Ever ask ChatGPT who the best plumber, lawyer or marketing agency in Nashville is, just to see what comes back? Your customers are doing it right now. And if your business isn’t in that answer, you never get the call, and you never find out you missed it.
That’s what GEO (generative engine optimization, sometimes called LLM optimization) fixes. We work on how your brand shows up in Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini, using the same SEO practices that already get you found on Google. You get more reach in AI answers, and what those tools say about you is actually favorable.
Every CMO and owner is being asked about AI search
It’s hard to overstate how fast this came up. Business owners, CMOs and boards are all asking the same question: when somebody asks an AI tool about us, what does it say? Most of them don’t know, because nobody on the team has checked.
Here’s the part people miss. An AI assistant doesn’t make up its picture of your business from nothing. It builds that picture from what’s already published about you: your site, your reviews, the articles and directories that mention you, the podcasts you’ve been on. If that footprint is thin or out of date, the answer is too.
We’re having a lot of success in driving traffic from ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude and seeing it not just from a traffic standpoint, but from a lead conversion standpoint.
I love AI Search for small businesses because it is a new channel. It put us all at the starting line together.
Our GEO is built on SEO that already works
We ground our LLM optimization for Nashville businesses in the best current research and in SEO practices that have held up for years. That’s on purpose. A lot of what’s being sold as “GEO” right now is guesswork with a new name, and the tactics that get you cited by an AI model overlap heavily with the ones that get you ranked: a crawlable site, clear pages that answer real questions, and other credible sites talking about you.
So we don’t throw out your SEO and start over. We build on it, then measure what the AI tools actually say about you before and after.
AEO is an evolution of SEO. And as you do, it can be argued, Jeremy, that as you do really good SEO, you are doing AEO.
We believe that good SEO does result in good AI visibility.
What we do to get your brand into AI answers
Our approach is cross-marketing. GEO doesn’t live on your website alone, so neither does the work.
Links and mentions on sites that matter in your niche
We build links and brand mentions on relevant sites: industry publications, local business sites, trade associations and the places your customers already read. Each one is a vote for your rankings on Google and one more source an AI model can find you in.
I refer to that as LLM consensus. This is when LLMs are able to find a lot of different sources about you and they are very consistent in their messaging.
On backlinks and AI search:
I would say, you know, for the AI search systems, they probably are not using this directly, but you know, a lot of them are pulling rankings from like Google and Bing, who do still use them.
Local community work that earns links and mentions
We find local community activities that can create LLM visibility, then make sure they get written about. Think neighborhood trash cleanups, sponsorships, charity drives and local events. A real thing your business did in Nashville gets covered by real local sites, and that coverage is exactly the kind of source AI tools pull from.
On community involvement:
I know that some people don’t want to think of that as a chance to gain traction or visibility. But I think in this day and age, that stuff does move the needle.
Podcasts in your niche, or one built for your brand
We get you booked on podcasts your buyers listen to, and we can build a podcast for your brand from scratch. A show creates leads, links and a steady supply of content in your own words that nobody else can copy. We know this one firsthand. Jeremy Rivera, who leads 2theTop, hosts the Unscripted SEO podcast and has recorded more than 100 interviews with marketers and business owners. The experts quoted on this page came from those conversations.
I would much rather spend my time building the relationships with the influencers who are going to mention my tool or get me on their podcast.
How we start: find out what AI says about you today
Before we change anything, we ask the major AI tools the questions your customers ask, and we write down what comes back. Who gets named, what they say about you, which sites they cite. That’s your baseline, and it’s how you’ll know the work is doing something.
Then we go after the gaps: the mentions you don’t have yet, the pages that don’t answer the question, the competitors getting named instead of you. If you already work with us on our Essential SEO package, GEO adds to it rather than replacing it. Want the full picture first? Start with an SEO audit.
Tell us how you want to show up in AI search
Tell us about your business and who you want to reach. We’ll run the baseline check and show you what the AI tools say about you now.
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More on getting found
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The 3 pillars of future-proof SEO
What survives every Google update, and every AI one.
Local SEO strategies for Nashville businesses
Tested on our own Google Business Profile.
Want to know who’s doing the work? Read about 2theTop and our team, or see the Nashville SEO Group we ran for ten years.