to alternatives, right? We have never agreed with that logic. In our experience, clients who understand the process are better collaborators. They provide better briefs, flag issues earlier, and stick with campaigns long enough for the compounding effects to show up.
Transparency also keeps us honest. When you document your process publicly, you have to actually follow it. There is no room for “we do some proprietary stuff” as cover for a slow month.
- Clients who understand the process ask better questions
- Documented processes are easier to improve over time
- Transparency is itself a differentiator in a trust-low industry
- It reduces client anxiety at the start of a campaign, when results are still building
Step 1: Foundation Audit (Week 1 to 2)
Before we write a single word or adjust a single meta tag, we do a structured audit of where the site stands. This covers four areas: technical health, existing content, keyword landscape, and AI citation presence.
Technical Health
We use a combination of Screaming Frog and manual review to check for crawl errors, indexation issues, page speed problems, and Core Web Vitals. Most small business sites we audit have at least three to five fixable technical issues that are quietly suppressing rankings. These are not glamorous fixes — often it is redirect chains, duplicate title tags, or images without alt text — but they compound over time.
Existing Content Assessment
We map every existing page to a search intent. Which pages are targeting informational queries? Which are transactional? Where are there gaps? Where is there keyword cannibalization — two pages accidentally competing for the same term? This gives us a content architecture map we can build against.
Keyword and GEO Landscape
We research the target keyword cluster and document which queries are being answered by Google AI Overviews, which appear in ChatGPT responses, and which are still traditional blue-link SERPs. This shapes the content strategy for step two. Our SEO service covers both classical ranking and generative engine presence from day one.
- Crawl audit: 200+ checks via Screaming Frog
- Manual review of top 10 existing pages by traffic
- Keyword gap analysis vs. top 3 competitors
- AI Overview presence check for target queries
- Citation audit: is the site mentioned in any AI model responses?
In our experience, about 70% of the quick wins in any SEO campaign are already sitting on the site, invisible because of fixable technical or structural issues. The audit is where we find them.
Step 2: Strategy and Content Plan (Week 2 to 3)
With the audit complete, we build a 90-day content and optimisation plan. This is the document that drives everything downstream — it is specific, prioritised, and tied to real search data rather than guesses.
The Pillar-Cluster Architecture
We organise the content plan around pillar pages (broad, high-authority pieces that cover a topic comprehensively) and cluster posts (focused pieces that answer specific related questions). Each cluster post links back to its pillar, and the pillar links to clusters. This structure does two things: it tells Google and Bing how the site content relates to itself, and it creates the kind of interconnected, comprehensive coverage that AI models like ChatGPT and Perplexity tend to cite.
GEO-Specific Optimisations
For generative engine optimisation, we structure content differently than traditional SEO. Every pillar post gets a TL;DR section formatted for answer extraction, FAQ blocks with FAQ schema markup, and answer-first paragraph structure where the key claim comes in the first sentence. This is not a separate deliverable — it is baked into the content brief for every piece we write.
- Pillar-cluster map: typically 1 pillar + 4 to 6 clusters per campaign tier
- Target keyword assigned to each URL with no keyword splitting
- GEO schema plan: Article, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Speakable where applicable
- Internal link plan: which pages link to which, with anchor text
- Priority ranking: which fixes and pieces to ship first for fastest impact
The strategy document is shared with the client before any execution begins. We want sign-off on direction before we start writing, because a week of content built on the wrong angle is a week lost.
Step 3: Execution — Content, Technical Fixes, Schema (Weeks 3 to 10)
This is the bulk of the campaign. Once strategy is approved, we move into a rolling execution cadence: technical fixes in the first sprint, content production across the campaign, and schema implementation as content goes live.
Technical Fix Sprint
We triage the technical issues from the audit into three categories: fix immediately (blocks crawling or indexation), fix this sprint (hurts performance), and monitor (low-priority edge cases). The immediate and sprint-level fixes go into the first two weeks of execution. For most campaigns, this means we have resolved the core technical debt before the first piece of new content goes live.
Content Production
We use an AI-assisted production workflow: structured briefs go into our content pipeline, AI drafts a first version, a human editor rewrites for voice and accuracy, and we do a final GEO pass before publication. The output is human-readable, brand-consistent content that also performs in both search and generative engine contexts. Our AI content creation service explains the production model in more detail if you are curious about the mechanics.
