How to Use Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to Grow Your Estate Agency Business

You’ve probably heard of SEO, but have you heard of GEO? 

Generative engine optimization (GEO) increases the chance that AI links to your website, or mentions your brand name in its responses. Just like with traditional SEO, there are techniques to help you do this, and the end result is more relevant leads and traffic heading to your website. 

This is all the more important as traditional internet searches change, and more people use AI chatbots to answer their questions. For example, Google says its AI Overviews now reach 2.5 billion people every month, while its dedicated AI Mode search experience passed 1 billion monthly users in its first year alone, and has been live here in the UK since July 2025. Meanwhile, ChatGPT has grown to over 900 million weekly users.

So how do you make sure people still discover your website and use your services? The answer is to adopt a solid GEO strategy before your competitors do, and gain an edge in the ever-changing search landscape. 

This article explains what GEO is, how it works for estate agents, and how you can take proactive steps to get more web traffic from AI searches and chatbots. 

What is Generative Engine Optimisation? 

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is a strategy for optimising your estate agency website and digital channels so that you show up in relevant, AI search results. Because this is a new and evolving field, it is known by many different names which all mean roughly the same thing: 

• AI Engine Optimisation (AIO) 
• Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) 
• LLM Optimization  

GEO involves optimising your content so that it shows up across multiple AI chatbots and search engines. After all, people use a variety of AI tools, from the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini, to AI overviews on Google Search. GEO can help you appear… 

1. In AI overviews displayed in Google search. 
2. In AI powered search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT Search.
3. In AI systems like Gemini and ChatGPT which combine internet searches and their own data. 
4. In AI training data, especially for models like Claude and Llama. 

Ultimately, you must ensure your content, brand, website and services are detectable by AI across the board. 

5 ways to dominate AI search results as an estate agent 

To show up in AI search results, you’ll need to follow these best practices outlined below. And, much like with SEO, you will need to keep up with new developments to make sure your strategy stays relevant as AI models evolve. 

1. Follow SEO best practices 

There are many differences between GEO and SEO – but also plenty of overlap. The key ingredients of good SEO content will help you get cited by AI search results too. For example: 

1. A well-structured, fast, SEO optimised website with plenty of relevant content. 
2. Schema markup and structured data which displays ‘rich results’ and featured snippets like tables and FAQs in Google Search. 
3. Unique, relevant, content which meets user intent across your webpages, case studies, blogs and sales pages. 
4. Backlinks and citations in high-quality sources across the internet, which point back to your website. 
5. Trust signals, such as (e.g.) positive Google or Trustpilot reviews and testimonials. 

Ultimately, Google provides a set of guidelines which remain relevant for both SEO and GEO: content should always signal ‘Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness’ (EEAT) to your customers. 

2. Create content based on customer ‘personas’ 

You need to know who your ideal customers are (their ‘personas’), and answer the questions they are likely to ask within your web content.  

Here’s a few examples of what we mean by customer ‘personas’: 

• HMO landlords who let property to students 
• Overseas investors looking for prime London property 
• Middle-income families looking to upsize 

The more you optimise content for your customers, the more likely it is that AI will provide links to your content when answering customer questions. 

Consider the questions your customers ask 

Now, while you can’t predict someone’s (hyper-specific!) search query on AI, you can think carefully about the questions your customers ask. If you know your buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants, you will be aware of the niche queries they ask you on the phone, in person and through your website chatbot. 

This means that you need to dominate all the search queries your customers are likely to ask AI engines. The AI often has to fall back on generic results when the query is extremely specific, but if you have a webpage which meets a very niche query, it is likely to cite your website instead. 

How to tailor web content to your customer ‘personas’ 

For example, you may have an existing article on ‘how to sell your house’. But, you could develop the article so that it reaches a certain target audience. The new focus might be “how to sell your Victorian leasehold property in south Manchester” (depending upon your area and persona).  

Likewise, whenever you create new content, you could always aim to include an FAQ section that fits with the questions your customers ask on that topic. 

3. Increase your ‘share of voice’ & customer sentiment 

AI tools will scour the internet in order to answer a query. They don’t just go off the top 10 results in Google. This means you have to increase the number of times your brand is mentioned across the internet, and that when it is mentioned, people talk about it positively. 

