A founder's build-in-public breakdown of the exact SEO and GEO playbook I'm running to rank my studio &7 in Singapore and get cited by AI. The dual-brand setup, the content plan, and the off-site work.
Quick Answer
I run &7, an interactive and immersive web studio in Singapore, and I'm building its search and AI visibility in public. The playbook has four moving parts: a dual brand (the studio ranks for craft, I rank for growth), a content plan that finally covers what the studio actually does, on-page Singapore signals on the pages that compete for local intent, and an off-site cadence on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. The reason for the split is simple. On-page work sets the floor. Off-site mentions set the ceiling, especially for AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity that lean on what other people say about you, not just what your own site says. Here is exactly what I'm doing and why.
Why I'm writing this at all
Most SEO content is written by people selling SEO to people who will never check the work. I wanted the opposite. This is the studio I actually run, the rankings I'm actually chasing, and the moves I'm actually making, written down as I go.
If you run a business in Singapore and you have ever wondered whether the SEO advice you are paying for is real, this section is for you. I'm not going to teach you to write meta tags. I'm going to show you the decisions that move the needle and the ones that just look busy.
Part one: the dual brand
The first decision was the hardest, and it has nothing to do with keywords.
&7 is a studio. Its voice is about craft: 3D, motion, the work itself. That voice is great for a creative director deciding who to hire. It is the wrong voice for a business owner asking "will this grow my company?"
So I split it. The studio keeps its voice and ranks for what it builds. I write under my own name, Samuel Wang, about growing the business: SEO, AI search, automation, conversion. Two brands, one company. The studio is the proof. I'm the person you follow to watch it happen.
The practical version: I write under my own name, in my voice, and every article links back to the studio that does the work. You are reading the first one.
Part two: the content the studio was missing
Here is an uncomfortable thing I found auditing my own site. The studio is an immersive web studio, and the blog had dozens of posts about business software and zero about immersive web design. The thing we are best at had no content behind it.
That is a topical authority hole, and it is the single biggest fix. So the studio is now publishing the cluster it should have had all along, starting with the two posts I'd point any prospective client to first:
- What an immersive website is and when a brand needs one, for the person who has heard the term and wants to know if they need it.
- What 3D web design actually costs in Singapore, for the person who has decided they want it and needs to budget.
The lesson for any business: rank for what you do, not just for what is easy to write. The easy posts pull traffic that never buys. The posts about your actual craft pull the people who do.
Part three: on-page Singapore signals, where they belong
I'm chasing Singapore intent, but not everywhere. There is a rule I follow: the brand pages stay global, and only the service pages carry Singapore in the title, the meta, and the structured data.
Why the split? Because someone searching "interactive web design Singapore" is a buyer with local intent, and the service page should answer that query directly. But the homepage and the brand story should not read like a local listing. They should read like a studio that works anywhere. Geography goes where the buyer is searching for it, and stays out of where it would cheapen the brand.
This is the kind of decision that costs nothing and that most sites get wrong by either ignoring local signals entirely or stuffing the city name into every headline.
Part four: getting cited by AI, not just ranked by Google
This is the part most Singapore businesses are not thinking about yet, and it is where I'm spending real attention.
Search is splitting in two. There is the blue-links Google we know, and there is the answer you get from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI overviews. Getting ranked and getting cited are not the same job.
On the site side, the floor is technical and I have it covered: the content is readable by AI crawlers, there is an llms.txt file that tells those engines what the studio is and does, and every page states its answer in plain language up front so a model can lift it cleanly. The studio also has a dedicated SEO and GEO service because this is now a real part of the work we do for clients.
But here is the thing the technical work cannot do. AI engines weigh what other people and platforms say about a brand far more heavily than what the brand says about itself. You cannot schema your way to a citation. You earn it by being mentioned, in public, by real accounts, over time.
Which is why the last part of the playbook is not on the site at all.
Part five: the off-site cadence
I committed to three channels I will actually keep up: LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. LinkedIn is where the business-owner audience is, so that gets the weekly growth post. X is for thinking out loud and sharing what the studio is building. Instagram is for the visual side, the actual 3D and motion work, which is the easiest thing we have to prove without words.
The honest tradeoff: the platforms with the strongest pull on AI citations are the ones I did not pick, like Reddit and YouTube. I chose reach and consistency over chasing the absolute ceiling, because a cadence I can sustain beats a perfect plan I abandon in a month. I may add the others later. For now, three channels, every week, each one linking back here.
That is the whole rule of off-site work, and almost nobody follows it: pick what you will actually do, and do it long enough to matter.
What I'll report back
I'm going to keep writing these as the numbers come in: what ranks, what gets cited, what converts, and what was a waste of time. No invented wins. If something flops, I'll say so here.
If you want the studio side of any of this built for you, that is literally the business. Start with the SEO and GEO service, or just start a conversation.
Frequently asked questions
Why split a studio into two brands instead of one?
Because the audiences are different. A studio's craft voice speaks to the people hiring for design taste, while a founder's growth voice speaks to business owners deciding if the work will grow their company. Splitting them lets each rank for its own audience, and the personal brand sends authority and trust back to the studio that does the work.
Is getting cited by AI different from ranking on Google?
Yes. Google ranking is largely about your own pages and links. AI citation, in tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, leans heavily on what other platforms and people say about your brand. You can earn rankings with on-page work alone, but citations require an off-site presence that on-page work cannot fake.
Do I need Singapore in every page title to rank locally?
No, and you should not. Put Singapore on the pages that answer local buyer intent, like service pages, where someone is literally searching "web design Singapore." Keep it off your brand and homepage so the studio still reads as one that works globally. Geography belongs where the buyer is searching for it.
How often should I post to build off-site authority?
Often enough to be consistent on channels you will actually sustain, which matters more than chasing every platform. I post weekly on three channels and link each post back to my site. A modest cadence you keep for a year beats an ambitious plan you drop in a month.