According to DAN, GEO Still Sits Beyond In-House Teams
According to DAN, GEO Still Sits Beyond In-House Teams
Can GEO be handled in-house?
Drawing on its global network of agencies, market visibility across regions, and continuous analysis of emerging digital capabilities, Digital Agency Network (DAN) observes a clear pattern forming across the industry.
The short answer, at least for now, is no.
Not because internal teams lack talent, but because GEO is not a single function—it is an operational system that most in-house teams are not yet structured to build or maintain.
GEO Is Not “Advanced SEO”
One of the most common mistakes companies make is treating GEO as an extension of traditional SEO.
SEO historically focused on:
Keyword targeting
Page-level optimization
Backlinks and rankings
GEO operates on a completely different layer.
Generative engines do not rank pages in a list; they recommend entities, brands, and solutions. Visibility is no longer about being #1—it is about being selected.
That shift changes everything:
From pages to entities
From keywords to context
From optimization to signal consistency
From traffic to trust
This is where most in-house SEO playbooks start to break down.
GEO Requires Cross-Functional Execution, Not a Single Team
In theory, many companies already have the ingredients GEO requires:
Content teams
SEO specialists
PR or communications
Data or analytics
In practice, these teams operate in silos.
GEO demands tight coordination across:
Entity architecture
Content systems
Authority signals
Distribution channels
Ongoing iteration based on AI visibility
This is not a “campaign.”
It is not even a quarterly initiative.
GEO is an always-on operational layer—and that is where execution becomes the real bottleneck.
The Entity Engineering Problem
Generative engines do not understand brands the way humans do.
They understand entities—structured, repeatable representations of what something is, does, and is trusted for.
Building entity clarity requires:
Consistent language across owned, earned, and third-party content
Alignment between brand claims and external validation
Coverage across multiple authoritative surfaces
Most in-house teams are optimized for:
Publishing content
Maintaining websites
Supporting campaigns
They are not optimized for entity engineering across the open web.
This gap is one of the main reasons companies turn to specialized GEO agencies that already operate at this intersection.
GEO Is a Distribution Problem Disguised as a Content Problem
Another misconception is that GEO success comes from “better content.”
Content matters—but only when it is:
Properly structured
Contextually placed
Repeated across trusted sources
Reinforced by third-party authority
Generative engines learn from patterns, not one-off pieces.
This means GEO requires:
Editorial placements
Directory presence
Expert commentary
Cross-site consistency
Internal teams rarely control enough of these surfaces to create the necessary signal density.
Specialized GEO companies focus precisely on this: not just what you say, but where and how often it appears.
Why GEO Breaks the Traditional In-House Model
Most in-house marketing teams are built for:
Speed within one organization
Brand control
Predictable workflows
GEO demands the opposite:
External validation
Multi-source reinforcement
Continuous adaptation to opaque AI systems
This creates three structural challenges.
1. Feedback Loops Are Unclear
You cannot “check rankings” in GEO the way you do in SEO.
Understanding AI visibility requires monitoring:
Mentions
Citations
Recommendation patterns
Prompt-level outputs
These feedback loops are still unfamiliar to most internal teams.
2. Tooling Is Immature
GEO measurement tools are emerging, but fragmented.
Agencies working across multiple clients see patterns sooner and adjust faster.
3. Authority Is External by Nature
You cannot manufacture trust internally.
You can only earn it through consistent external presence.
The Role of GEO Agencies in the US Market
In the US, GEO adoption is accelerating fastest among:
SaaS companies
B2B platforms
Enterprise service providers
These organizations face intense competition in AI-driven discovery environments. As a result, many are partnering with GEO agencies that already understand:
How LLMs synthesize information
How authority compounds across sources
How to align PR, SEO, and content into a single GEO system
Rather than building experimental GEO teams internally, brands are leveraging agencies that have already operationalized these frameworks.
The UK Perspective: GEO and Strategic Authority
In the UK, the GEO conversation often starts from a different angle.
UK-based brands tend to emphasize:
Strategic positioning
Regulatory awareness
Narrative coherence
This makes the UK market particularly strong in GEO strategy and entity consistency.
However, even here, execution remains the challenge. Many brands work with GEO-focused agencies to translate high-level strategy into:
Scalable content systems
Third-party validation
Long-term AI visibility
The result is a growing ecosystem of GEO companies in the UK that specialize in turning strategy into recommendation-ready signals.
GEO Is Still Too New for Most In-House Teams
This is not a criticism of internal teams—it is a timing issue.
GEO as a discipline is still evolving:
Search engines are changing rapidly
AI models update frequently
Best practices are still being defined
In-house teams are designed for stability.
GEO currently requires experimentation at scale.
That experimentation is expensive, risky, and difficult to justify internally—especially when results do not map cleanly to traditional KPIs.
Agencies absorb this uncertainty across multiple clients, which is why they move faster.
When GEO Will Become an In-House Capability
Eventually, GEO will move in-house—just like SEO did.
That shift will likely happen when:
Measurement standards stabilize
Tooling matures
GEO roles become clearly defined
AI discovery becomes a standard acquisition channel
Until then, GEO remains closer to:
Early technical SEO
Early programmatic content
Early performance PR
All of which historically lived outside in-house teams first.
GEO Is About Readiness, Not Control
The instinct to bring GEO in-house is understandable.
But readiness matters more than control.
Right now, GEO rewards:
Speed of learning
Cross-industry pattern recognition
External authority building
That combination still favors specialized GEO agencies and GEO companies that operate at scale.
For brands navigating AI-driven discovery today, the question is not who owns GEO— but who can execute it before competitors are recommended first.
Evren Kacar
DAN Global
email us here
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