SEO, GEO and Google: What Actually Matters for Small Businesses
- Rilwan Mogaji, Mogaji Digital Communications OG
- 7 hours ago
- 7 min read
ChatGPT has over 900 million active users per week. More than half of all B2B buying decisions now start with an AI query, not a Google search. And visitors who arrive via ChatGPT convert at 15.9%, compared to 1.76% from Google Organic. Nearly nine times higher.
That sounds like a problem for large companies with large marketing budgets. But it's just as relevant for the hair salon in the 10th district, the tax advisor in Graz, and the plumber in Linz.
The good news: the fundamentals haven't changed. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and ChatGPT visibility sound new, but they're built on the same foundation that SEO has always rested on. And that foundation is something small businesses can build themselves.
In this article:
On-page: What Happens Directly on Your Website
On-page SEO is everything you control yourself. It's also where most small businesses can gain the most with the least effort.
The principle is simple: search engines and AI systems need to understand immediately what a page is about. A page that doesn't do that gets skipped, regardless of how good the service behind it actually is.
Take your five most important service pages. Ask two questions about each one:
Does the H1 heading (first heading) clearly state what you offer and where?
Does the page answer a specific question a potential customer would actually ask?
If the answer to either is no, that's your biggest on-page gap.
Beyond that, what matters is a clear page structure with logical H1, H2, and H3 headings, descriptive meta descriptions (the text shown under your link in Google results), and internal links between thematically related pages.
Free tools for this:
Google Search Console shows you exactly which search queries you already appear for, and where you have impressions but almost no clicks. Those are the pages to fix first: better titles, more precise meta descriptions.
For keyword research, Google Ads Keyword Planner is a good place to start. A free Google account is all you need, no active ad campaign required. It shows monthly search volumes for any term in your target country.
Another source most people underestimate: Google itself. Type your core service plus city into the search bar. The autocomplete suggestions and the "People Also Ask" section show you directly what potential customers are actually searching for. Every one of those questions is a potential H2 on your service page.
Technical SEO: The Invisible Foundation
Technical SEO determines whether search engines and AI systems can read your website at all. It's invisible, but without it, everything else is irrelevant.
For small businesses, three areas actually matter.
ChatGPT behaves like an impatient visitor when loading a website. Slow response times mean content gets ignored outright. The target is a server response time (TTFB) under one second. Google PageSpeed Insights shows you where you stand - for free, directly in the browser.
Robots.txt
This small text file decides which bots are allowed to access your site. For ChatGPT visibility, at least these five entries need to be present and set to Allow:
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /
Find your robots.txt by typing yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. If GPTBot or OAI-SearchBot are blocked there, you simply don't exist for ChatGPT.
JavaScript and Content
AI crawlers read websites similarly to screen readers, they often can't see content that only loads via JavaScript. Prices, service descriptions, and core claims should therefore exist as plain HTML text on the page, not exclusively as images or dynamically loaded content.
A simple test: disable JavaScript in your browser (in Chrome via F12, then Settings, then "Disable JavaScript") and reload the page. What you see then is what ChatGPT sees.
Free tools:
Screaming Frog Free Tier (up to 500 URLs) for crawl errors and broken links
Google Search Console for indexing issues
Don't miss out on our webinar with expert Rilwan Mogaji!
EEAT: What Small Businesses Often Underestimate
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — the four signals Google uses to assess whether a real, credible person or business stands behind a website.
And this is exactly where many small businesses have more to show than they realize.
A local plumber with 80 Google reviews, ten years in the same neighborhood, and real before-and-after photos has stronger EEAT signals than many mid-sized companies with polished web design and zero actual proof of their work.
What concretely helps:
An imprint with a real name and photo is a strong trust signal. An About page that explains who does the work and why adds to that. Two or three concrete references or before-and-after examples are worth more than ten generic statements about quality.
Google Business Profile is one of the strongest EEAT tools available for local businesses, and it's completely free. A fully completed profile with current opening hours, photos, and regular posts sends a clear signal to both Google and ChatGPT: this business exists, is active, and is reviewed by real customers.
Off-page and Mentions: The GEO Difference
Classic off-page SEO was almost entirely about backlinks. That remains relevant, but the picture has widened.
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website, acting like recommendations that help search engines trust and rank your site.
ChatGPT doesn't work like a link algorithm. It behaves more like a careful researcher: it reads many independent sources, compares them, and draws an overall picture. Who gets mentioned in trade publications, who has consistently strong reviews on rating platforms, who gets cited in industry media, that's what reads as credible.
