{"id":16907,"date":"2026-02-10T13:51:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T07:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:11:17","slug":"checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/","title":{"rendered":"GEO: the action plan you can really execute (complete site checklist)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 fusion-flex-container nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row fusion-flex-align-items-flex-start fusion-flex-content-wrap\" style=\"max-width:1420.64px;margin-left: calc(-4% \/ 2 );margin-right: calc(-4% \/ 2 );\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-flex-column\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;--awb-width-large:100%;--awb-margin-top-large:0px;--awb-spacing-right-large:1.92%;--awb-margin-bottom-large:0px;--awb-spacing-left-large:1.92%;--awb-width-medium:100%;--awb-spacing-right-medium:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-medium:1.92%;--awb-width-small:100%;--awb-spacing-right-small:1.92%;--awb-spacing-left-small:1.92%;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-justify-content-flex-start fusion-content-layout-column\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><p>Let&#8217;s get straight to the point. Many of the GEO action plans circulating at the moment are theoretically correct documents that are practically unworkable. Sixth phase, twelfth month, eighty-two points to tick off. On paper, it&#8217;s exhaustive. In the reality of a team with a limited human and financial budget, it&#8217;s a list that ends up in a file that&#8217;s never reopened.    <\/p>\n<p>This plan is built differently. It&#8217;s based on the field &#8211; on what we&#8217;ve actually seen working on sites in a variety of sectors, dealing with AI engines that evolve quickly and not always in a predictable way. Some phases are long because they are difficult. Others are short because complexity is often overestimated. And a few points you&#8217;ll find in other checklists have been omitted here because they make no practical difference.    <\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_82_2 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Au sommaire de cet article :<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Before_you_start_two_checks_that_decide_everything\" >Before you start: two checks that decide everything<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Phase_1_%E2%80%93_What_crawlers_see_and_miss\" >Phase 1 &#8211; What crawlers see (and miss)<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Phase_2_%E2%80%93_Architecture_and_thematic_clusters\" >Phase 2 &#8211; Architecture and thematic clusters<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Phase_3_%E2%80%93_Content_that_really_makes_a_difference\" >Phase 3 &#8211; Content that really makes a difference<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Phase_4_%E2%80%93_Distributed_authority_being_cited_elsewhere_to_exist_here\" >Phase 4 &#8211; Distributed authority: being cited elsewhere to exist here<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#Phase_5_%E2%80%93_Surface_fragmentation_an_under-exploited_opportunity\" >Phase 5 &#8211; Surface fragmentation: an under-exploited opportunity<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#The_12-month_plan_%E2%80%93_what_gets_done_in_what_order\" >The 12-month plan &#8211; what gets done in what order<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8\" href=\"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/blog\/2026\/02\/10\/checklist-action-plan-full-website-optimization-geo\/#What_this_plan_cant_do_for_you\" >What this plan can&#8217;t do for you<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Before_you_start_two_checks_that_decide_everything\"><\/span>Before you start: two checks that decide everything<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Before you touch content, schema or anything else, check two things in your robots.txt.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, do you block GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot &#8211; intentionally or by mistake? It happens more often than you think, often as a legacy of a <code>Disallow: \/<\/code> rule applied too broadly during a migration. Open your server logs for the last 30 days and look for these user-agents. If you don&#8217;t see them at all, they&#8217;re either not crawling your site yet (less likely), or you&#8217;re blocking them (more likely). Fix everything else first.    <\/p>\n<p>Next: is your strategic content rendered server-side, or client-side in JavaScript? AI crawlers read raw HTML. If your key pages don&#8217;t exist in this HTML without JS execution, you&#8217;re optimizing for an audience that can&#8217;t read you. Test with <code>curl -A \"GPTBot\" [votre-url]<\/code> and see if the content is there. If not, SSR or prerendering on priority pages &#8211; before any content optimization.    <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Phase_1_%E2%80%93_What_crawlers_see_and_miss\"><\/span>Phase 1 &#8211; What crawlers see (and miss)<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Technical performance.<\/strong>  Measure Core Web Vitals on a sample of 20 to 30 representative pages via PageSpeed Insights and the Chrome UX Report. Critical thresholds: LCP over 2.5 seconds, CLS over 0.1. Don&#8217;t try to correct everything at once. Prioritize strategic pages &#8211; service pages, reference articles, author pages &#8211; and treat images first: WebP compression, lazy loading, dimensions explicitly declared in HTML. This is where 60-70% of gains are made on most sites.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>The llm.txt file.<\/strong>  This point remains little known and still experimental, but is worth doing now while it&#8217;s simple. At the root of the site, create a <code>llm.txt<\/code> file that explains in 150 words what your organization does, lists the 5 to 7 most useful pages with their full URLs, and specifies how you want to be cited. It&#8217;s the equivalent of robots.txt for language templates &#8211; a signal of intent that some engines are starting to read.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Schema.org at the organizational level.