Background and goals
Caliber is an enterprise stakeholder intelligence platform that helps large organisations measure and manage corporate reputation. Focused on Fortune 500 and multinational companies, it provides data driven insights into stakeholder perception across markets. The platform combines reputation analytics, benchmarking, and executive reporting to support communications, marketing, and leadership teams in protecting brand equity, identifying risks, and driving strategic decision making.
The ambition was clear:
- Lead category visibility across AI search platforms
- Appear in bottom-funnel, high-intent prompts
- Increase authoritative citations in AI-generated answers
- Generate qualified enterprise pipeline, including the first large SQL
This was not a traffic play. It was a commercial visibility play inside AI Search.
GEO Strategy
Caliber partnered with BE VISIBLE to strengthen its visibility in both traditional search and AI driven search environments. The strategy combined four tightly integrated pillars.
1. The SEO Foundation
We implemented a full service SEO program, starting with a technical audit to resolve crawlability, indexing, and performance issues. Key commercial pages were refreshed and restructured, new landing pages were created around high intent keywords, and internal linking was optimized to strengthen authority distribution across the site.
2. Preparing for AI Search Optimization
Content was rewritten and structured to be AI friendly, with clearer entity signals, authoritative positioning, and answer focused formatting. Using Rankshift, we conducted an in-depth AI visibility analysis to identify gaps in citations, entity associations, and topic authority, prioritizing the actions with the highest projected impact on AI generated answers.
3.High citation placements
A targeted digital PR and media outreach program focused on securing placements in highly cited sources that AI Search platforms were looking at. The objective was not just referral traffic, but increasing Caliber’s likelihood of being referenced inside AI Search responses through trusted third party validation.
4. From Top Funnel to Bottom Funnel Focus
Due to the increase of zero-clicks in classic search. The content strategy shifted from predominantly awareness driven topics to bottom funnel, high intent queries. Dedicated landing pages were created around solution driven and comparison based keywords, aligning with enterprise buyer journeys and increasing the probability of generating qualified leads from both classic and AI search.
5. Integrated marketing approach
Relevant Social Media, UCG content like Reddit discussions around reputation monitoring, crisis detection and enterprise brand tracking were discovered via Rankshift and strategically engaged.
Because third-party content is frequently surfaced in AI search results, contextual mentions strengthened brand association and recall inside AI answers.
Execution
Execution followed a phased rollout:
- Prompt mapping and competitive visibility benchmarking via Rankshift
- Creation of bottom-funnel landing pages aligned to commercial intent clusters
- On-page restructuring for AI readability and structured summaries
- Technical SEO upgrades and schema refinement
- Authority amplification via media placements
- Community-layer reinforcement through targeted Reddit participation
Every layer reinforced the others. Landing pages increased eligibility. Authority increased trust. Technical clarity increased grounding.
Measurement framework
Performance was tracked across four dimensions:
1. AI visibility
Leaderboard position and percentage visibility for priority prompts.
2. Citation share
Frequency of brand citation relative to competitors in AI-generated answers.
3. Grounding rate and sentiment
- Percentage of grounded answers
- Positive, neutral and negative brand sentiment
4. Commercial impact
- Enterprise SQL generation
- Lead attribution from AI search exposure
The framework connected visibility metrics directly to pipeline.
Results
AI visibility leadership
- Caliber reached 35 percent category visibility, highest in the leaderboard
- Reputation.com decreased to 25 percent
- RepTrak reached 17 percent
- YouGov reached 16 percent
- High-intent prompt visibility peaked at 53 percent
Caliber secured the number one position across tracked commercial prompts:
Brand sentiment
- Positive sentiment increased to 100 percent
- Neutral and negative sentiment dropped to zero
Visibility translated into trusted inclusion.
Commercial impact
Within three months, Caliber generated its first large enterprise SQL directly attributed to bottom-funnel AI search exposure. AI search visibility became pipeline.
Why it worked
Several structural factors drove performance:
- Focus on decision-stage prompts rather than awareness traffic
- Authority building in sources AI systems already trust
- Structured, entity-rich content that improved machine comprehension
- Technical clarity that strengthened retrievability
- Community presence where AI systems frequently draw contextual signals
This was not SEO in the traditional sense. It was retrieval engineering plus authority shaping.
Lessons and optimization opportunities
1. Bottom-funnel pages outperform blogs for enterprise conversion
High-intent landing pages drive SQLs. Informational content supports awareness but rarely closes.
2. Citation authority outweighs ranking position
Being referenced by trusted sources increases inclusion probability in AI answers.
3. Structure improves grounding rates
Explicit summaries, clear feature breakdowns and entity clarity increase citation frequency.
4. Community platforms influence AI outputs
Reddit and similar ecosystems act as contextual reinforcement layers.
5. Continuous prompt tracking is essential
AI visibility shifts quickly. Ongoing prompt intelligence ensures sustained leadership.
The key takeaway: generative search optimization is a distinct discipline. When executed with commercial intent, it produces measurable pipeline, not just impressions.
