SEO and GEO for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses: The 12 Most Important Questions Business Owners Ask Us

At Waterproof Web Wizard, we’ve been having the same initial conversations over and over again in recent months. A business owner from the region calls. He explains that the website isn’t delivering what it should. And then the questions come. Always similar, always honest, always phrased clearly.

We’ve collected these questions. From our project tracking, from Chamber of Commerce events, from conversations following Dennis’s LinkedIn posts. In this article, we answer the twelve most important ones. No jargon, no promises, no sales pressure.

The text ended up being longer than planned. Don’t read it all at once. Use the table of contents and jump straight to the question that’s on your mind right now.

What you’ll find in this article

1. No inquiries despite a new website (Question 1)
2. Competitors rank high on Google, we’re invisible (Question 2)
3. What is SEO and what is GEO (Questions 3 and 4)
4. Who can help us get found on Google (Question 5)
5. How do you recognize a reputable service provider (Question 6)
6. How much does SEO cost, and when will you see results? (Question 7)
7. Can you do SEO yourself (Question 8)
8. Can your business be found on ChatGPT (Question 9)
9. Google now shows AI-generated answers—what does that mean? (Question 10)
10. What do you need to change so that AI recommends you? (Question 11)
11. A competitor is recommended on ChatGPT, but you aren’t (Question 12)

1. No inquiries despite a new website—what’s going wrong

This is the most common question in our inbox. An entrepreneur has invested a lot of money in a relaunch. The site looks great. And yet the phone isn’t ringing.

We usually explain it this way: A beautiful website is like a well-designed trade show booth in an empty hall. Without visitors, even the best design is useless. Visibility isn’t created by design, but by two things. First: your site must be understandable to search engines. Second: you must provide answers to the questions your customers are searching for.

After a relaunch, the opposite often happens. Old URLs are lost without redirects. New content is created without considering keywords that people are actually searching for. Google views the new site as unknown and initially ranks it low. The old rankings are gone, and new ones don’t exist yet.

Our advice: Ask your previous service provider for the redirect list. Check in Google Search Console which pages are indexed. Take a look at which search terms brought you here before. It’s not a personal failure if this doesn’t mean anything to you. This work is usually handled by the service provider carrying out the relaunch. If that didn’t happen, the relaunch was incomplete.

2. Competitors rank high on Google, we’re invisible

This is the second most common trigger. The business owner has Googled their own company. They enter terms like “CNC contract manufacturing Ravensburg” or “medical technology Upper Swabia.” The competition appears on page one; they’re on page four.

The causes are almost always the same. The competitors have content that directly answers the search query. They have clear page structures. They have links from other websites pointing to them. And they update their site regularly.

What to do? In such cases, we start with a visibility comparison. We look at three to five direct competitors. Which search terms do they rank for? How are their pages structured? What can we learn from them, and what do we need to do differently?

The result is usually a list of 10 to 20 specific pages that you either rewrite or restructure. That’s work, but it’s manageable. In our SEO consultation, you’ll receive such a list in writing.

3. What is SEO and what is GEO, and why do we need both

This is where things sometimes get technical. We’re keeping it brief on purpose.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s about getting your website to appear on traditional search engines like Google or Bing. The search results provide a list of links; your goal is to rank as high as possible.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It’s about ensuring your website appears in the responses from generative AI systems. These include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and, as of October 2025, Google AI Overviews. These systems don’t provide a list of links, but rather a direct answer. Ideally, your company is part of that answer.

The big difference: On Google, the user clicks on the third result. On ChatGPT, they see an answer listing two to four providers. If you aren’t mentioned, you don’t exist for that potential customer.

Do you have to do both? Yes. But not at the same time and not with equal weight. Good GEO visibility is built on solid SEO. Without the basics, there is no GEO. We explain the connections in more detail in the article on Generative Engine Optimization in B2B.

4. Who can help us get found on Google

This question comes up repeatedly in our tracking. It appears both as a Google search and as a prompt in ChatGPT.

Our honest answer: It depends on where you are right now.

If your website has technical issues, you need a web developer with SEO expertise. If you’re lacking traffic, you need someone with content and keyword experience. If your contact form isn’t being used, that’s a usability issue, not an SEO issue.

In practice, everything is usually needed at the same time. That’s why we work this way at Waterproof Web Wizard: Dennis first assesses the status. Then we coordinate a plan with you. Then we implement it. Not everyone needs monthly support. Sometimes an audit plus three clear fixes is enough, and the company gets back on track on its own.

5. How do we recognize a reputable service provider

This is perhaps the most important question, and it is rarely asked openly. Business owners are afraid of being seen as suspicious. That’s why we’re taking the time to write down here what we ourselves consider reputable and what we don’t.

