Why your SEO strategy isn't enough if ChatGPT doesn't know you

Six months ago, I audited the AI visibility of a French fintech scale-up that came to me with a simple question: "Why have our inbound leads dropped while our organic traffic hasn't moved?"

The answer was in the numbers: their SEO traffic was fine, but their buyers had changed behaviour. They weren't typing questions into Google anymore. They were asking ChatGPT. And in ChatGPT's answers, this fintech simply didn't exist. Their two main competitors, on the other hand, were cited by name as reference solutions.

This case isn't isolated. It's what I see today in almost every tech and fintech company I work with. The problem isn't their SEO, it's elsewhere.

94% of B2B buyers use AI in their decision process. 75% prefer a sales-rep-free buying journey, they research on their own. 81% have already chosen a vendor before the first sales conversation.

These numbers aren't futuristic projections. They describe buying behaviour today, in 2026. And they have a direct implication for your marketing strategy: if you're not recommended by AI, you don't exist in a growing part of your prospects' buying journey.

The problem: SEO and AI visibility are two different games

For twenty years, the rule was simple: if you ranked well on Google, you were visible. SEO had its constraints, backlinks, keywords, page speed, but the logic was linear. Optimise your site, climb the results, harvest traffic.

Generative engines work on radically different logic. When a user asks ChatGPT a question, "Which payment solution is best for French SMEs?" or "Who's the best consultant to launch my fintech product in Europe?", the model doesn't scan a list of ranked links. It synthesises an answer from what it learned during training and what it can consult in real time. And in that synthesis, certain brands are cited. Others don't exist.

The selection criterion isn't your ranking on a specific keyword. It's your perceived topical authority, the density and quality of third-party citations about you, the clarity of your positioning in your content, and the consistency with which you're associated with a domain of expertise.

"Doing SEO badly costs you traffic. Mishandling your AI visibility costs you your buyers' trust before they even land on your site."

GEO and AEO: two disciplines to understand

Two terms have become unavoidable in this field. Here's what they mean concretely.

GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation

GEO is the practice of structuring your online presence so that you're cited and recommended by Large Language Models (LLMs). The goal isn't to appear in a list of results, but to be the answer, or at least part of it, when a model like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini handles a query related to your business.

Concretely, GEO works on: the structure of your content (clear answers to precise questions), the presence of your brand on sources LLMs ingested during training, and the consistency of your positioning across all online touchpoints.

AEO, Answer Engine Optimisation

AEO targets real-time AI answer engines, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, Perplexity. These tools don't just list links: they generate a synthetic answer and cite their sources. AEO is about being that cited source by answering high-intent buying questions directly, precisely and in a structured way.

The fundamental difference with SEO? SEO targets the rank. AEO targets the answer.

Quick comparison: traditional SEO rewards backlinks, keywords and technical structure, aims for first position on a SERP, monetises through click volume, and takes 6–12 months on competitive keywords. AI visibility (GEO/AEO) rewards third-party citations, topical authority and structured content, aims to be cited in a generated answer, monetises through buyer-intent quality, and delivers measurable LLM visibility in 3–6 months, with no pay-to-play option.

What it concretely changes for a French B2B company

Let's take two typical scenarios I regularly encounter.

Scenario A, The SaaS scale-up. A CIO at a French mid-size company is looking for a compliance management tool. They don't type a software name into Google. They open Perplexity and ask: "What are the best GDPR compliance tools for a 200-person company in France?" Perplexity generates an answer with three to five cited solutions and a brief description of each. If your SaaS isn't on that list, you don't exist in this research phase. The CIO probably won't ever visit your site during this session.

Scenario B, The consulting firm. A fintech startup CEO wants to launch their product in France. They ask ChatGPT: "Which consultants specialised in launching fintech products in France would you recommend?" ChatGPT cites two or three profiles with precise descriptions of their positioning and results. If your profile isn't documented enough on sources the model indexed, you don't appear, even if you're objectively the best consultant for that project.

In both cases, the buying decision is influenced, or even halted, before the buyer ever sets foot on your site. SEO, however good, can do nothing about that.

The four concrete levers to act on

The good news: this isn't an unsolvable problem. It's a method problem. Here are the four levers I work on in my AI visibility engagements.

1. Audit your current visibility. Before touching anything, you have to measure. That means testing 30 to 50 representative queries from your market in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. Who is cited? How? What's your competitors' share of citations vs yours? It's the starting point without which any action is blind.

2. Restructure your existing content. Most B2B company sites are written to convince a human reader, not to answer an LLM's precise question. You need to create pages that answer directly, with FAQ-type blocks, clear definitions, sourced data. AI looks for extractable content, not sales copy.

3. Build a presence on third-party sources. LLMs were trained on thousands of sources, media, trade publications, forums, LinkedIn. If your brand is only mentioned on your own site, your footprint is too small. Guest posts, interviews, sector rankings, presence on Clutch or Malt: every external mention reinforces your perceived authority.

4. Implement structured data (schema markup). JSON-LD schema lets AI answer engines understand precisely what you do, for whom, with what results. FAQ schema, HowTo schema, Person schema for independent consultants: these technical tags are invisible to users but decisive for AIs synthesising answers.

Where to start if you're starting from zero

If AI visibility is a new topic for you, here's my recommendation to prioritise without drowning.

Start by running the test yourself: open ChatGPT and ask the five questions your prospects most often ask you. Note who appears. If you're not cited a single time, you have confirmation that this is an urgent topic. If you appear but are poorly represented, the priority is to fix the positioning, not to do more.

Then, list your three most strategic content pages, typically your homepage, your main service page, and a case study. Rewrite them to answer precise questions rather than to describe what you do. The formula is simple: each section should be extractable by an AI and readable as a standalone answer.

Finally, identify two or three trade publications where you can speak as an expert, even as a short contribution. A citation in a reference article on your market is worth more for your AI visibility than ten articles published only on your own blog.

SEO builds your visibility in search results. AI visibility builds your reputation in buying decisions. Both are necessary. But today, the second is more urgent to address.

The question founders often ask me

"Is this really urgent for a company like ours, or is it a big-company problem?"

It's exactly the opposite. Big companies have the resources to catch up in 18 months. They'll launch internal programmes, recruit specialised teams, and close the gap. The scale-ups and mid-size companies acting now are the ones that will define the references in their sector, and that will be cited first when buyers ask their questions.

The most strategic moment to invest in AI visibility is before your competitors do. In most French B2B markets, that window is still open, but it's closing fast.