How we work
A craft method for a discipline that cannot be automated
GEO is content work before it is technical work. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity what they recommend in your sector, what determines whether your company makes it into that recommendation — and with what arguments — is the narrative the model can build about you with the sources it has to hand. Sometimes that narrative appears explicitly in the response. Sometimes the model simply lists names. But the reasoning is always there, in the sources that underpinned the decision. Our job is to build that narrative: to make your website, external mentions, reviews and comparison sites tell the same story with the same arguments, so that the models recommend you with the case you want to make — not the one they improvise from whatever they find.
That narrative is not built with templates or generic content. It is built from what your company knows how to do and that no other company knows how to do in quite the same way: what the person who handles the difficult cases knows, what the person who takes the first client call knows, what the person who hears the real objections before a contract is signed knows. That knowledge is almost never on your website. It lives inside your people. Drawing it out, deciding how to position it against what your competitors already do, structuring it so that models can cite it, and publishing it with the technical scaffolding needed to make it readable — that is the work.
Principles
The same person signs the commercial rationale, the content and the technical decision
Traditional agencies divide work in a chain: strategist, copywriter, developer. Each link interprets what it understood from the previous one, and what arrives at the end of the process frequently bears little resemblance to the original strategy. At Deslumbra IA there is no chain. The person who decides which question deserves its own page is the person who writes that page and decides which schema it carries. Everything decided gets implemented — with no intermediary filters to dilute the detail. This is also why the work is faster and more cost-effective than it appears — and why there is a natural ceiling to how many clients can be served well.
Deep work and quick fixes run in parallel
From the first week there are two speeds running simultaneously. The fixes that surface through a technical audit — poorly structured pages, headings that answer no real question, buried or badly organised content — go live quickly and generate the first results. In parallel, interviews begin with your team to identify the specific knowledge that will later become the answer pages and comparison pieces that actually move the needle. It is not one thing after the other: it is both at once from day one.
Strategy decides what to build before building anything
Before publishing a single new page we do two readings. The first: what narrative already exists about your company in the sources the models consult — often a narrative you are unaware of. The second: what space the competitors the AI already recommends in your sector occupy, and which of your strengths can be defended more convincingly than theirs. On that basis we decide which parts of the current narrative to keep, which to adjust, which gaps to fill, and in what order. Without that decision, content becomes production for its own sake. With it, every piece has a clear purpose.
Every decision is validated against a specific question
Before publishing a page, an FAQ or any intervention, three questions must be answered: which buyer’s question are we answering here? Why would an AI model choose this answer over a competitor’s? How will we know in the next cycle whether it worked? Audit tools are inputs for decisions — they are not the decisions themselves. If a page does not answer a real question, it does not get published — even if it passes every audit.
Limited volume by design
The entire process is run by one person — Antonio Raunelli — and that imposes a natural ceiling on available hours per week. New clients consume significantly more time at the outset: understanding the business, reading the narrative that already exists about them, mapping competitors, designing strategy. When that workload does not fit within available capacity, we say so and propose a realistic start date. It is the direct consequence of how we work: if the person who signs the strategy is the person who conducts the interviews, writes the content and reads the results, there is a limit. We accept that as part of the model.
- How we work
What happens when we start?
1. First conversation · 30 minutes at no cost
This is not a service presentation. It is a conversation to understand your situation: what your clients are asking AI about your sector, where you stand today, and whether it makes sense to work together. If there is a fit, we continue to the hour.
2. Visibility Check and background work begins · weeks 1 and 2
We run real prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. We review each response source by source: what the models say about your company, what they say about your competitors, which sources they consult, and what arguments they use to build their recommendations. In parallel, interviews begin with people from different areas of your team — operations, sales, customer service, product — to capture the knowledge that is not on your website but that models could cite. The output is a report covering what the AI sees, what is missing, and where the real opportunity lies.
3. Positioning strategy · takes shape from day one, consolidated in 3–4 weeks
Strategy begins taking shape in the first meeting and is refined as we get to know your business better. With the Visibility Check completed and the first interviews done, we run two parallel readings. The first: what narrative already exists about your company (if any) in the sources the models consult — what your own pages say, what external mentions say, what reviews say, what comparison sites say. It is often a partial, contradictory or entirely unknown narrative. The second: what narrative supports the competitors the AI already recommends in your sector — what arguments the model uses to cite them, where their gaps are, which market spaces no one is claiming. Crossing both readings against your specific strengths, we decide strategy: which parts of your current narrative to keep, which to adjust, which questions to compete for directly against a specific competitor, which to open a new space where no one is answering well, and in what order. That strategy directs the work of the following 90 days. Without it, you publish a great deal and achieve little.
