Generative Engine Optimization with Authority System Builder for a Leading Healthcare Provider
Generative Engine Optimization with…
Situation
MediNova Health Services GmbH is a leading DACH provider of digital care and billing processes in outpatient healthcare. The company supports 1,200 practices, medical care centers, and regional care facilities and generated revenue of around EUR 48 million in 2024. Marketing had long focused on classic SEO, specialist content, and lead nurturing through webinars and product pages. Around 240 pieces of content were already online, including guides, use-case pages, and comparison articles.
Despite stable Google visibility, a new pattern emerged in 2024: decision-makers were increasingly researching through generative search systems and were more often influenced there by competitors or neutral comparison sources. Internal analyses showed that 64% of qualified demo requests now came from just six core pages. At the same time, brand presence in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot was inconsistent and difficult to control. The marketing team was therefore looking for a solution that would do more than measure reach — one that would systematically build the brand’s semantic authority.
Challenge
The core issue was not a lack of content, but a lack of machine-readable authority. Content was distributed across topics, only partially interconnected internally, and not consistently aligned to the question of which sources AI models would classify as trustworthy. For important purchase terms such as “practice software data protection,” “digital patient intake,” or “outpatient billing,” MediNova either did not appear in generative answers at all or only indirectly.
There were also two operational hurdles: first, content production was too slow to build consistent authority structures across multiple topic clusters at once. Second, the specialist department, compliance, and marketing had to coordinate every new piece of content separately. This led to long turnaround times, friction between the CMS and SEO tools, and a high dependence on individual measures. To move from SEO to GEO, the company needed a system that brought content, linking, structured data, and brand perception together in a single operating model.
Solution
MediNova chose to implement Zeno Visibility because the platform not only measures AI visibility, but actively builds the brand’s semantic authority. In the first step, the Research Engine was used to establish a baseline for 24 prioritized search and response patterns. In parallel, brand presence and the Semantic Authority Score were measured across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot. The result was clear: individual topic areas were visible, but the brand was only rarely output as a citable reference.
Based on this, the Authority System Builder was deployed for ten core keywords. For each keyword, a complete authority system was created with more than 100 semantically linked pieces of content: hub pages, blog articles, FAQs, comparison pages, case studies, definitions, social posts, and supporting snippets. In total, more than 1,050 content assets were generated and delivered as CMS-ready material in 15 export formats, including Gutenberg, Elementor, HTML, and JSON-LD.
Three elements were especially relevant for the healthcare sector: automated Schema.org generation, a clear internal linking logic, and the ability to publish content directly into WordPress and Contentful. Before publication, the team reviewed all medically and regulatorily relevant statements in a compact approval process. Zeno Visibility served as the infrastructure for research, structure, and scale; final subject-matter approval remained intentionally within the company. Within nine weeks, the first authority system was live, and after twelve weeks all ten topic clusters were in production.
Results
After 90 days, a measurable effect was visible on several levels. The Semantic Authority Score increased from an average of 34 to 69 points. In prioritized LLM queries, brand presence rose from 9% to 31%, measured as mentions or references in answers to defined purchase and comparison questions. At the same time, the share of organic non-brand clicks to the new hub and comparison pages increased by 38% versus the previous quarter.
The operational process also changed significantly: the average production time per subject-matter-approved piece of content fell from ten to three working days because structure, linking, and markup were already in place. Within six months, 27% more qualified demo requests were generated through topic clusters that came directly from the authority systems. Based on the actual influenced pipeline of around EUR 520,000 and a project cost of EUR 126,000, this resulted in an ROI of approximately 4.1:1 in the first half-year. For the team, the key takeaway was that visibility was not only being observed, but systematically built.
Lessons Learned
Summary
With Zeno Visibility, MediNova implemented the shift from classic SEO to Generative Engine Optimization in a structured way. The Authority System Builder delivered scalable, semantically connected content and made the brand visible in generative answer systems. The decisive factor was not the volume of individual content pieces, but the systematic build-up of authority across topic clusters, markup, and internal linking.