Signs of a reputable provider:

• The service provider wants to understand your goals before making an offer. A free initial consultation is standard, but it’s for your benefit, not the service provider’s.
• You receive a status report on your website before you sign. Even a mini-audit is sufficient.
• The services are described in concrete terms. Not “we’ll improve your visibility,” but “we’ll rebuild six pages, write 20 pieces of content, and secure eight backlinks.”
• Timeframes are realistic. First results after three to six months: realistic. Top-10 rankings after two weeks: unrealistic.
• Reports are easy to understand. No PDF with 40 charts and no explanation.

Red flags:

• Guarantees of specific rankings or visitor numbers. No reputable service provider guarantees such things. Google decides that.
• Very long contract terms with no option to cancel. 36 months is too long for an initial contract.
• No transparency regarding subcontractors. Without knowing who writes your content or who optimizes your site, you bear the risk alone.
• Vague service descriptions in the contract. The scope must be clear.

Ask to see a sample report before you sign. Reputable service providers have examples from anonymized client projects.

6. How much does SEO cost, and when will we see results?

We answer this with real-world figures, without pushing you into a specific price range.

One-time audits: Between 1,500 and 4,000 euros, depending on website size. An audit is a good starting point if you’re unsure whether you even have an SEO problem. You’ll receive a written analysis plus a list of priorities.

Ongoing support: For a regionally active medium-sized business in a niche market, reputable offers start at around 1,200 to 1,500 euros per month. For national goals or tougher competition, budgets can quickly reach 2,500 to 5,000 euros per month.

Timeframe for results: First measurable changes in Search Console after about eight to twelve weeks. A noticeable increase in visitor numbers usually after three to six months. New inquiries from search often don’t start coming in until months four to seven.

That sounds like a long time. It is a long time. That’s why SEO is a strategic decision and not a short-term advertising budget. If you need quick results, Google Ads often makes more sense—or a combination of both.

7. Can we do SEO ourselves?

Short answer: Yes, to some extent. Not everything, but quite a bit.

What you can do well on your own:

• Maintain your Google Business Profile. Business hours, photos, services, posts. This takes an hour a month and has a strong impact on local searches.
• Write blog articles on specialized topics. You know your customers and their questions better than any external service provider. We can help with the format; you provide the content.
• Collect customer reviews. Google reviews, review platforms, industry-specific platforms. This benefits both SEO and local search at the same time.

What’s harder to do yourself:

• Technical SEO topics (load time, Core Web Vitals, structured data). This requires developer expertise.
• Link building. Not trivial, not something you can buy. Requires strategy and patience.
• GEO optimization. Requires up-to-date knowledge of AI systems and how they rank content.

Our advice: Split it up. Handle the simple tasks internally, and outsource the complex ones. Many clients work with us exactly this way. We handle the technical aspects, strategy, and GEO, while they manage day-to-day operations themselves. This keeps costs in check and builds your team’s expertise.

If you have a marketing employee handling SEO, you’ll need at least three days of training plus monthly coaching sessions. Without coaching, that person will get lost in tools they don’t know how to use.

8. Can our company be found on ChatGPT?

We like to test this together with the client during initial consultations. We open ChatGPT or Perplexity and enter a question that a prospective customer would actually ask. For example: “Which companies in Upper Swabia offer machining for medical technology?”

What happens? Most of the time, three to five names appear with links. Sometimes the client’s company is among them. Often it isn’t. Sometimes the competition ranks higher, even though it’s smaller.

The mechanics behind this are different from Google’s. ChatGPT aggregates content from many sources and formulates an answer. It doesn’t matter whether your site ranks number one. What matters is whether your content is written and structured in such a way that a language model recognizes it as a reliable answer.

Three factors make you visible to ChatGPT:

1. A clear question-and-answer structure on your page. No walls of text, but pages that address a specific question and answer it in a structured way.
2. Mention in external sources. Specialized articles, industry directories, reputable portals. The more often your company appears, the more likely you are to end up in training data and real-time citations.
3. A solid technical foundation. Load time, HTTPS, clean HTML structure, clear metadata. This may sound trivial, but it makes all the difference. Details can be found in our post on structured data following the Core Update.

9. Google now displays AI answers directly—what does this mean for our website?

Since October 2025, Google has been displaying AI Overviews in Germany. This is a box above the traditional search results that contains an AI summary of the search query.

The problem for websites: about three out of four users no longer click on any links after seeing an AI Overview. They get their answer directly and move on. As a result, traffic to traditional websites is declining by 30 to 50 percent for some topics.

Does that mean SEO is dead? No. It’s shifting.

You lose traffic for simple informational queries. For specific purchase intent, the quality improves. Someone searching for “machining service providers in Upper Swabia” still wants to see providers and will click. Someone searching for “What is machining” gets an AI answer and doesn’t need your site.