It’s especially common for AI to scrape information from database style sites like Wikipedia, as well as industry specific sites, review platforms, social media, forums and more. 

So, the key question to ask is this: “does your brand name and service appear in these sources?” And then, if it does appear there, what is the sentiment like? Are people saying good or bad things about you? 

You need to optimise your online content strategy to achieve two things: 

1. Increase share of voice – Ensuring you are mentioned in as many places as possible, and as many times as possible as a brand name across all the relevant areas of your industry (versus your competitors).  
2. Customer sentiment – Ensuring that you get good reviews, and that these reviews are displayed on estate agency review platforms (and Google Reviews) 

Here are a couple of examples of the kind of positive brand mentions that can grow your share of voice: 

• Listed in a ‘Top 10’ page – For example, you are named 1stplace in a ’10 best estate agents in Manchester listing’ on a reputable website like Estate Agent Today or the Negotiator. 
• You are mentioned in a large Reddit forum– For example, someone explains on the HousingUK forum (with over 400k members) that you went above and beyond in your estate agency services for their house sale. 
• You invest in a press release service – For example, having your services and brand name displayed across hundreds of related industry websites through a PR firm. 

Top tip: Ask ChatGPT or Gemini, “what are the main things that stand out about [my agency] brand and services?”. This will help you understand what AI search engines know about your agency already, and help you identify what important information about you is missing. 

4. Use statistics, data & case studies 

In the age of AI, you must create content which AI tools can’t. 

Why? Firstly, because if AI can create (e.g.) a blog post, it will often return a response to the person searching without any links, based on its training data alone.  

Secondly, if it does return results, it will cite the sources which provide unique data, case studies, customer stories, real life examples and more. It cannot independently create that content. 

So, it’s essential to create unique content to become a featured link in AI search. For example: 

• Naming business achievements – E.g. ‘92% of homes sold over the asking price in the last 12 months’. 
• Highlighting your specific processes – E.g. ‘Our secure purchase scheme stops gazumping and gazundering by 99%, it works by…then…finally’. 
• Comparison based content – ‘How our lettings services compare to X national agency in Manchester’ (then cite statistics, tables of comparison, unique reviews etc.). 
• Customer specific case studies – E.g. ‘how we helped X sell their leasehold property with subsidence in 3 weeks’. 
• Service specific testimonials – E.g. ‘X didn’t just list our house – they staged it with their own furniture, brought in a professional photographer, and scheduled viewings around our work hours.’ 
• Tweaking generic content with specific examples – E.g. generic ‘how to sell your home’ article amended with your own sales testimonials, sales/pricing data, or market specific examples.  

You should display this content across all your channels and industry profiles, so far as it is possible, to give you the best chance of ranking in AI search results. 

Finally, when you create content, you should always ask yourself: “could AI instantly generate this content?”. If the answer is ‘yes’, then it’s probably not worth creating.  

5. Create middle & bottom of the funnel content 

AI search engines answer basic, informational queries instantly. And often without citing any web links.  

This is the kind of content at the ‘top of the funnel’ – when customers are doing initial research before doing more specific searches relating to your services. Target the middle and bottom of the funnel to appear in AI search engine results. 

Here’s some examples of different content types as your customers move through their property journey: 

• Top of the funnel queries – Traditionally, a lot blog posts and landing pages target ‘top of the funnel’ queries like ‘how to sell a house’. People at this stage of their house buying journey are doing initial research to find out more about (e.g.) the sales process. This is where AI is commonly used. 
• Middle of the funnel queries – However, the middle of the funnel targets more specific questions like ‘how to choose the right estate agent in Manchester’ as the person moves closer to (e.g.) deciding to book a valuation. This is harder for AI to produce. 
• Bottom of the funnel queries – Bottom of the funnel content meets the intent of people who are nearly ready to book a valuation or have a consultation with you, for example ‘3 ways our management service will save time spent on admin by 10hrs per week’. This is impossible for AI to generate unless you supply the information. 