This means unlinked mentions have gained significant weight. A mention in an article that contains no clickable link still counts.
Concretely, for small businesses:
Industry directories with strong domain authority are a direct lever. For Austrian businesses that's the WKO directory (free), Herold.at, Firmen.at, and relevant sector-specific portals. The same principle applies in other markets: free, high-authority directories in your industry and region.
The key finding from the research: it's far more effective to be consistently present on three strong platforms than weakly present on twenty. For most small businesses, that means Google Business Profile, a strong social media presence, one to four major industry directories.
Reviews on Google and, where relevant, on Trustpilot. They're authority signals. According to an analysis of over 680 million ChatGPT citations, G2 is among the most frequently cited sources overall. Who ranks well on high-authority platforms gets read by ChatGPT more often, and cited more often in its answers.
Find your existing mentions and activate them.
Do a Google search for your business name in quotes. Look at every result that isn't your own website. Some of those pages mention you without linking to you. That's a missed opportunity, and a fixable one. Reach out to the site owner, thank them for the mention, and ask whether they'd be willing to add a link. Most will say yes, because it costs them nothing and adds value for their readers. This is one of the highest-ROI link building activities available, and it requires zero budget.
Give interviews and expert commentary.
Local journalists, industry bloggers, and podcast hosts constantly need expert voices. A plumber who comments on new water regulations, an accountant who explains what a tax change means for small businesses, a physio who gives tips on home office posture — these create exactly the kind of third-party mentions that build authority with both Google and ChatGPT.
You don't need to be famous. You need to be findable and responsive when someone is looking for a local expert.
Start small: identify two or three local publications, Youtube podcast or blogs in your industry and reach out. Offer to answer questions or contribute a short expert comment on a relevant topic. One placement on a credible regional outlet is worth more than fifty directory listings on sites nobody reads.
Use press releases strategically.
A press release isn't just for big companies announcing product launches. For a small business, it's a tool to generate indexed, citable content on third-party platforms. A new service offering, a local award, a partnership with another business, a piece of original data you've collected from your own clients, all of these are valid press release triggers.
In Austria, OTS is the standard distribution channel and reaches most major Austrian media. Distribute a well-written press release and you create multiple indexed mentions across authoritative domains in one move. ChatGPT reads those domains. That's the point.
Free Keyword Research in Practice
Many small businesses assume they need expensive tools to find out what their customers are searching for. They don't.
Here's a workflow that costs zero and takes about 45 minutes:
Step 1: Open Google and type your most important service, plus city. Write down all autocomplete suggestions.
Step 2: Scroll to "People Also Ask" in the search results. Every question there represents real search intent, and a potential H2 section on your service page.
Step 3: Open Google Ads Keyword Planner (free with any Google account, no active campaign needed). Enter your five most important terms and check the monthly search volume for your target region.
Step 4: If you have Google Search Console set up: which queries are already bringing you impressions but almost no clicks? Those are your biggest quick wins. Better titles and meta descriptions for exactly those pages can produce measurable improvements within weeks.
This workflow delivers 50% of what paid tools deliver.
Go local, not broad.
There's a tactical advantage most small businesses ignore: local keywords have dramatically less competition. "SEO agency" is a fight against hundreds of well-funded competitors. "SEO agency Vienna 3rd district" is a different game entirely.
The same logic applies to any service business. A dentist targeting "teeth whitening Vienna Meidling" is competing against a fraction of the businesses that target "teeth whitening Vienna." The search volume is lower, yes, but the conversion intent is higher and the competition is thinner. For a small business with limited time and no paid tools, winning locally is far more realistic than winning nationally, and often more profitable.
What Actually Matters, and What Can Wait
Some things do eventually require budget: link building at scale, professional content production, AI visibility tracking with tools like Rankability or Otterly. That's reality.
But a local business with a clean technical setup, well-structured service pages, an active Google Business Profile, and consistent presence on social media is already better positioned than the majority of small businesses in their market.
ChatGPT and GEO didn't rewrite the rules. They made the existing rules matter more. Those with the foundation benefit. Those without it become increasingly invisible, whether on Google or in ChatGPT.
The first step costs nothing but time: open your most important service page and read it out loud. Is it immediately clear what you offer, for whom, and why someone should trust you?
If not, start there.
Mogaji Digital Communications OG is an SEO agency based in Vienna. We help businesses get found and cited in search engines and AI systems.
