When a 15 year old starts thinking about where to go after school, they’re increasingly asking AI before they ask anyone else. Research from the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom showed that around four in five teenagers who use the internet are already using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude. This matters because generative tools don’t behave like search engines. They don’t just return links. They summarise, recommend and repeat the sources they appear to trust. This is where GEO comes in: Generative Engine Optimisation. How generative AI tools find and reuse information so that what they say about your organisation is accurate and truthful. In PR we’ve always said reputation is built on consistency, and GEO works on the same idea. If your organisation wants to be represented accurately in AI answers, you’ve got to take care about what gets cited, what gets reused and what becomes the default version of the truth, not just what gets clicks and views. Here’s how to make that practical without a rebrand, new platform or an expensive campaign: Step one: Put together a list of questions people actually ask. Things like, “which college is best for catering near me?” “Can I do an apprenticeship if I fail English?” “Can I retake my A-levels at 22?” Or “what are T Levels really like?”. Run these prompts and make a note of who gets mentioned, which sources are named and what information keeps coming up. You’ll get a baseline as to where your organisation sits. Step two: Audit your footprint. Look at the domains that keep appearing in answers. Regulator pages, local authority hubs, sector press and major education publishers tend to show up repeatedly because they’re seen as reliable. Then be honest about where you appear in that ecosystem. Many providers have plenty of content on their own sites, but very little of it is referenced elsewhere. Much of it is written for marketing rather than as something another organisation would point to as evidence. Step three: Make parts of your website behave like reference points. This doesn’t mean building anything new or fancy, just choose a small number of pages that already exist and make them factual, dated and easy to cite. One clear page that sets out progression and destinations with a short note on how the figures are calculated. One plain English page that explains learner support, who it’s for and how to access it. One maintained page that lists apprenticeship employer partners. If someone outside your organisation could link to these pages with confidence, they’ll be far more likely to be reused in AI answers too. Step four: Make these pages easy to extract information from. Both AI systems and people reward clarity. Short summaries at the top, clear headings and bullet points help. A proper FAQ that mirrors real questions helps. Putting key information on web pages instead of hiding it in PDFs helps too. Keeping URLs stable (which means updating the content on the page each year, rather than creating a new page with a new address) and naming things consistently helps as well. None of this is glamorous, but all of it improves accuracy and usability. Step five: Get mentions in places people already trust. This is something comms teams know how to do, it just needs a different lens now. Partner pages that name you as the delivery provider. Employer announcements that link back to your apprenticeship and support pages. Local authority and careers sites that point people to your guidance. Sector round ups that reference your outcomes and approach. These mentions matter because they don’t read like self-promotion. They read like other people saying you’re part of the picture. Step six: Governance. If you publish outcomes, keep them up-to-date. If programme names change, make sure old links still go somewhere sensible. If you launch something new, give it one clear page with a date, a summary and a contact point. The easiest version of your story to find is the one that’s most likely to be repeated. With GEO, you don’t need to shout louder. You just need to make sure that the right information is what gets picked up and passed on.