Thursday Day 2-February 25

Bridging the Gap Between SEO and GEO: A Case Study in AI Search Monitoring and Optimization for Apartment Marketers

As AI-powered search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — starts influencing how renters discover and evaluate communities, most marketing teams are flying blind: they don't yet have a way to know if their brand is even showing up in AI-generated answers, let alone how it's being described. This session tells the real-world story of how Willow Bridge and ApartmentSEO partnered early to figure out what "visibility" means in an AI-mediated search world — what to track, how to interpret it, and how a marketing team can start building this into their existing reporting without waiting for the industry to standardize. Michelle Smith (Willow Bridge) and Martin Canchola (ApartmentSEO) will walk through hurdles first, what surprised them, and a practical framework any team can use to start monitoring and optimizing their own AI search presence today. 3 Key Takeaways:

• How to identify the handful of AI-search signals that actually correlate with leasing performance, so your team isn't guessing at what to track.
• A simple framework for auditing whether your brand/community is being surfaced — and accurately described — in AI-generated answers.
• How to talk to your team and leadership about GEO without overselling it — what's proven, what's early, and how to set realistic internal expectations.