Q4 Starts Today. Here Is Our Entire SEO and GEO Plan.

Our SEO and GEO plan for October 1 to December 31 is one fix and three moves. The fix: our website cannot count a lead yet, so that gets set up in week one. The moves: win the click on searches where Google already shows us, build AI readiness and training pages people can actually use, and repair the reviews and listings that AI assistants read before they recommend anyone. Below is the whole plan, with our real numbers, including the ones that do not flatter us.

Why publish it? The method works on any business's website, and our own numbers are the most honest way to show it. In August we pointed an AI agent at our own website and found seven bugs, five of them quietly producing wrong numbers. This plan is the follow-through, built by an AI agent working through an 11-step prompt, and we will report back in public on November 16 and January 6.

Where our SEO stands on October 1

On September 28 we pulled Google Search Console data for August 6 to September 27, crawled 258 URLs on coulee.tech, checked 69 pages with Google's URL Inspection tool, and asked three AI assistants the same 13 questions.

| Measure | Our number | | - | - | | Search impressions and clicks | 29,396 impressions, 273 clicks | | Clicks from searches that did not include our name | 5, from 21,120 impressions | | Clicks that landed on the homepage | 190 of 273 | | La Crosse IT searches | 3,276 impressions, average position 14.6, 0 clicks | | Fort Myers location pages | 4,344 impressions, average position 26, 0 clicks | | AI searches (154 queries) | 1,111 impressions, 0 clicks | | Cybersecurity searches (319 queries) | 3,151 impressions, 0 clicks | | AI assistant answers that named us | 11 of 39 | | Conversions recorded in one week | 0, from 644 sessions |

The trend is better than the totals. Our average position improved from 41.3 in the week of August 3 to 24.7 in the week of September 21, weekly clicks rose from 14 to a high of 54, and blog impressions nearly doubled (533 to 949) between the first and last three weeks. The problem is the click: almost nobody who is not already searching for our name clicks.

The first fix: we cannot count a lead

When we checked on September 28, Google Analytics 4 on our site had one of six key events set up, and none had fired in the prior week. Contact forms, discovery call requests, consultation bookings, tips signups and phone clicks are all invisible. In week one we configure those five events. Until they fire, nobody, including us, can judge this plan by leads.

If you do one thing after reading this, check whether your own analytics counts a lead.

Move 1: win the click on searches we already rank for

When a page sits in Google's top 10 and still gets no clicks, the problem is usually the title and description, not the ranking. Pages on page 2 also need more depth. These pages already get seen:

| Page | Impressions | Avg position | The change | | - | - | - | - | | IT services in La Crosse | 3,276 | 14.6 | Title naming La Crosse, Onalaska and Holmen; 1,200 words with named staff, an office photo and testimonials; drop the old retreat promo | | IT services in Fort Myers and sub-pages | 4,344 | 26.0 | Same treatment, plus an AI section | | Wisconsin breach law post | 272 | 7.3 | Title and description written for the click; summary box at the top | | Florida breach law post | 136 | 9.2 | Same | | vCIO cost post | 434 | 14.8 | Refresh the post; grow the 238-word vCIO page to 900+ words |

The crawl adds housekeeping: 176 titles run past 60 characters, 243 images have no alt text, and seven places still carry stale copy about our September 15 retreat.

Move 2: build AI pages people can use

Fort Myers AI searches already reach positions 8 to 15 on a page with no AI section. In our Wisconsin markets, only one established IT firm has an AI readiness, Copilot readiness or AI policy page. In six similar-sized metros we studied, no local IT firm ranks for "city name plus AI consulting." The local firms that rank nationally do it with tools people can use: an ungated AI policy, a 12-check Copilot scorecard, a 10-question readiness tool.

The build order:

1. Week 1: the AI Business Retreat page becomes a recap. It is our second most-entered page, and on September 28 it still sold an expired price.
2. Weeks 2 and 3: our AI readiness assessment page gets a clearer title and a 10-question scored self-check (it already averages position 11.4). A Copilot readiness page and an ungated AI acceptable use policy template ship in the same window.
3. Weeks 4 to 6: our AI training for business page becomes a hub in the main menu, with Wisconsin and Florida training-grant FAQs. City AI pages go up for Fort Myers (first), Eau Claire and La Crosse. Cybersecurity service pages, now 103 to 227 words, grow to 900 to 1,500 words.
4. Weeks 7 to 9: case studies built from existing testimonials (with permission) and a page defining the AI Business Maturity Model, a phrase where other sites outrank us today.

Four of our eight AI industry pages are not in Google's index yet, and five August posts are not indexed. Fixing that matters, because Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Move 3: fix trust off the site

Across online directories, one of our offices appears at three different street addresses, some listings still carry an old company name or description, and we have no Florida directory listings at all. The plan:

• Correct every listing so name, address and phone match.
• Verify a Google Business Profile for each office: Holmen, Eau Claire and Fort Myers.
• Ask for a review after every resolved support ticket.
• Claim profiles on Clutch, UpCity, ClearlyRated and Bing Places, and join the Greater Fort Myers Chamber.
• Offer AI sessions to local colleges, small business development centers and chambers, the groups that run local AI workshops today.

Are AI assistants recommending us?

