A 90-Day GEO Engagement: Scope, Timeline and Deliverables
Scope a 90-day GEO engagement from baseline and technical fixes through content, authority, reporting and client handoff.
A 90-day GEO engagement should create a defensible baseline, fix priority eligibility and factual issues, improve a focused group of content and authority signals, establish reporting, and hand the client a prioritized operating plan. It cannot guarantee citations or finish every market in one quarter.
Weeks 1–2: Discovery and Baseline
Deliver:
- agreed audiences, markets, engines, competitors, and outcomes;
- prompt universe and measurement protocol;
- repeated visibility baseline;
- source and competitor observations;
- brand-fact and risk register;
- access to analytics, search tools, and relevant logs.
Define success before implementation. The 90-day AI search strategy provides the internal planning counterpart.
Weeks 3–4: Technical and Entity Foundations
Audit crawl policy, WAF behavior, rendering, indexability, canonicals, sitemaps, internal links, and structured data. Reconcile company, product, people, location, and credential facts across owned and authoritative profiles.
Deliver prioritized tickets with evidence, severity, owner, and acceptance test.
Weeks 5–6: Content and Source Plan
Map high-value questions to existing pages, missing assets, and third-party evidence. Decide what to improve, consolidate, or create. Produce briefs with primary sources, expert input, internal links, update rules, and conversion pathways.
Weeks 7–8: Implementation Sprint
Ship the highest-value technical fixes and content improvements. Validate rendering, metadata, structured data, links, and analytics. Begin an ethical authority programme using research, expert commentary, partnerships, or relevant digital PR.
Weeks 9–10: Re-measure and Diagnose
Repeat the controlled benchmark. Compare changes with sample sizes and platform annotations. Classify findings as improved, unchanged, mixed, or inconclusive. Do not claim causality from timing alone.
Weeks 11–12: Operating Model and Handoff
Deliver:
- baseline and post-sprint evidence;
- completed work and QA record;
- live dashboard and definitions;
- remaining risk register;
- 90-day follow-on backlog;
- ownership matrix and review cadence;
- documentation, training, and exports.
Success Criteria
Contract for deliverables the team controls: audit completion, fixes shipped, pages improved, measurement reliability, factual-risk resolution, and handoff quality. Track visibility and pipeline as outcomes, not guarantees.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pages should be improved?
That depends on complexity. A focused set of important sources implemented well is preferable to dozens of shallow rewrites.
Should reporting wait until day 90?
No. Provide evidence and decisions every two weeks, with a final synthesis at handoff.
What happens after the engagement?
The client should own the data, backlog, methodology, accounts, and operating cadence, whether execution continues internally or with a partner.