For you, this means two things. First: your content specifically targets purchase decisions, not purely informational queries. Second: when cited in AI overviews, you still benefit because Google displays you as a source in the answer. And you can influence those citations.

10. What do we need to change so that AI recommends us

We’ll summarize the most important levers. This isn’t a complete checklist, but the five points with the greatest impact.

First: Write answers instead of ad copy. Revise your core pages so they answer real questions. Headline = question. First paragraph = direct answer. Rest = reasoning and details.

Second: Explain technical terms. Language models like texts that define their terms. For “contract manufacturing,” explain what it is in a subordinate clause. This helps laypeople and helps the AI categorize your text.

Third: Include structured data. This is technical. JSON-LD markup for FAQPage, Organization, LocalBusiness. A language model understands this immediately. Details can be found in our article on structured data.

Fourth: Establish author signals. Author profiles with real people, qualifications, and contact information. AI systems prefer sources that have attributable authority. A post by “the team” carries less weight than a post by a named individual with a professional background.

Fifth: Leverage third-party sources. Have trade media, industry publications, or local portals report on your company. Listings in reputable business directories also help. This is classic PR work, but with a new purpose.

For existing WordPress sites, implementing these five points usually takes two to four weeks. For older systems or complex TYPO3 sites, it takes longer. We have a dedicated TYPO3 service for this.

11. Our competitor is recommended by ChatGPT, but we aren’t

This question comes with the highest emotional urgency. It signals: The person has tested it themselves, has seen the result, and feels the need to act.

Our approach in such cases consists of three steps.

Step one: Why is the competitor being cited? We look at their site. What’s the structure? What’s the content? What external references? We usually find three to five reasons why they appear more frequently in AI responses.

Step two: What gaps do we have? The comparison provides a list. Not all reasons are relevant, but two to three recurring patterns are almost always found.

Step three: Six-month plan. We develop an action plan that specifies the priority and effort required for each item. This usually involves ten to 15 tasks. Some can be implemented in a week; others take three months.

Important: AI visibility can be influenced, but not guaranteed. Language models regularly change their training data and response mechanisms. Whoever is cited today may not be there tomorrow. That’s why GEO is an ongoing task, not a one-time project.

What we want to leave you with

The twelve questions in this article are no coincidence. They come from real initial consultations and our own prompt tracking. If you find yourself in one or more of these questions, you’re not alone.

We’ve learned three things we’d like to share with you:

1. Start with the status quo, not with the solution. Anyone who launches SEO or GEO without first taking stock usually ends up paying twice. An audit is usually the most cost-effective and sensible investment to start with.
2. Plan for three to six months of patience. If you need quick results, rely on paid advertising in parallel. SEO and GEO are a mid-term game.
3. Don’t separate technology and content too strictly. The best results come when both are considered together. A good copywriter who understands the technical basics often outperforms a pure SEO technician.

If you’d like to discuss your current situation with Dennis, reach out to us via /contact/. We offer a free initial consultation where we’ll assess your current status and determine the next steps for you. No obligation, no sales pressure.

Frequently Asked Questions at a Glance

What is the difference between SEO and GEO in a nutshell?

SEO optimizes your website for search engine rankings, while GEO optimizes it to be cited in the direct answers provided by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews.

Do we need to invest in GEO now if we’re already doing SEO?

Yes, but in most cases not as a separate budget. If you’re doing solid SEO, you’re already laying the groundwork for GEO. On top of that, there are three to five specific adjustments: structured data, a clear question-and-answer structure, and author signals. This requires effort, but not an additional budget on the scale of hiring a second consultant.

What monthly budget makes SEO worthwhile for a B2B SME?

A reasonable starting budget for a regionally active B2B SME with a niche focus is around 1,200 to 1,500 euros per month, plus a one-time fee of 1,500 to 3,000 euros for the audit. In our experience, results are not reliable at less than 800 euros per month.

How long does it take to see results?

The first measurable ranking changes in Google Search Console become visible after eight to twelve weeks. A noticeable increase in website traffic usually occurs after three to six months. Based on experience, new inquiries from search typically start coming in from month four to seven, depending on the level of competition.

How can we tell if an SEO service provider isn’t operating in good faith?

Three red flags: ranking guarantees for specific positions, contract terms exceeding 24 months without an opt-out clause, and a lack of transparency regarding subcontractors and services. Reputable providers explain exactly what they do, provide realistic timelines, and deliver clear reports.

Sources

• Ahrefs – How Long Does SEO Take to Work
• Google – AI Mode in Search
• Search Engine Land – Bing Ranking as a ChatGPT Visibility Factor
• Princeton – Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)