On the NoRobots podcast, Kateryna Vakulenko, founder and CEO of SOUP Agency in Australia, explains what a new brand needs in place before ChatGPT and other AI platforms will recommend it: a site AI can read, content that answers real questions, genuine reviews, and a clear view of where AI is pulling its answers from.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
Where should a new brand start with GEO?
Vlad opened with a practical scenario. Say you’ve just launched a coffee shop or a clothing brand. What are the first things to do if you want ChatGPT and other AI platforms to cite you and send you sales?
Kateryna’s answer starts with the technical side. Before anything else, make sure AI can actually access and read your website. Without that, she says, it’s hard for anything else you do to have an impact.
Next comes content. The site needs pages that answer the questions people type into tools like ChatGPT: size information, product benefits, use cases and reviews.
Reviews matter on their own too, whether they live on your website or elsewhere. Where it fits the business, she also recommends working with cited sources and publications.
Can you use AI-generated content?
Yes. According to Kateryna, neither Google nor AI platforms penalize content just because AI wrote it. The condition is that the content is unique, fits the brand’s tone and carries the right information.
You don’t necessarily need a copywriter to get there. Where a copywriter helps is in checking that the tone of voice and the facts are right, because what you put into AI is what you get out. Her preferred setup is AI assisting a copywriter who then polishes the result. In her words, that’s “the best mix of both worlds.”
Content vs backlinks: what matters more now?
In classic SEO, backlinks were the main lever. Vlad asked whether that’s still true for AI search.
Kateryna says there’s no universal rule yet. In the research SOUP has done on the brands it works with, it depends on the category. Very often, AI uses the brand’s own website for details and specs that aren’t easy to find elsewhere on the web. In other cases, it leans on third-party sites, especially review sites and category listings. For some brands, Reddit gets cited more than anything else.
Her advice is a holistic strategy built around where AI is pulling its answers from for your category right now.
Which external sources should you target?
Vlad asked what a brand without many connections can use instead of building lots of dofollow links: reviews, Reddit, listing sites or press releases.
Again, it depends on the category. What works for an e-commerce store can be very different from what works for a SaaS app or a B2B company. So Kateryna recommends starting with research inside the AI tools themselves:
- Run the queries your customers are likely to search.
- Look at which sources the AI cites for those queries.
- Work from there, case by case.
If the cited sources are listing directories, you can usually just set up a profile. If they’re blogs, see whether you can create a similar blog yourself, or contact the blog’s admin and ask to be featured.
Should you do GEO yourself or hire an agency?
For a brand on a tight budget, Kateryna believes a lot can be done in-house now, especially with AI’s help. You can write the content, do some of the outreach and make sure you’re collecting reviews.
An agency brings two things: technical expertise, and insights from having done this for other brands that you won’t find online or pick up without working on it day to day. If you only bring in an agency for one thing, she’d make it the technical side, so the website is sound and can be crawled by AI agents.
How do you track AI visibility?
Citation tracking tools
Tools like Peec and Semrush can track specific queries and the AI responses to them. Kateryna finds them useful but limited. There are thousands, if not millions, of ways people phrase their searches, especially for brands with a large range of products. So these tools only ever see a small slice of the whole picture.
GA4 and Google Search Console
In Google Analytics 4, you can now set up AI as a traffic source and see visits coming from AI platforms. That’s the number she checks more often than citations.
Google Search Console has also added a limited ability to track AI Overviews, which works as a rough proxy. She expects ChatGPT and other platforms to offer something similar to Search Console eventually. For now, the options are third-party tools and GA4.
The simplest method: ask
Vlad pointed out that many people find a brand in ChatGPT or Claude, copy the name into Google and click through from there. In analytics, that visit looks like ordinary search.
Kateryna sees the same at SOUP. When new leads are asked where they heard about the agency, they often say ChatGPT or AI. On SOUP’s side, the same leads show up as organic search, direct traffic or even email. If you can, ask your customers where they found you. It’s one of the best proxies there is.
Being cited isn’t the same as winning
Kateryna warns against reading too much into citation counts. Brands track their citations and think they’re doing great, but under the hood the mentions may be negative, or the brand may appear low in the answer. If the AI’s recommendation sends the traffic to a competitor, the citation brings no commercial benefit.
That’s why she keeps the focus as close as possible to the end goal: sales or leads.
What if ChatGPT only shows one option?
Vlad noticed that AI answers are much more compressed than Google’s first page. Sometimes there’s only one main recommendation. Does that make first place the only one that counts?