<\/strong>  Deploy a complete Organization block in JSON-LD on all pages: legal name, logo, URL, contact details, social profiles. This is nothing new. What is new is the importance of consistency between this schema and what your Wikidata, Crunchbase and industry directories say. The NAP (Name, Address, Phone) must be identical everywhere, down to the last character. A discrepancy between these sources creates an entity ambiguity that LLMs resolve by choosing the source they consider most reliable &#8211; rarely your site.    <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Phase_2_%E2%80%93_Architecture_and_thematic_clusters\"><\/span>Phase 2 &#8211; Architecture and thematic clusters<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Ask yourself an honest question: if someone asked ChatGPT &#8220;who&#8217;s the authority on [your main topic] in France?&#8221;, would your site stand a chance of being mentioned? If the answer is no or maybe, it&#8217;s a problem of architecture before it&#8217;s a problem of content. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Thematic coverage audit.<\/strong>  Map what your site actually covers. Not what you think you cover &#8211; what Google and LLMs see when they crawl the whole thing. Topics covered superficially in a sub-section of an 800-word article don&#8217;t constitute coverage. Identify 3 to 5 topics on which you have real legitimacy and on which you can produce something substantial.   <\/p>\n<p><strong>The cluster structure.<\/strong>  For each priority topic: a pillar page covering the whole ground (between 2,500 and 4,000 words, depending on the depth of the subject), accompanied by 6 to 10 satellite pages, each exploring a specific aspect. Meshing between these pages is not optional &#8211; it&#8217;s what turns a collection of isolated articles into a semantic network that crawlers can model. Link the pillar to all the satellites, each satellite to the pillar and to 2 or 3 other relevant satellites. Use descriptive anchor texts, not &#8220;click here&#8221;.   <\/p>\n<p><strong>Person schema for experts.<\/strong>  If you have identifiable experts in the organization, create their author profiles with full Person tagging and an actual bio of 200 to 250 words. LLMs give credit to recognized human entities. An article signed &#8220;Admin&#8221; with a photo placeholder doesn&#8217;t exist in their trust model.  <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Phase_3_%E2%80%93_Content_that_really_makes_a_difference\"><\/span>Phase 3 &#8211; Content that really makes a difference<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>There&#8217;s a shortcut that many sites try that doesn&#8217;t work: rewriting existing content to make it &#8220;GEO-compatible&#8221;. It may work on the margins. What really builds authority is content that no one else can publish because it comes from you.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Original research.<\/strong>  A survey, an analysis of internal data, a longitudinal study, an industry benchmark. The format doesn&#8217;t matter &#8211; what matters is that you own the numbers. LLMs are looking for primary sources to cite. If you produce a study with a transparent methodology and quantified results, you become quotable. Start small: 150 respondents on your email list or LinkedIn, a strategic question, a one-page report. It&#8217;s not a six-month project, it&#8217;s a three-week project if you put your mind to it.     <\/p>\n<p><strong>Static reference pages.<\/strong>  A &#8220;Statistics [your sector] 2026&#8221; page, updated quarterly. A glossary of 40-50 actually defined terms &#8211; not two-line drafts. A comparative guide to available approaches or solutions with clear criteria. These pages have a longevity that news articles don&#8217;t have. They accumulate links, they get cited, and LLMs remember them because they answer questions that users often ask.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>Case studies.<\/strong>  Document what you&#8217;ve done for customers, with figures, methodology, and the limits of the approach. Honesty about the limits is a strong credibility signal &#8211; it&#8217;s what distinguishes a real case study from a commercial testimonial. Aim for 1,500 to 2,000 words per case. Six well-documented cases are worth more than twenty one-sentence testimonials.   <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Phase_4_%E2%80%93_Distributed_authority_being_cited_elsewhere_to_exist_here\"><\/span>Phase 4 &#8211; Distributed authority: being cited elsewhere to exist here<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>LLMs build their representation of an organization from everything that circulates about it in their training corpus, not just from its site. This means that if you only exist on your own domain, you&#8217;re at a structural disadvantage. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Identify your target sources.<\/strong>  Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. Ask questions about your area of expertise. See which sites, publications, blogs or forums are cited in the answers. These are your priority targets for an external presence &#8211; not the sites with the best Domain Authority according to Ahrefs, but the sites that LLMs already consider to be authorities in your space.   <\/p>\n<p><strong>The press relations pipeline.<\/strong>  One press release per quarter on a real initiative (a research project, a partnership, an outstanding customer case). Ten to fifteen industry journalists and editors identified and contacted personally, not via a purchased list. It&#8217;s not about the volume of mentions &#8211; it&#8217;s about the quality of the sources citing you. A mention in a publication that LLMs read is worth a hundred times a mention in an aggregator site with no organic traffic.   <\/p>\n<p><strong>Authentic community presence.<\/strong>  Reddit, Quora, specialized forums. Two or three substantial answers a week that provide value without pitches. When your resource is truly relevant to answering a question, cite it &#8211; but only then. Communities detect and punish spam disguised as help, and LLMs learn from these discussions. An authentic presence over time builds a footprint that nothing else can simulate.    <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Phase_5_%E2%80%93_Surface_fragmentation_an_under-exploited_opportunity\"><\/span>Phase 5 &#8211; Surface fragmentation: an under-exploited opportunity<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Users no longer search only on Google. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini. They watch YouTube videos on complex subjects. They read Reddit threads before making a decision. Your content needs to exist in these spaces &#8211; not as advertising, but as value.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>YouTube first, if the subject lends itself to it.<\/strong>  Tutorials lasting 10 to 15 minutes that explain a methodology step by step remain the most effective format. A full transcript integrated via YouTube doubles the video&#8217;s SEO value. If you already have written guides, half the scripting work is already done.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>LinkedIn for operational insights.<\/strong>  Not service announcements. Short analyses (150 to 250 words) of field observations, counter-intuitive results, mistakes made and what they&#8217;ve learned. The carousel format works for data &#8211; one visualization per slide, eight to ten slides, an actionable conclusion.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>The newsletter as a sovereign channel.<\/strong>  A monthly mailing positioned as an expert summary, not a product newsletter. Two or three original insights, a trend analyzed with data, two questions received and answered. The aim is to build a direct channel that doesn&#8217;t depend on any algorithm &#8211; because in an environment where visibility surfaces are fragmenting fast, having an audience that reads you directly is a rare asset.  <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_12-month_plan_%E2%80%93_what_gets_done_in_what_order\"><\/span>The 12-month plan &#8211; what gets done in what order<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the sequence. Times are indicative &#8211; a 2-person organization will take twice as long on some points, and that&#8217;s normal. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Month 1.<\/strong>  Full audit: technical (Core Web Vitals, robots.txt, JS rendering), content (thematic coverage, gaps, orphan pages), external presence (initial AI Presence Rate on 40 queries tested on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude, with screenshot of each result). Don&#8217;t go on without this baseline. You can&#8217;t measure what you haven&#8217;t documented in the first place.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Months 2-3.<\/strong>  Technical foundations: robots.txt corrected, llm.txt created, SSR or prerendering implemented on strategic pages, Organization schema deployed, Person schema created for identified experts, image performance adjusted. This is where you close the leaks before opening the taps. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Months 4-5.<\/strong>  First thematic cluster: anchor page + 6 to 8 satellite pages + full internal linking + Article and BreadcrumbList schema on each page. At the same time, launch of the first original search initiative. It doesn&#8217;t need to be complex &#8211; a survey of 150 respondents on a relevant sectoral question is enough to produce a quotable report.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Months 6-7.<\/strong>  Reference assets: updated statistics page, industry glossary, 2-3 in-depth guides using original research data. Expert signature activated on all strategic content. This is the period when you create the pages you&#8217;ll want to see quoted ten years from now.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Months 8-9.<\/strong>  Digital PR: publication of research report with dedicated landing page, distributed press release, targeted outreach to 15 sources identified during AI platform interrogation. Start of community presence on 2 to 3 platforms. Patience is essential here &#8211; results in terms of IA citations appear 4 to 8 weeks after publication.  <\/p>\n<p><strong>Month 10.<\/strong>  Second thematic cluster, applying exactly the same method as the first. Addition of 3 to 4 detailed case studies with standardized structure. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Month 11.<\/strong>  Omnichannel expansion: content adapted for YouTube, LinkedIn carousels, monthly newsletter launched. The goal isn&#8217;t to be everywhere &#8211; it&#8217;s to be on the 3 to 4 surfaces where your audience makes its decisions. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Month 12.<\/strong>  Full review. Compare AI Presence Rate month 1 vs month 12. Measure the growth of queries branded in Search Console. Quantify backlinks gained from target sources. Identify the 2 to 3 highest-impact initiatives and double them in year 2. The rest, optimize or abandon according to data &#8211; not intuition.     <\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_this_plan_cant_do_for_you\"><\/span>What this plan can&#8217;t do for you<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The question of execution rate. We&#8217;ve seen organizations spend six weeks building this type of plan and six months not executing it. The blockage is never strategic &#8211; it&#8217;s operational. Who writes the pillar page? Who identifies the experts and creates their profiles? Who manages press relations?     <\/p>\n<p>Answer these questions before validating the plan. Assign a person responsible for each phase, with a deadline. Without this, a checklist remains a checklist.  <\/p>\n<p>GEO is not a separate discipline on top of SEO. It&#8217;s an evolution of the same reasoning: to be understood and cited by the systems that synthesize information for users. The tools change. The logic remains the same as before: authority, relevance, accessibility. This plan is simply calibrated for today&#8217;s engines.    <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GEO checklist and action plan to optimize a complete website: structure, content, meshing, structured data and authority signals to gain visibility in search engines and AI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,92,86,154,155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-governance","category-innovation-en","category-project-management","category-seo-en","category-trends-en"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16907"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16990,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions\/16990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poleetic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}