Schema Implementation
Schema markup is added to every new piece of content at publication. We use Article schema on all blog posts, FAQPage schema on any post with Q&A sections, BreadcrumbList site-wide, and LocalBusiness schema on the homepage and contact page. For e-commerce clients, we add Product and Review schema on relevant pages.
- Starter tier: 2 new posts + 5 technical fixes per month
- Growth tier: 4 new posts + ongoing technical monitoring per month
- Authority tier: 8 or more new posts + proactive GEO tracking + schema audit per month
- All tiers: schema on every new piece, internal links woven in
What We Do Not Do
No link schemes, no AI content without human editing, no keyword stuffing, no fake reviews. These tactics either do not work anymore or actively harm rankings. We would rather ship fewer pieces done properly than more pieces done quickly.
Step 4: Measurement and Monthly Review (Ongoing)
A campaign without measurement is just publishing. We track a specific set of metrics and review them monthly with clients — not because we have to, but because it is the only way to know if the strategy is working and where to adjust.
What We Measure
For traditional SEO: organic sessions, keyword position changes for target terms, click-through rate on search appearances, and pages indexed vs. pages expected. For GEO: AI citation presence (manual spot-checks in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for target queries), featured snippet wins, and FAQ schema rich result appearances in Google Search Console.
The Monthly Report
Every month, clients receive a report that covers what was shipped, what moved, what is next, and whether any strategy adjustments are warranted. We use a structured format with a short executive summary — designed to be read in five minutes — followed by full data for those who want to dig in. For a sense of what a client-facing digest looks like from our side, the post on what a Friday digest looks like at our agency gives a real example of how we communicate progress.
- Core metrics: organic sessions, keyword rankings, indexed pages
- GEO metrics: AI citation spot-checks, AI Overview appearances
- Content metrics: new posts published, pages updated, internal links added
- Technical health: Core Web Vitals trend, crawl error delta
- Next month: priorities, any strategy pivots, new opportunities spotted
When to Expect Results
We are direct about timelines because we have seen clients get burned by agencies promising results in 30 days. Technical fixes can show impact quickly — sometimes within a few weeks of implementation. Content takes longer. Most of the pillar posts we publish start ranking meaningfully between months 3 and 6. GEO citations tend to appear earlier than traditional rankings, because AI models update their training and retrieval on different cycles. Plan for a 90-day horizon before drawing conclusions about whether a content strategy is working.
How the Tier You Choose Affects the Process
The four-step process is the same across all tiers. What changes is the pace and depth of execution. The Starter tier runs the full process but at a slower cadence — two pieces of content per month instead of eight, and a lighter schema implementation. The Growth and Authority tiers allow us to move faster through the cluster architecture, pick up more keyword surface area, and do more proactive GEO testing.
If you are unsure which tier fits your situation, you can find a practical breakdown of what each package includes over on the campaigns page. For most early-stage businesses, the Starter tier is the right starting point — it runs the complete process, just at a pace that matches budget reality.
- Starter (199 EUR/month): Audit, Strategy, 2 posts/month + fixes, Monthly report
- Growth (349 EUR/month): Audit, Strategy, 4 posts/month + proactive monitoring, Monthly report
- Authority (499 EUR/month): Audit, Strategy, 8+ posts/month + GEO tracking + schema audit, Monthly report
Common Questions About the Process
What if we already have an SEO plugin like Yoast or RankMath?
We work alongside them. These plugins handle on-page basics well, and we do not ask clients to remove tools that are already in place. Where we add value is in the strategic layer — the content architecture, the GEO-specific formatting, and the schema that these plugins do not generate automatically.
Do we need to give you CMS access?
For technical fixes and content publication, yes — editor-level access to the CMS is helpful. For clients who prefer to implement fixes themselves, we can deliver instructions instead. It adds a round of back-and-forth but it works.
What happens after the campaign ends?
Content does not expire. Everything we publish remains live and continues to compound. We have seen posts from an 18-month-old campaign still generating meaningful traffic two years later. The compound effect is real — it just requires patience in the first few months.
- You keep everything we publish — it is your content on your site
- Rankings built during the campaign persist after it ends
- Schema markup stays live unless you remove it
- Continuing with a maintenance tier is optional, not required
Getting Started
If the process makes sense and you want to see whether it fits your situation, the right next step is a short conversation. We do a 20-minute intro call — no pressure, no pitch deck — where we look at your site together and tell you honestly what we would prioritise. If there is a fit, great. If not, we will tell you that too. You can book that call or ask a question directly through our contact page.
The process works. The timeline is honest. And now you know exactly what you are buying.