A useful GEO brief names the audience, the commercial pages that matter and the evidence available to improve them. It asks an agency to explain its work and measurement clearly. It does not ask for a guaranteed position inside an AI answer.
Start with the business decision
State what you want someone to understand or do after finding your organisation. For a charity this might be choosing an appeal and completing a donation. For a practice it might be checking a clinician’s suitability and making an enquiry. Give the agency the actual page and explain the current problem; “we need more AI visibility” leaves too much undefined.
Give each page one clear purpose
- Name your priority service and audience.
- List the questions a prospective client asks before getting in touch.
- Choose a preferred page for each distinct question or decision.
- Identify overlapping articles for review before asking for new ones.
- Include relevant case studies, credentials, scope information and prices.
Describe the evidence you can supply
List the people who can explain the work, the project records you can publish and any restrictions on disclosure. Distinguish a screenshot that shows delivery from analytics that show a result. If a result has not been measured, the agency should help establish a baseline. It should not manufacture one to make the proposal look stronger.
Ask for a scope you can review
| Workstream | What the proposal should explain |
|---|---|
| Technical review | URLs checked, access findings and implementation responsibility. |
| Content | Pages to improve, evidence needed and review process. |
| Business information | Which owned profiles and public facts need correction. |
| External references | The original work or relationships that justify an approach. |
| Reporting | Sources, dates, definitions and limits of each metric. |
Ask who owns the website, accounts, source files and reporting data. Confirm the initial term, ongoing costs, review meetings and how either party can end the arrangement. These details affect whether the work is useful and manageable, even when the technical recommendations are sound.
Separate delivery from outcomes
An agency can commit to agreed reviews, edits and reporting. Search engines and answer products determine their own outputs. Measure search visibility, observed citations, visits and qualified enquiries separately. A reporting dashboard should not turn a mention into a lead or assign a monetary value to an impression without evidence.
Decide whether the proposal fits
Choose work that resolves an identifiable problem on an important journey. If the proposal mainly sells files, schema volume or a quota of near-identical pages, ask how those items help your audience. A useful proposal should make that connection in ordinary language and explain what will be checked after release.