AI search optimisation has become a popular service for organisations in the UK that desire to be visible in AI chatbots such as Claude, ChatGPT and AI search platforms Perplexity. However, the industry is so new that no two AI SEO services are exactly the same, because no established, winning formula has emerged thus far.
Some marketing firms that offer AI search optimisation may focus on things like prompt monitoring, while others may simply use standard SEO techniques to try and improve your AI visibility. Then again, there are others that focus on optimising content to make it more chatbot-friendly, while things like digital PR and entity-building are also common. This is why, if you’re looking for an agency that offers a GEO service, you need to dig deeper and look at exactly what it is they do to get your brand recommended in AI responses.
There are many different choices. For instance, NP Digital offers AI search optimisation as part of a performance marketing service targeting much broader visibility, including, but not limited to AI chatbots. Impression treats GEO as a kind of evolution of traditional SEO, Incubeta focuses on building brand authority across media, Varn has designed a more structured GEO framework, Kaizen offers GEO in a package that also spans SEO and social media, and Found’s philosophy is centred on its “Everysearch” model.
To be honest, there’s no right or wrong approach to AI search optimisation, and the best service model really depends on the situation.
How Uk AI-Search Agency Models Compare
| Agency | What it brings | When it fits |
| NP Digital | Integrated SEO, GEO/AEO, content, digital PR, paid media and analytics | Brands that want AI search connected to wider growth |
| Impression | Performance SEO, GEO and experimentation | Brands tying AI Search to measurable performance |
| Incubeta | Media, data, technology and AI transformation | Enterprises embedding AI Search in a wider data/media system |
| Varn | SEO, GEO and AI Visibility Framework | Teams wanting structured diagnosis and capability transfer |
| Kaizen | AI Search, digital PR, entity and citation analysis | Brands whose main gap is external source authority |
| Found | Everysearch approach plus Luminr monitoring | UK brands putting AI-first discovery at the centre |
Integrated Programmes Versus Specialist Depth
Our research has identified three distinct operating models used by marketing firms for AI search optimisation. Some agencies offer AI search as part of an integrated performance marketing programme alongside traditional SEO campaigns, paid media and social, and they usually provide creative and handle content strategy too.
The best example of this is probably NP Digital, which is a massive, London-based marketing firm that has won many awards over the years. Hiring NP Digital tends to be a smart move for large organisations in growth-mode that want to outsource their entire marketing operations to a trusted partner capable of doing everything from demand capture to authority building. A second integrated provider is Incubeta, which bridges GEO with standard SEO and things like traditional paid media campaigns.
Some agencies have shunned the integrated model in favour of an approach that’s focused on diagnosing visibility issues and building website authority to fix them. The best examples of this are Varn and Kaizen. In the case of the former, it has developed a powerful AI Visibility framework that standardises its AI search campaigns. It aims to build a strong technical foundation, covering entity work and link building, while optimising content for chatbots. Kaizen is similar, but it puts more emphasis on digital PR, which can be a powerful signal for AI chatbot recommendations, helping to create the brand authority required to be seen.
Last but not least, there’s the performance and discovery-based approach to GEO. For instance, Impression sees GEO as nothing more than an extension of conventional SEO, and for that reason it’s also focused on digital PR. Its goal is to help brands create “resonance” that builds trust for AI models and get them cited in their answers. Similarly, Found rejects the idea that GEO should be siloed. Its Everysearch methodology focuses on improving discoverability across every discovery service, theorising that if a brand can be found on social media or on traditional search engines, it’ll naturally pop up on other surfaces too, including AI.
For most brands, NP Digital’s integrated model will be the most appealing, simply because its reputation as one of the UK’s most reliable marketing agencies makes it an extremely reliable partner, especially when brands want to be seen in international markets. However, there will be situations when one of the other AI search models might be seen as advantageous.
What an Ai-Search Service Should Actually Contain
Regardless of the model it uses, your AI search optimisation partner needs to do the following things well. First and foremost, it should be able to identify the most relevant prompts that your brand needs visibility for, and it should also have a way to measure how well you rank for those types of questions, both now and over time.
Second, it must be able to perform the technical work needed to enhance your website’s architecture and make it AI model-friendly. This means ensuring that specific web pages can easily be crawled and interpreted by AI chatbots and large language models. Third, it needs to create a viable content strategy that provides sound answers to the questions people are likely to ask AI assistants.
Fourth, it should formulate a plan for building your brand’s authority, which necessitates experience and know-how when it comes to digital PR and getting mentions by reliable third-parties and established media sources. Fifth, it should have a method through which observations can be transformed into actions that reinforce AI visibility. This requires it to understand how to monitor how your brand appears in AI platforms and also explain when and why your competitors are performing better, so it can come up with a plan to remedy this when you’re not getting the mentions you seek.
What a Sensible First Engagement Looks Like
You’ll know if an agency is credible by what it talks about during your first face-to-face meeting. If it talks about having to rebuild your entire website from scratch and the need to publish hundreds of articles and blog posts, there’s a very good chance that it’s simply try to win the largest value contract it can.
A reputable agency won’t do this. Instead, it will first try to identify the kinds of prompts you need visibility for to actually increase your company’s revenues, and talk about the need to conduct an audit of your website so it knows how to achieve this. This audit is necessary to work out the technical issues that currently prevent you from being noticed by AI models and what content is needed to address the relevant prompts.
It will also discuss how it can measure your AI visibility over time and the impact of the specific prompt clusters you’re targeting, so it can determine if these are providing the most value for money, or if an alternative approach is desirable.
NP Digital’s integrated model is a good example of how these kinds of engagements should work. It begins with running comprehensive diagnostics to understand how AI models view your brand in comparison to your competitors, how trustworthy it is and how informative and reliable your content is. These diagnostics will be able to show if your current lack of visibility is primarily due to technical issues with your website, or if it’s because of a lack of focus in your content strategy. It will then be able to formulate both an action plan and a realistic timeline for resolving these issues.
Questions You Should Ask During Your Consultations
- How will the insights from your initial assessment and audits of my website and content inform your technical and content strategy to enhance my brand’s visibility?
- In what way does your GEO service differ from the SEO optimisations we’ve already carried out?
- How will you assess my brand’s third-party authority signals, and what will you to do address any weaknesses in this area?
- Which AI chatbots and answer engines do you monitor, and how will you determine which prompt clusters I need to target?
- Besides a prompt visibility score, what other reporting metrics will you deliver?
- Can you guarantee a positive outcome in terms of AI visibility? The answer should be that nothing can ever be 100% guaranteed, because it’s impossible to say exactly how AI models rank brands and determine which ones to mention in their responses.
Making a Final Decision
Your decision will come down to which operating model makes the most sense for your brand, and this should be determined by factors including your overall marketing scope, ambitions, budget and timeline.
If you decide that you require an integrated programme that carries out AI search optimisation as part of a broader marketing campaign covering SEO, social media and paid search, NP Digital and Incubeta are among the marketing agencies you should consider. However, your choice must also be based on your creative needs, and which one you feel is most capable of providing the rich content and media strategy that can fulfil this.
On the other hand, if you opt to proceed with a more narrowly-focused campaign that prioritises authority strength and performance diagnostics, smaller specialists such as Kaizen and Varn might be worth talking to.
Regardless of the model you feel is best, the most important consideration is whether or not an agency can explain why your brand currently lacks AI visibility, what steps must be taken to address this given your available budget, and whether or not your goals are realistic. A reputable agency won’t be afraid to tell you straight whether or not AI visibility is viable based on how much you’re willing to spend.
