How much time does Firestarter Marketing require from a business owner?

About 15 minutes per month. Moxie, our AI agent, creates all your content and SEO updates automatically. You review and approve in one simple session, and we handle the rest.

Will the content actually sound like me, or will it sound like generic AI?

Moxie learns your specific brand voice during a short onboarding call. It studies your tone, your audience, and your goals — so the content it creates reads like you wrote it, not like a robot.

Does Firestarter Marketing help businesses show up in ChatGPT and AI search?

Yes. Firestarter includes GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — which optimizes your business to appear in AI-powered searches on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, not just traditional Google results.

How is Firestarter Marketing different from a traditional marketing agency?

Firestarter Marketing uses AI to deliver agency-quality marketing at a fraction of the cost, with no account managers, no long-term contracts, and no agency markup. You get results in 48 hours, not months.

What kinds of businesses does Firestarter Marketing work with?

Firestarter Marketing is built for local service businesses — HVAC, salons, wellness studios, home services, and similar small businesses that need consistent marketing but don't have time to do it themselves.

What does Firestarter Marketing cost?

Plans start at $199 for self-service. Managed plans begin at $499/month (Get Found), with options up to $1,500/month (Own Your Area) and $2,000/month (Market Domination) for full-service marketing operations.

What is a Get Seen Audit?

A free audit that shows you exactly where your business is — and isn't — showing up online. It covers Google visibility, AI search presence, and competitor benchmarking. No credit card required. Results delivered in 48 hours.

Search Strategy

GEO vs. SEO: What's the Difference

SEO gets you found on Google. GEO gets you *recommended* by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Here’s the difference between GEO and SEO, and why treating them as separate strategies is already costing you customers.

SEO is the practice of ranking in traditional search engines like Google

Let’s kill the confusion in one sentence: SEO is the practice of ranking in traditional search engines like Google; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of getting cited and recommended by AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. GEO is not replacing SEO. It’s a second, faster-growing channel that runs on some of the same fundamentals and a few completely different ones. If you’ve been Googling “GEO vs SEO” trying to figure out whether to panic, drop everything, or ignore it, here’s the annoying truth: you need both, and most local businesses have neither dialed in. That’s the gap we built Firestarter to close.

SEO vs. GEO

The Difference Between SEO and GEO

SEO helps you earn visibility in search results. GEO helps you become the answer when customers turn to AI.

	SEO	GEO
Full name	Search Engine Optimization	Generative Engine Optimization
Goal	Rank on the search results page	Get named as the answer inside an AI response
Where it shows up	Google, Bing search results	ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot
What wins	Keywords, backlinks, page speed, reviews, local citations	Clear, quotable facts; structured data; being mentioned across multiple trusted sources
How you measure it	Rankings, organic traffic, clicks	Share of AI answers you're mentioned in, referral traffic from AI tools
Timeline	Weeks to months	Can shift in days as models re-crawl and re-train on fresh content
Still matters in 2026?	Yes, it's the foundation GEO is built on	Yes, and growing faster than traditional search for many query types

Search Visibility

What SEO Actually Does

SEO is everything that makes Google trust your website enough to put it in front of people: your Google Business Profile, on-page keywords, site speed, backlinks, and reviews. It’s been the rulebook for online visibility for 25 years, and it still works. If your site isn’t optimized for SEO, GEO won’t save you, because AI engines still lean on well-established, well-linked, well-reviewed sites as trustworthy sources.

AI Visibility

What GEO Actually Does

GEO is optimizing for a different kind of reader: an AI model deciding who to recommend. When someone asks ChatGPT “who’s a good plumber near me” or Perplexity “best chiropractor in Parker CO,” the AI isn’t scanning a ranked list of ten blue links. It’s synthesizing an answer from whatever sources it trusts most, and naming names. Winning that citation means:

– Being mentioned consistently, by name, across your own site, Google Business Profile, review platforms, and third-party directories

– Structuring your content so AI can lift a clean, accurate answer out of it (schema markup, FAQ formatting, direct language instead of marketing fluff)

– Having enough consistent, verifiable information about your business floating around the internet that an AI model has no reason to doubt it

This is the difference between generative engine optimization and SEO in practice: SEO earns a ranking position, GEO earns a mention.

SEO + GEO

Is GEO Replacing SEO?

No, and anyone telling you to abandon SEO for GEO is selling you something. GEO is additive. AI engines still pull heavily from sources that already rank well and look credible in traditional search, which means your SEO foundation is what makes you *eligible* to be cited by AI in the first place. Think of it this way: SEO gets your name on the guest list. GEO gets you the mic. Skip the guest list and it doesn’t matter how good your speech is.

What is changing fast:

Where people start their search. A growing share of local customers now ask an AI assistant instead of typing into Google first. If you’re only playing the SEO game, you’re invisible in that conversation, even if you rank #1 on Google for the same query.

Act Now

Who Needs to Care About This Right Now

If you’re a local service business, plumber, HVAC company, chiropractor, salon, real estate agent, landscaper, this isn’t a someday problem. Your customers are already asking AI tools for recommendations in your category. The businesses showing up in those answers today are the ones who’ll still be getting the calls in two years. The ones who aren’t optimized for GEO are watching the same volume of demand exist, just routed to a competitor.

Our Approach

The Firestarter Take

Most agencies bolt GEO onto an existing SEO retainer as a pricey add-on nobody explains well. We built Moxie to treat GEO and SEO as one system from day one, because that’s how the AI engines already treat your business: as one entity that either has consistent, trustworthy signals everywhere, or doesn’t. Plans start at $199/mo self-service, with full-service management from $750/mo. Run the free AI visibility audit and see, in about 48 hours, exactly where you show up (and where you don’t) across Google and every major AI engine.

FAQ

Common questions

What's the difference between GEO and SEO?

SEO optimizes your website to rank in traditional search engines like Google. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) optimizes your online presence to get mentioned and recommended inside AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. SEO earns you a ranking; GEO earns you a citation.

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. GEO builds on top of SEO fundamentals, it doesn’t replace them. AI engines still favor businesses with strong traditional search signals (reviews, backlinks, site trust). You need both working together, not one instead of the other.

What does generative engine optimization mean?

Generative Engine Optimization means structuring your business’s online information, website copy, reviews, directory listings, and schema markup, so that AI models can confidently and accurately recommend you when someone asks a question in your category.

How do I know if my business shows up in AI search results?

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity a question a customer would realistically ask (e.g., “best HVAC company in [your city]”) and see if you’re named. Most businesses aren’t, even ones that rank well on Google. Firestarter’s free AI visibility audit checks this across every major AI engine in about 48 hours.

Do I need a separate strategy for GEO and SEO?

No, and you shouldn’t want one. Treating them separately usually means paying twice and getting inconsistent messaging across channels. The strongest approach optimizes both from the same content and data foundation.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Traditional SEO can take weeks to months to move rankings. GEO can shift faster, sometimes within days, as AI models re-crawl the web and update their training and retrieval data, which is why fresh, consistent, well-structured content matters even more for GEO than it did for SEO alone.

Ready to Get Found, Chosen, and Recommended?

See where your business stands in Google and AI search—and find the opportunities you’re missing.