Kateryna points out that AI often does give comparisons. When it doesn’t, it’s usually because the search is filtered tightly to what that user needs. That leads her to two points.
First, your website should have content that gives the right information and effectively qualifies users for you. If AI recommends you to someone you’re not relevant for, they won’t convert, so there’s little point in being cited for that query.
Second, if a query is relevant to you and you’re not among the options, find out why. Why did AI pick the other brand? You can ask the AI that question directly, then use the answer to improve your website, your reviews and the rest.
Do fake reviews and bought Reddit threads work?
Both Google and ChatGPT prohibit deceptive practices. Kateryna says they might work at first in some cases, but overall they don’t, because AI and Google are both smart. She recommends building on genuine content, genuine backlinks and genuine stories.
She draws on SEO’s own history here. Black hat tactics used to work, until major Google updates penalized the sites using them. After some of those updates, she saw many sites penalized for duplicate content and poor user experience. Even if a shortcut works today, she expects it to catch up with you eventually.
Can a small brand compete with a big one in AI search?
Yes, Kateryna says. A small brand can compete even against a well-known one with lots of backlinks and press mentions. Her approach is to focus on content and to localize it. She gives an example from her own market: if your product suits the Australian climate or meets a specific local need, say so on your website. Add complete product information, and work on local reviews and citations.
The goal, she says, isn’t visibility to everyone. It’s visibility to the customers in your target audience.
How SOUP structures a GEO engagement
Work usually starts with an audit of where the website is strong and where it needs improvement. From there, SOUP puts together a three- to six-month plan.
The technical audit comes first, because it’s the foundation for everything else. Kateryna estimates that around 80% of the best practices for AI visibility are what an agency would do for SEO anyway. The order is:
- Make sure the website is crawlable.
- Work on content and on-page experience. Many brands have content that neither AI nor Google can crawl, so that gets fixed.
- Build third-party citations and reviews.
Vlad asked whether the approach changes between large and small companies. SOUP has launched multiple consumer tech brands in Australia. Kateryna says the framework is the same for big and small brands. What varies is the industry: a B2B manufacturing client needs different things from a B2C beauty brand.
Do you need to be on Amazon or Shopify?
Marketplaces like Amazon can be a good extra channel for brand awareness, if they fit the brand’s commercial setup and marketing goals. But you don’t need to be on one to get cited by AI. If your products are tagged correctly and your product feed is accessible to AI engines, you can still get cited. Kateryna would decide on marketplaces from a broader marketing perspective, not for AI visibility alone.
The same applies to the platform. Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom build all work. Shopify has feed functionality built in, which helps. With a custom website, she says, it isn’t a problem at all as long as the feeds are accessible.
About Kateryna Vakulenko and SOUP Agency
SOUP is a digital marketing agency working across SEO, paid search, paid social, content production and email marketing. Some clients come to the team for one specific service. For others, SOUP acts as an extension of their in-house marketing team.
Besides SEO and GEO, SOUP also helps with go-to-market strategy for brands launching into a new market, and with broader execution of a marketing plan.
FAQ
Who is Kateryna Vakulenko?
Kateryna Vakulenko is the founder and CEO of SOUP Agency, a digital marketing agency in Australia. She works on SEO, GEO and paid campaigns for e-commerce and B2B clients and has launched multiple consumer tech brands in the Australian market.
What should a new brand do first to get cited by ChatGPT?
Make sure AI can access and read the website. Then add content that answers customer questions, such as size information, product benefits and use cases, and collect genuine reviews.
Is AI-generated content penalized?
No, according to Kateryna. It needs to be unique, match the brand’s tone of voice and contain the right information. AI plus a copywriter who polishes the result works best.
How can you measure traffic from ChatGPT?
Set up AI as a traffic source in GA4, use tools like Peec or Semrush for specific queries, check AI Overviews data in Google Search Console, and ask customers where they heard about you.
Does a brand need to be on Amazon to be cited by AI?
No. Correctly tagged products and a product feed that AI engines can access are enough. Marketplaces are a broader marketing decision.
How much of GEO is just SEO?
Kateryna estimates about 80% of what brands do for AI visibility is what they would do for SEO anyway, starting with a crawlable website.
Where to find Kateryna Vakulenko
Learn more about SOUP Agency and send an inquiry at soupagency.com.au, and someone from the team will get back to you. You can also find SOUP Agency on NoRobots.
Watch the full interview: Make ChatGPT Recommend Your Brand in 2026
Looking for a team that does SEO and GEO the right way? Browse the marketing and digital agencies listed on NoRobots.