We asked ChatGPT (GPT-5), Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3 Flash the same 13 questions with web search on: 12 a buyer would ask, plus one about us by name. Of 39 answers, 11 named us. ChatGPT put us first for managed IT in La Crosse and IT support in Eau Claire, fourth for cybersecurity in western Wisconsin, and second for AI training in western Wisconsin, where Gemini put us first.

Every Florida question missed on all three models, and so did the AI readiness, AI adoption and two industry questions (accounting software and auto dealerships). The Copilot readiness question missed on two models, and the Gemini answer failed outright; we count that as an error, not a miss. One answer per question per model is noisy, so we read patterns, not single results. On the eight questions we also asked GPT-5 in August, it now names us on four, up from three.

On the service questions where ChatGPT named us, it cited our cybersecurity services in La Crosse page and our Eau Claire IT support page, both published August 8, plus the AI training page. City and service pages earned AI citations within weeks. That is the case for the city AI pages.

What the research says about getting recommended by AI

We label every AI search tactic as measured or opinion, and note when a study shows only correlation:

• Mentions (measured, correlation). Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found branded web mentions had the strongest correlation (0.664) with visibility in Google's AI Overviews, well above backlinks (0.218).
• Listings (measured). BrightLocal's August 2026 study of 1,355 business locations found Google Business Profile made up 28.5% of all citations in local AI answers, and Yelp appeared as a source in 80% of ChatGPT's local answers. Around 93% of the domains cited were individual business websites.
• Reviews (measured, correlation). SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index, covering more than 350,000 locations, found ChatGPT recommends just 1.2% of brand locations, against a 35.9% average appearance rate in Google's local 3-Pack. Locations ChatGPT recommends average 4.3-star ratings.
• Answer first (measured). Kevin Indig's Growth Memo research found 44.2% of all citations originate from the first 30% of the text.
• Freshness (measured). Ahrefs found AI assistants cite content that is 25.7% fresher than organic search results: 1,064 days old on average, against 1,432.
• Schema (measured). Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added schema markup and found no major uplift in AI citations on any platform. Google says no special structured data is needed for its AI features. Schema is not one of our three moves.

How we will know: targets for November 16 and December 31

| Measure | Baseline | Nov 16 | Dec 31 | | - | - | - | - | | Analytics key events | 1 of 6 set up, 0 fired | All 5 firing | Firing weekly, organic leads counted | | Non-brand clicks per 4 weeks | About 3 | 20 | 60 | | La Crosse clicks / avg position | 0 / 14.6 | 10 / 11 | 30 / under 8 | | Fort Myers avg position | 26.0 | 20 | Under 15 | | Breach-law post clicks per 4 weeks | 0 | 5 | 15 | | Google reviews: La Crosse / Eau Claire / Fort Myers | None visible | 10 / 4 / 4 | 25 / 10 / 10 | | AI industry pages in Google | 4 of 8 | 8 of 8 | 8 of 8, plus the new AI pages | | AI assistant answers naming us | 11 of 39 | 14 of 39 | 18 of 39 | | Blog impressions per 3 weeks | 949 | 1,500 | 2,500 |

The blog carries 55 posts between today and January 6: 22 on AI readiness, 11 on cybersecurity, nine on AI training and nine on IT support, plus four plan-in-public posts (this plan, the prompt, the November 16 checkpoint and the January 6 results) written only from real numbers.

How to build a quarterly SEO and GEO plan for your own site

The 11 steps: (1) can we measure a lead, (2) search performance split by brand and non-brand, (3) near-miss searches, (4) focus topics, (5) a page-by-page crawl, (6) index coverage, (7) content history, (8) the same AI assistant questions every quarter, (9) competitors and the colleges and chambers that own your topics locally, (10) listings, and (11) the plan, with targets and a checkpoint.

Three ground rules from the prompt are worth copying even if you never run it. Compare equal time windows, and check whether position moved with impressions: our Fort Myers impressions fell 37% while average position improved from 30.9 to 23.9, so the drop was not a ranking failure. Treat any position based on fewer than 10 impressions as noise. Count a cut-off AI answer as an error, not a miss; we once scored one wrong.

When the full prompt is out, you can run it in RapidDashboard, which turns plain-language prompts into live dashboards and reports from your own systems, or in any AI assistant you can hand your exports to.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of earning a place and a click in search results. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of getting AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, and Google's AI Overviews, to name and cite your business. Google says the usual SEO best practices apply to its AI features, so a good GEO plan starts from a sound SEO plan.

How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Start with what the studies above point to: accurate, matching listings, a verified Google Business Profile, steady reviews, mentions on other sites, and pages that answer the buyer's question in the first few paragraphs. Make sure those pages are indexed. Then ask the assistants your buyers' questions every quarter and record which of your pages they cite.

How often should a small business review its SEO plan?

We review ours every quarter, with a checkpoint about six weeks in. That is long enough for title and page changes to show up in Search Console, and short enough to change course before the quarter is gone.

How can I tell whether AI assistants recommend my business?

Write 10 to 15 questions the way a buyer would ask them, covering each market and service, and ask two or three AI assistants with web search on. Record whether you were named, your position, and which pages were cited. Keep the wording identical every quarter so the comparison is fair.

The full prompt goes up October 9. If you want a second set of eyes on your own numbers sooner, schedule a consultation, or start with our AI readiness assessment if AI is the question on your list.