The further you move down the funnel, the more specific and personalised the content becomes. It’s the kind of content which AI struggles to produce accurately, and usually cites web sources which deal with it directly – and you want to be one of those sources! 

It’s also worth saying that, with more queries being directed to AI chatbots, the customer may do a lot of research on AI tools before simply searching for your brand name in Google and clicking on your valuation page. 

Case study: How AI engines generate estate agent search results 

AI tools perform web searches and return results using a specific process. It’s important to understand how this works, so that your website is linked to when buyers and sellers are looking for estate agency services. 

How AI answers questions – short explainer 

AI uses a particular process to answer questions. This is called ‘query fan out’. You provide a query, and the tool breaks this down into lots of smaller queries. It then runs these smaller queries across the search engine it is connected to, and collects the results. Then it cherry-picks the results to return to you in its chosen format, based on relevance, with either embedded links or web links included in the sidebar. 

How a real AI search ranked estate agencies in an area 

Let’s see how this works in practice with a real question we asked ChatGPT: 

“Show me the top 10 estate agents in south Manchester, ranked according to recent sales reviews which prioritise a quick sales timescale and amount of sales completed above the initial asking price” 

Here’s how it responded: 

• It broke the query into two separate web searches – “Top estate agents south Manchester quick sale reviews” and “estate agents south Manchester sold above the asking price” 

• It browsed 13 different sources – These ranged from specialised review platforms (Trustpilot, All Agents, Compare Agents), to forums (Reddit), database sites (Citymaps, Wikipedia, Wheree), and three estate agents. 

• It returned a custom response with ranked results – ChatGPT ordered the results in a top 10 format to match our query based on the other searches it had performed, along with comments, reviews and quotes from the pages.  

• …but only 3 estate agent websites were linked – Of these three, one was an in depth, sellers focused page with FAQs, testimonials and a very strong local profile. One was a dedicated testimonial page for the South Manchester area. And one was not that relevant to South Manchester, but had a very sharp focus on quick sales and the price achieved. 

However, when we performed the exact same search in Google, not one of the top 10 results was the same (except a link to a similar Reddit forum). Then, when we used a more typical, SEO focused query “top estate agents south Manchester”, not one of the results was the same as the ChatGPT query.  

Perhaps more interestingly, some of the agencies that ranked highest in traditional, SEO focused search engine results pages did not appear when searching our original query, while lesser-known agents with query-specific content appeared in the AI results. 

New opportunities abound for AI optimised estate agencies 

Like an Apple investor at the turn of the century, or someone who bought Tesla stock back in 2007 – it pays to get ahead of the curve.  

Optimising your content so that it’s linked to in AI search results puts you directly ahead of your competitors, who often have no idea how AI works and haven’t even considered optimising for it. 

While it can take months to get on the first page of Google Search using SEO, it may take just a few weeks to dominate AI search results for questions asked by your customers. 

So we suggest you get ahead now, and capitalise on this new opportunity to attract relevant sellers and landlords to your estate agency business today. 

When is GEO particularly important for estate agents? 

It is most important if you’re targeting a Millennial audience (ages 30-45) or Gen Z audience (younger than 30). While uptake of AI is present across all generations, these two groups are the most likely to use it, whether at work or simply as an alternative to Google Search. 

For example, Pew Research’s 2026 study found that adults under 50 are twice as likely to use ChatGPT as those over 50 (57% versus 28%), and usage among under-30s climbed from 33% in 2023 to 58% by 2025. You can expect this to increase as AI tools are adopted more and more widely.

Once your GEO strategy is live, you’ll want to track its impact. Read our guide on how GA4 now attributes leads sent by ChatGPT to see this in action.

Need help with Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)? 

You might be really excited about this new opportunity for business growth, but you simply can’t dedicate the time and resources to GEO. 

If that’s you, then not to worry. It’s our job to optimise estate agency websites for the new era of AI, whether by automating your blog posts or engineering your website content so that it dominates AI search results for your customers’ questions. 

Get in touch if you’d like to win more leads through your digital content – whether through GEO, SEO, email campaigns, social strategy or a combination. 

Tags: Digital Marketing, Estate and Letting Agents, Professional Services