[Richard H Roberts]

Generative Engine Optimization — AI Search

Make your brand the answer.

Getting mentioned when buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI takes more than volume. It takes judgment: which bets to make, and how to mine your experts for information gain AI can't create.

See the work Get in touch

25+ years in marketing & growth leadership
SEO & GEO Practice Lead · Ex-CMO · Yale MBA

Optimizing for  ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini · Google AI Overviews

Richard H Roberts

Why now

Buyers draft a shortlist before they visit your site.

AI answers now shape which vendors make the list. If the models don't name you, many buyers never get to your website.

94%
of business buyers use AI in the buying process
92%
of B2B buyers say AI shaped their vendor shortlist
69%
turn to sales reps to check what AI told them

Sources: Forrester, Buyers' Journey Survey 2025; Semrush B2B buyer survey, 2026 (vendor-run); Gartner B2B buyer survey, May 2026.

Selected Work

Results I've led

Engagements I led at Active Ingredients, across very different categories.

B2B SaaS · Microsoft cloud

Nerdio

GEO · led a team of four · 50+ pages

  • +1,394%AI mention rate YoY across top LLMs
  • +1,266%Google AI Overview mentions
  • 89%total AI mention rate, near 100% on priority topics
  • +125%AI citation rate
  • 25%GEO share of voice, more than 2x competitors
  • +602%leads YoY · 2.1× conversion vs. baseline
  • +32%brand impressions YoY · partner posts reaching audiences up to 460k
"Active Ingredients are true pioneers in GEO. The results have been outstanding — a completely new, high-efficiency funnel for our sales team." — Lane Cauley, Senior Manager, Web Experience, Nerdio
Read the Nerdio case study →
Enterprise analytics

Qlik

SEO · led a team of six · 90+ pages · 10+ yr relationship

  • +1,152%unbranded organic traffic YoY
  • +477%organic lead volume YoY
  • Top 5Google ranking, primary Gartner keyword
  • +35%Gartner Magic Quadrant conversions
"A critical partner for 10+ years — they transformed our website into a truly powerful growth engine. Great strategy, design, content, tech, and service." — Susan Nishimoto, VP Global Digital Marketing, Qlik
Consumer / CPG

Chicken of the Sea

GEO + SEO · structured data

  • +871%AI mention rate YoY
  • +1.1k%AI citation rate growth YoY
  • +44%organic traffic while cutting paid dependence
Finance / Asset management

Hennessy Funds

GEO + SEO · compliance-heavy category

  • +139%AI mention rate YoY
  • +226%organically sourced deals YoY

Approach

Enduring visibility, not permanent penalties.

AI slop can spike metrics for a few months, then get you buried. Google's updated guidance now says generative AI used to produce large amounts of text without oversight "represents little to no effort," and Google has deployed SAFE, its second AI-slop detection system of 2026. A Semrush study of 42,000 posts found human content 8x more likely to rank than AI content. And Princeton's GEO study found that adding unique statistics lifts citation likelihood about 30%, and expert quotes about 41%. Long-term success comes from giving the models something they can't already generate. That's what my work manufactures: information gain.

Why information gain wins
Synthetic noiseInformation gain
Source materialRepurposed training dataPrimary research and expert interviews
Entity densityLow; generic termsHigh; exclusive terms and stats
Engine treatmentDeduplicated; brand strippedCited; source attributed
Competitive moatZero; anyone can produce itHigh; rivals can't copy novelty
Long-term outcomeModel collapse; AI engines penalizeCompounding authority
REFRESH & OPTIMIZE 01 / PRIORITIZE The right bets 02 / INTERVIEW Expert insight 03 / CREATE Net-new content 04 / AMPLIFY Trusted & cited 05 / MEASURE Tied to revenue
01 / Prioritize

Develop the strategy

I audit what AI already says about you, where it's generic, wrong, or missing your view, then design a GEO strategy tied to business goals and prioritize the prompts worth winning by value, competitiveness, and volume.

02 / Interview

Get expert insights

Interview your subject-matter experts and pull out the data, perspectives, and details that aren't already on the internet.