4. Intervention · first 90 days
From the strategy, we execute in order of business impact — not by number of findings. Quick fixes go live while the deeper work advances: new answer pages built from the interviews, restructuring of existing content, presence in the external sources your sector consults, schema and structured data where they add value. Every piece of copy is developed with your team and in your voice, ready to pass your internal approval process.
5. Ongoing tracking · cadence according to plan
Monthly, fortnightly or weekly. Each cycle: before/after comparison screenshots, share of voice against the competitors the AI recommends in your sector, citations per prompt, alerts if a new competitor enters or you lose a relevant mention. And an analysis of the narrative the models use when recommending you — which arguments they use, alongside which competitors they place you, in what order, with what caveats. Appearing is only half the work; appearing with the arguments you want to defend is the other half. The output of each cycle is a short list of what to do next — three prioritised actions, not twenty pending tasks.
Deliverables
Executive Summary
One page per cycle. Decisions taken, decisions pending, owners and dates. The document the managing director can read in the lift.
Comparison Screenshots
What a user sees when they ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews about your sector. Before and after, with date. No estimates or projections — real responses at the moment of tracking.
Action list for the next cycle
Three actions prioritised by expected impact. Each with an owner and a date. This is not a backlog: it is what moves the needle in the next period.
Change Log
What was published, what was adjusted, what was decided not to do and why. So that in six months you can reconstruct how you got to where you are.
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If it makes sense, we’ll continue to the full hour.
Choose your visibility tracking plan
All three plans include the same service. What varies is how often we work together — and therefore, how fast your visibility grows.
Most clients go through all three phases. We start weekly while building visibility from scratch — usually two or three months. When the metrics show that presence is established, we move to fortnightly. And when the work is mainly maintenance and fine-tuning, to monthly.
It’s not an automatic step-down. It’s a decision we make together when the data says it makes sense. And the criteria is always the same: what pace does your business need right now?
For businesses that want to build AI visibility at a sustainable pace.
For businesses that want to close the gap faster and gain ground before their competitors do.
For businesses that want the maximum pace of progress and continuous adjustment.
FAQs — Frequently asked questions about how we work
Organisation and process
We define this together at the start of the engagement. We adapt to your way of working, not the other way around.
The pace of the project depends on the availability of the people involved on your side and the material you already have. Publication is split according to the situation: with start-ups or companies without internal staff responsible for the website, the usual arrangement is for you to provide credentials and for us to create the content directly — always as a draft, awaiting your approval before it goes live. With companies that have a marketing or product team responsible for the website, content goes through your internal processes before it reaches publication. What does not change: the final decision on what gets published is always yours.
Strategy starts taking shape from the first meeting. What takes 3–4 weeks is consolidating the detail, not starting the work.
As we get to know your business better — through interviews, reading the narrative that already exists about you, analysing the competitors the AI already recommends — the initial picture is refined. The more complex the business or sector, the more nuance emerges and the more the strategy is sharpened. While that happens, the quick fixes identified in the Visibility Check go live from the first week — headings that answer no real question, poorly structured content, basic missing schema. The new, deeper content is what waits for the strategy to be properly consolidated, because publishing before that decision is made is moving without direction.
You do. We recommend a strategy based on the opportunity map we identify in your market and build the content on that basis.
We do not invent content. Every piece that is published has a real foundation in your product or service — it comes from interviews with your team, from conversations with your clients, from materials you already have. What we contribute is the judgement about which question deserves its own page, which arguments position you better against the competition, and how to structure the text so that models can cite it. The voice is yours, the facts are yours, the final decision is yours. Our signature is on the strategy and on the how.
If you have one, we work with them. If not, we manage with access to your CMS and advise you on when it makes sense to bring one in on a one-off basis.
When a developer is available, the usual arrangement is for them to give us visual access to review the state of the infrastructure, while we indicate the technical adjustments worth making at each stage — schema, robots.txt, redirects, llms.txt, whatever applies. When there is no developer, we work directly on the CMS for everything that can be done there, which is the majority of the work. A developer is only needed for server-level interventions or structural changes to the site — and in those cases we give you advance notice so you can organise accordingly.
Terms and capacity
There is no minimum commitment. The plan is billed one month in advance and can be cancelled at any time.
Everything worked on during that period stays with you: the Visibility Check report, the documented strategy, the published copy, the comparison screenshots, the change log. No penalties, no hidden clauses. The reason is consistent with how we work: if what we are doing adds value, you see it yourselves in the tracking. If it does not, there is no point in obliging anyone to continue.
We say so directly and propose a realistic start date. Usually between two and six weeks depending on current workload.
If the urgency cannot accommodate that wait, we recommend other market options that may suit your situation — and we explain what to look for and what to avoid. The reason this happens is structural, not commercial: the entire process is run by Antonio Raunelli from start to finish, and new clients consume significantly more hours in the first weeks. Before taking on a new client, we prefer to maintain the service standard we give to existing ones. It is the only honest way to operate this model.