Conner Hats: GEO moved SEO by 99 positions in 90 days.

The challenge

Conner Hats (connerhats.com) makes hats people search for by name — gambler hats, outback hats, leather hats, fishing hats. The site had an SEO program and 27 collection pages, and those pages were climbing slowly. Slowly wasn't good enough: the top keyword sat on page five, and when a buyer asked an AI model for a recommendation in the category, Conner Hats wasn't in the answer.

The question the brand brought us was the one most retailers bring: is GEO a second program to fund alongside SEO, or a different way to run the one they already have?

The opportunity

Twenty-seven collection pages that already ranked somewhere are twenty-seven pages AI models could already retrieve. The opportunity wasn't new content. It was making what existed legible to a model: product authority, experiential detail, and structured data — the same signals Google rewards, expressed so a model can extract and cite them.

If it worked, both channels would compound from one set of changes. If it didn't, the SEO program would be exactly where it was.

The insight

Most brands treat GEO as a separate workstream from SEO — a new channel, new team, new vendor. That framing misses the point. The signals that win AI recommendations are the same signals Google rewards. Run them as one program and both compound. Run them as two and you underperform in both.

Case study E-Commerce Specialty Retail 90 Days

connerhats.com
Family-owned · 27 collections audited

GEO moved SEO by 99 positions in 90 days.

At a family-owned specialty retailer, AI-optimized content became the accelerant their search program had been missing. Same site, same SEO program — layered with Visigent's GEO methodology. Within 90 days, ranking improvements landed across the entire collection portfolio.

GEO content is not a replacement for SEO. It is an accelerant. The same pages that were slowly climbing surged when we layered GEO on top. — Tom Howell, Co-Founder & CEO, Visigent

The Approach

Visigent layered GEO methodology on top of the existing SEO program. No rebuilds, no replacements. 27 collection pages audited, then content, structure, and schema updated to match what AI systems prioritize: product authority, experiential detail, and structured data. Traditional rankings and AI visibility tracked together so the compounding effects were measurable.

Audit

Diagnose how AI systems interpret each collection page.

Optimize

Update content, structure, and schema across 27 pages.

Monitor

Track SEO rank and AI visibility as one system.

The Results · Selected Keywords

50+ keywords broke into the top 100. New rankings appeared for keywords Conner Hats had never ranked for. Top performers:

The Insight

Most brands treat GEO as a separate workstream from SEO. A new channel, new team, new vendor. That framing misses the point. The signals that win AI recommendations are the same signals Google rewards. Run them as one program and both compound. Run them as two and you underperform in both.

AI recommendations, readiness and conversion

AI recommendations. Top-three recommendations across all four models tracked — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude — within 12 weeks of kickoff to full execution rollout.

Readiness. GEO Score from 23 to 87 over the 90-day program.

Conversion. Visitors arriving from AI engines converted at 4.4× the rate of organic search visitors.

Windows and sources: rank changes from the rank tracker over the 90-day program (Q1 2026); AI recommendation positions and GEO score (23→87) from the Visigent tracker over the same 90-day window; conversion from the site's analytics, AI-referral segment vs organic.

Why it mattered

Conner Hats didn't buy a second channel. It ran the one it had differently, and both outcomes moved at once: the search program it had been funding for years got faster, and the brand entered a set of answers it had never been in. The pages were the same pages. What changed was whether a machine could understand them.

That's the case for treating GEO as the way you run SEO now, not as the thing you add after.

See where your brand stands

Get your GEO Score across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude — where you're understood, where you're missing, and what to fix first.