We relaunched the Walker Sands website in late 2024 to align our digital strategy with new OBM-driven messaging. After the launch, we saw a sharp decline in organic traffic, which underscored the need to rebuild visibility and momentum towards our target keyword/prompt set.
The core idea behind this initiative was to future-proof Walker Sands’ digital visibility by balancing two parallel but increasingly interdependent forces: SEO and GEO.
On the SEO front, we aimed to expand our non-branded keyword footprint to capture more qualified traffic from traditional and AI-driven search. That meant rebuilding technical site health, aligning content with OBM messaging and strategically mapping high-value keywords to business outcomes.
But visibility isn’t just about search engines anymore. The rise of generative engine optimization demanded a new layer of strategy. In H1 2025, we set out to optimize our content for not only rankings, but also for retrievability and relevance within AI models and answer engines.
Our specific GEO goals included:
By treating SEO and GEO not as competing priorities but as complementary paths to discoverability, we created a digital strategy that reflects how modern buyers search and how modern algorithms respond.
We pivoted towards GEO as the foundation of our digital strategy. We recognized that the future of discoverability depends not just on how we rank, but on how AI systems understand and represent our brand. While SEO provided the technical groundwork, GEO became the driving force behind how we rebuilt visibility and credibility in an AI-driven search landscape.
We started by aligning our content and metadata with this evolved positioning, implementing page tagging, structured headers and schema markup to help large language models interpret the purpose, hierarchy and relationships within our site.
From there, we developed a GEO-first content strategy designed to satisfy both user intent and AI comprehension. We worked closely with our editorial team to create semantically rich, intent-based content built around real questions and search behaviors. Each piece was optimized not just to rank but to be retrievable and contextually understood by generative AI models and answer engines.
We also prioritized authority-building through expertise. Agency leadership authored thought leadership pieces on GEO topics to strengthen our expertise signal across both human and AI audiences. This thought leadership extended to press releases, earned media coverage and award submissions, which reinforced our relevance within AI-indexed sources and built external validation that improved contextual visibility.
On the technical side, we conducted a full audit of site performance to ensure that AI crawlers and retrieval systems could effectively access and interpret our content. We enhanced crawlability, fixed broken links, improved load times and expanded long-tail keyword coverage through FAQs and conversational phrasing, which is critical for visibility in AI-driven environments.
Every piece of this strategy was intentionally interconnected: technical structure supported semantic context, which supported authority, which supported discoverability. The result was a cohesive framework where GEO and SEO worked in tandem. They serve as complementary layers of a single visibility strategy.
What makes this work unique is its proactive nature. Instead of reacting to search trends, we designed a strategy built for the future of AI-driven discovery. We integrated GEO principles across technical, editorial and authority-building efforts, which not only optimized for visibility, but redefined what it means for a brand to be understood in an era where algorithms read, learn and respond like humans.
Our GEO-first strategy successfully redefined how Walker Sands appears across both traditional and AI-driven search. In just six months, AI referral traffic more than doubled (1,055 vs. 2,189 sessions, including 1,596 from ChatGPT), engaged sessions nearly doubled (582 vs. 1,139) and key events rose 41%, proving stronger visibility and higher-quality engagement.
We achieved a major leap in Google AI Overview (AIO) visibility, from five keywords in January 2025 to 97 currently, establishing measurable authority in generative results.
Walker Sands is now consistently surfaced in high-intent, AI-generated results, confirming that our brand is being accurately interpreted within generative ecosystems. Key prompt-level wins include:
Our “What Is GEO?” blog also ranks on Google’s first page, reinforcing leadership in this emerging space.
Early pipeline data shows positive momentum. This body of work has directly driven $3M+ in pipeline and $820K+ in closed-won revenue
These outcomes validate our approach. By prioritizing GEO, we not only restored visibility post-website relaunch but established Walker Sands as a pioneer in GEO.