花火Hanabi Studios

Web Design · GEO · Strategy

We build websites
for how people
search today.

Search has fundamentally changed. AI systems now answer questions directly — no links, no rankings. We design and build websites structured for this new era of generative discovery.

See our approachView work →
2018
Founded
90+
Core Web Vitals
2x
Organic Traffic

The Shift

The rules of
search changed.

For twenty years, SEO meant earning a spot on page one of a list of links. Today, AI platforms — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews — synthesize answers from the web and present them directly. Users get a response. Your website is either a trusted source in that response, or it doesn't exist.

Traditional SEO

  • Compete for ranked positions on a results page
  • Optimize keywords for crawler indexing
  • Build backlinks to signal domain authority
  • Write for click-through rate on blue links
  • Win traffic. Lose the answer.

Generative Engine Optimization

  • Become a cited source inside AI-generated answers
  • Structure content for semantic comprehension
  • Build topical depth and entity clarity
  • Write to be quoted, not just found
  • Win the answer. Before the click.

Services

What we do

Every project starts with the same question: where do you need to be seen, and by whom?

01

GEO Architecture

We structure your site so AI systems can comprehend, trust, and cite it. Entity disambiguation, semantic markup, topical authority mapping — built into the foundation from day one.

02

Web Design & Build

Precise, performant, and purposeful. Every detail is considered — typography, layout, interaction — and every line of code is clean. No bloat, no shortcuts.

03

Content Infrastructure

AI rewards depth and clarity over volume. We design content systems that demonstrate genuine expertise and are structured to be cited inside generative responses.

04

AI Visibility Audit

We test your current presence across major AI platforms, identify exactly where you're missing, and deliver a clear roadmap with prioritized recommendations.

Why Hanabi

Precision is
the spectacle.

Hanabi — 花火, "flower fire" — is the Japanese art of fireworks. It is not chaotic. Each burst is composed with extraordinary care: the specific metals that produce exact colors, the timed shells, the deliberate spacing between blooms. The beauty emerges from discipline.

We apply the same philosophy to every project. Not decoration, but structure. In the age of generative search, the most visible websites aren't the loudest — they're the clearest.

花火

Hanabi

Flower fire — beauty through composition

間

Ma

The power of meaningful space

刹那

Setsuna

The perfect, fleeting moment

丁寧

Teinei

Careful, attentive craft

Selected Work

Recent Projects

01

Insure It Forward

Health Insurance Agency

Website Overhaul/Complete SEO/GEO Optimization.

Read case study →02

Midwest Animal Shelter

Nonprofit · Animal Welfare

A custom CMS built to manage adoptable pets, events, and donations.

Read case study →03

Recipe Spinner

Web App

An interactive app that helps home cooks find recipes from what they already have.

Read case study →

FAQs

Questions, answered

Generative Engine Optimization structures a website so AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews can understand, trust, and cite it directly in their answers. Traditional SEO competes for position on a results page; GEO competes to be the actual source an AI quotes.

Most builds run 1–10 weeks depending on scope. Recipe Spinner, a Laravel and React web app, took about a week to build; Midwest Animal Shelter's full SaaS platform — combining a public adoption site with a complete administrative backend for intake, kennels, donations, and medical records — took about four weeks. We scope a specific timeline once we understand your goals.

Both. This site is itself an example — hanabistudios.com was rebuilt from the ground up specifically for GEO, restructuring existing content around AI-readability rather than starting over conceptually. We also build new platforms from scratch, like Midwest Animal Shelter's adoption and administration system.

It depends on the goal. For Midwest Animal Shelter, success meant processing adoption applications roughly 3× faster than their previous system. For a marketing site, it means measurable Core Web Vitals scores and organic traffic growth. We define the specific metric with each client before the project starts, rather than applying one generic measure to every build.

We take on projects across a wide range of industries rather than specializing in one — our approach applies to any business that depends on being found and trusted online.

Start a project

Ready to be cited,
not buried?

We take on a small number of clients each year - the ones we can make something extraordinary with. Tell us about your project.

Email

solutions@hanabistudios.com

Based in

Charlotte NC · Concord NC · Remote