30-Day GEO Visibility Plan for
Puck

The 30-Day Plan

Four phases, one per week. Each ships a deliverable Cooper can use.

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Week 1: GEO Audit and Opportunity Mapping

I run a full audit of careerpuck.com against current AI overview ranking patterns.

What happens:

• Identify which queries around employer branding, recruitment marketing, career sites, and hiring tech are surfacing AI overviews in Google and Gemini today
• Competitive scan: which companies (if any) are appearing in AI results for Puck's core topics
• Set up tracking so we can see week-over-week movement in AI overview appearances

Deliverable: GEO opportunity report with prioritized topic list, gap analysis, and tracking dashboard live.

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Week 2: Content Optimization Sprint

Puck's blog is human-written and high quality. That's a starting advantage most companies don't have. We sharpen what's already there.

What happens:

• Optimize 4-6 existing high-performing blog posts for GEO signals: structured data, direct-answer formatting, entity clarity, FAQ schema
• Reformat content to increase the likelihood of AI citation: concise definitions, authoritative statements, data-backed claims
• Tighten internal linking across optimized posts so authority flows where it matters

Deliverable: 4-6 optimized posts live on careerpuck.com.

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Week 3: Backlink and Authority Campaign Launch

Backlinks matter more for GEO than they did for traditional SEO. AI models weigh entity authority across the web when deciding what to recommend.

What happens:

• Identify 15-20 relevant media opportunities via Connectively, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer, and Featured
• Target HR tech, recruiting, employer branding, and SaaS verticals
• Submit Puck as a source for 8-10 active journalist queries
• Draft 2-3 contributed-article pitches positioning Tali and the Puck team as employer-branding voices

Deliverable: active backlink pipeline with tracking, first placements expected within 30-45 days.

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Week 4: New GEO-Native Content and Measurement

Publish from scratch using GEO-first methodology: written to be cited by AI, not just ranked by traditional search.

What happens:

• 2-3 new posts on the highest-opportunity gaps surfaced in Week 1
• Pull together Month-1 performance report: AI overview appearances, traffic recovery vs. pre-pause baseline, backlink pipeline status, content metrics
• Recommendations for Month 2

Deliverable: performance report and Month 2 roadmap.

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Why This Sequence

The pause hurt traffic. The fastest way to recover is optimizing what already works (Week 2) before publishing new content (Week 4). The backlink campaign (Week 3) compounds slowly, so it has to start now to show results in Month 2 and beyond.

Cooper keeps owning content production. I plug in the GEO layer underneath and feed him a prioritized topic queue.

GEO 101

GEO is generative engine optimization. It's how brands get cited and recommended by AI search systems like Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. It's a different game than traditional SEO keyword ranking.

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Why It Matters Now

When someone asks Gemini "best employer-branding platforms for mid-market tech companies," the AI returns 3-5 brands by name. If Puck isn't one of them, you're invisible to that searcher. Traditional SEO doesn't fix this. GEO does.

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What Actually Moves the Needle

1. Direct-answer formatting. AI models cite content that answers the question in the first 1-2 sentences. Long preambles get skipped.

2. Entity authority across the web. AI weighs how often and where a brand is mentioned. Backlinks from journalists, podcasts, and authoritative sites reinforce the brand in the model's training and retrieval data.

3. Structured data and FAQ schema. Helps AI parse and quote the content cleanly.

4. Topical depth. AI prefers brands with multiple high-quality pieces on a topic over a single post.

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What Doesn't Matter

Whether it was written by AI. Google's developer documentation states clearly that AI-generated content is not penalized when it serves the end user. The signal AI optimizers care about is quality, not authorship.

Keyword density. That's a 2015 metric. AI models read for meaning.

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Why Backlinks Still Matter (Despite What You Were Told)

You mentioned someone advised that backlinks don't matter. That advice was correct for some 2020-era SEO contexts. It's wrong for GEO.

AI models reinforce recommendations based on how often a brand shows up across the web. A backlink from an HR-tech publication, a recruiting podcast, or a SaaS roundup is a signal to the AI: this brand is real, this brand is cited, this brand is worth recommending.

That's why Week 3 of this plan exists.

Where Puck Stands Today

This is a brief situational read based on our conversation and a look at careerpuck.com.

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What's Working

Content marketing drove revenue. Across 9 months of blog posts and LinkedIn activity, inbound discos turned into closed deals. Content is a proven revenue lever, not an experiment.

Existing blog content is high quality. Cooper's writing is sharp and human. That's a major advantage over competitors starting from a content baseline of zero.

Tracking has improved. Attribution was historically weak, but the recent push (improved tracking) means Month 2+ results will be measurable in a way they weren't before.

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What's Holding You Back

Recent pause cost real traffic. Approximately 1 month of zero publishing dropped traffic and dried up inbound that referenced "found you on Google" or LinkedIn.

Restart needs a strategy refresh, not just a relaunch. Republishing on the old cadence will recover some traffic. It won't unlock the GEO opportunity that's currently sitting wide open.

Not appearing in AI overviews. Core queries around employer branding, recruitment marketing, and career sites are increasingly answered by AI overviews. Puck isn't surfacing in them.

No backlink or digital PR strategy. This was a deliberate skip based on prior advice. For GEO, it's the highest-leverage missing piece (covered in GEO 101 tab).

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The Recording

Full discovery call recording, transparent for your team's reference:

https://www.assemblyai.com/share/BlUQowbpdr

Transparency is how I work.

About Ryan Murphy

Founder, Upfront Operations. Solo operator, not an agency.

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Background

• Electrical engineer by training
• 10 years in marketing operations inside corporate
• Independent since 2024
• Top 20 Clay user globally
• HubSpot Certified Solutions Partner
• 6 Clutch awards in 2024, including AI Strategy
• Applicant, Anthropic Claude Partner Network (passed first round)

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How I Work

You hire me, not an agency. No outsourcing overseas. No account managers. If you ask for something, I do it.

The longest-running client engagement I have is 4 years. They keep the flexibility to cancel anytime. They just don't.

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Recent Client Work

See the case studies for the kind of GEO and content systems I've built for other clients:

https://casestudies.upfrontops.cloud

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Contact

Ryan Murphy ryan@upfrontops.com (832) 581-5400