03 / Create

Make it net-new

That expertise becomes original copy, data tables, and diagrams engineered to bring information gain to the topic, not a rewrite of what already exists. Technical SEO and content architecture make every page easy for search engines and LLMs to find and parse.

04 / Amplify

Build authority and consensus

Build verifiable authority with presence across high-trust third-party domains: digital PR, plus your partners, who get GEO-optimized posts to run on their own blogs. When other trusted sources say the same thing you do, the models are more likely to repeat it.

05 / Measure

Tie it to revenue

Report share of voice, mention and citation rates, and brand sentiment and accuracy across the major LLMs and Google's AI results, alongside traditional rankings, impressions, and clicks. Track sessions, conversions, and leads from organic, AI referral, and branded search. Then I connect all of it to leads, meetings, and deals in your CRM, so the program is judged on pipeline, not vanity metrics.

↻  Continually refresh and optimize as the models and the market move.

The quality bar

The Active Information Gain (AIG) Framework

Every page is scored on six dimensions: four before it publishes, two once it's live. It's how I make sure content gives the models something they can't already write.

Before publishing

Novelty vs. the models

What a model can't write from its training data alone.

Before publishing

Competitive differentiation

A uniquely ownable POV and data, compared with the pages engines retrieve today.

Before publishing

Entity exclusivity

Coined terms, proprietary data, and named people only your brand has.

Before publishing

Definitional density

Clear "X is Y" statements an engine can lift and use.

After publishing

Attribution survivability

Specific enough that the model must name you to stay accurate.

After publishing

Position weight

Named first in the answer, not absorbed anonymously.

Read the full AIG Framework →

AI can't create information gain.

Writing

Ideas on the
AI-search shift

The data and thinking behind the method: making the case against AI slop, and how to build content that earns mentions and doesn't crush your SEO.

Essay · GEO strategy

The Argument About AI Content at Scale Is Over

Published

Google, its researchers, the trade press, and practitioners all reached the same conclusion in six months: scaled low-effort content spikes, then collapses.

Essay · GEO strategy

AI Slop Is Doomed. Here's Why.

Published

Why "GEO at scale" gets a short-lived spike, and why content built on genuine information gain compounds as the models tighten.

Essay · GEO Methodology

How to Stop the Slop: The AIG Framework

Published

A measurable, six-dimension method for engineering content that AI engines cite instead of ignore.

About

SEO, AI-Search, and Marketing Leader

I've spent 25+ years on the front edge of platform shifts: e-commerce, mobile, SEO, and now AI search. Each time, I built the capability to own the shift before it was obvious.

I've led marketing as a CMO and VP at venture-backed companies (Fuze, EQO, ZipRealty, CNET, Zing.com) and driven growth for global brands including HP, NetApp, Honeywell, Equinix, and Dell. In late 2024 I founded a Generative Engine Optimization practice, building the tooling, the "information gain" method, and the team to deliver it. I started it after seeing LLM answers begin to replace the blue-link search results brands had relied on for twenty years.

I'm equally comfortable as the strategic north star on an engagement and as the hands-on builder shipping the work. Yale MBA; BA in psychology and economics from Emory.

I'm also a novelist: the award-winning Tuning In series. It's the same instinct as the day work, understanding how people think, and creating something genuinely new rather than more of the same.

Career at a glance

  • SEO & GEO Practice LeadActive Ingredients
    2017–Present

Selected prior leadership

  • SVP MarketingBOL Agency
    2009–2015
  • Chief Marketing OfficerFuze
    2008–2009
  • Chief Marketing OfficerEQO Communications
    2006–2008
  • VP MarketingZipRealty
    2005–2006
  • AVP MarketingCNET.com
    2002–2005
  • VP Marketing & Co-FounderZing.com · acquired by Sony
    1997–2001
  • DirectorGrey Interactive · launched Dell.com
    1996–1997

Focus · GEO · AEO · technical SEO · LLM visibility & citation strategy · content architecture

Education · Yale University, MBA · Emory University, BA

Contact

Let's talk.

richard@richardhroberts.com LinkedIn ↗