AEO & GEO · included in Growth
Answer Engine Optimization. Be the named recommendation in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
AEO is the practice of making your business the one AI assistants cite when a homeowner asks for what you do. Five years ago this wasn't a discipline — “rank on Google” was the whole game. Today a meaningful share of trades-related searches happen inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI box, before anyone clicks a link. The plumber who appears in those answers gets the £800 call-out. The one who doesn't, doesn't.
I track and optimise for it alongside the broader local SEO retainer. Schema across every page, llms.txt at your root, AI-crawler directives, content structure for E-E-A-T, third-party mentions (the GEO side), and monthly tracking of which AI assistants cite you and which cite a competitor instead.
What the service delivers
Schema, llms.txt, third-party mentions, and the tracking that proves it's working
Schema.org markup across every page: FAQPage, HowTo, Organization, Person, Service, BreadcrumbList — all valid against schema.org and JSON-LD
llms.txt at your root, written to the llmstxt.org spec, updated when services or locations change
AI-crawler directives in robots.txt: explicit Allow / Block / Configured per bot (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, anthropic-ai, CCBot)
Content structure audit: factual claims, source citations, last-reviewed dates, author entities
E-E-A-T signals built: about page, credentials, contact, real author bio with byline and link-back to publisher
AI-visibility tracking across ChatGPT (with browsing), Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews — monthly snapshot showing where your business is and isn’t cited
Quarterly content review for freshness, accuracy, and structural updates that LLMs prefer
Competitive monitoring: which competitor domains are being cited in the AI box for your best keywords, and what to do about it
GEO: third-party mention building on trade-body directories, manufacturer dealer-locators, vertical review platforms and local press, with NAP matching your Google Business Profile exactly
GEO: citation-graph upkeep, because directories close and businesses move; mentions are reconciled so the graph stays clean
AEO and GEO are included in the Growth retainer (£497+/mo) along with the local SEO work they depend on. Not sold standalone.
How I run it
Audit, fix the foundations, maintain monthly
- Step 1. Audit. I crawl your site and the live AI assistants. Site-side I check every schema type, every FAQ / HowTo / Organization block, your existing llms.txt (if any), your robots.txt AI-crawler rules, and your content structure for E-E-A-T signals. AI-side I run the same headline queries a homeowner would use and log which surfaces cite your business, which cite a competitor, and which cite neither.
- Step 2. Fix the foundations. Schema across every page that warrants it. llms.txt at your root, written to the llmstxt.org spec. robots.txt directives for the major AI crawlers (allow / block / configured per bot, documented in-line). E-E-A-T signals — about page, credentials, contact, real author bio. These four together are 70% of the AEO work and most businesses are missing all of them.
- Step 3. Maintain monthly. New content goes out with schema from day one. Existing pages get reviewed quarterly for last-updated dates, source citations, factual claims. AI-crawler directives are adjusted when vendors change their user-agent strings (it happens — Anthropic and OpenAI have both done this in 2025 alone). Tracking tells us whether the work is moving the needle; the dashboard surfaces it.
What next
Get a free audit, see where you stand today
AEO is the practice of making your business the one AI assistants cite when someone asks for what you do. It's a discipline that overlaps with SEO but is distinct enough to deserve its own name. Where SEO optimizes for "rank on page 1", AEO optimizes for "be the named recommendation in the answer". The signals overlap (clear structure, factual claims, sources cited, schema) but the format is different (LLM-generated prose, not a SERP).
AEO is the tactical answer-engine work (schema, llms.txt, content structure, robots directives) that decides whether you appear in a specific AI answer today. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the strategic foundation: third-party mentions, citation-graph reach and training-corpus inclusion that decide whether the model knows your business exists at all. The terms are used loosely and overlap. The Growth retainer covers both in the same monthly engagement.
Yes, more than it applies to national e-commerce. AI assistants answering local-intent questions (ChatGPT with browsing, Perplexity, Gemini) pull heavily from local citation sources: Google Business Profile, review platforms, trade-body directories, local press and the data aggregators that feed them. A plumber with consistent NAP, plenty of reviews and solid trade-body citations already has most of what AI answers draw on. GEO is the work that makes those baseline signals compound into AI citations.
AEO and GEO are downstream of traditional SEO. The citation graph AI models weight is built from the same links, mentions and reputation signals Google has weighted for twenty years. A business with weak traditional SEO can't be rescued by AI optimisation; there's no foundation to compound. The local SEO retainer is the foundation. AEO and GEO get its value into AI answers.
Because a meaningful share of trades-related searches already happen in AI assistants. A homeowner at 9pm with a leaking boiler doesn't open Google. They open ChatGPT or Siri and ask "emergency plumber near me who does gas-safe work". The plumber who appears in that answer gets the £800 call-out. The plumber who doesn't, doesn't. Five years ago this wasn't the case. Three years from now it will be the majority of high-intent local queries.
Per-month: (1) Schema markup across your site — FAQPage on every service page, HowTo on tutorials, Organization / Person / Service on the about + contact pages, all valid against schema.org. (2) llms.txt at your root, curated and updated when services change. (3) AI-crawler directives in robots.txt (allow / block / configured per bot). (4) Content structure audit — factual claims, source citations, last-reviewed dates, author entities. (5) E-E-A-T signals — about page, credentials, contact, real author bio. (6) Third-party mention building: trade-body directories, manufacturer dealer-locators, local press. (7) AI-visibility tracking across ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini / Google AI Overviews, in your dashboard.
ChatGPT (with browsing), Perplexity (most-cited answer engine for trades in 2025), Google AI Overviews (the AI box above organic results), Gemini (Google's own LLM, surfaced through Workspace and Pixel), Apple Intelligence (via Applebot-Extended in robots.txt), and the broader training-corpus crawlers (GPTBot, anthropic-ai, CCBot, Common Crawl).
Yes. Rank tracking shows where you appear in the standard results. AI-visibility tracking shows whether AI assistants recommend your business at all, and who they recommend instead. Tracking surfaces the gap ("you're invisible on ChatGPT for emergency plumber queries"); the AEO and GEO work is the fix. Both are in the Growth retainer.
Two distinct answers. (1) For AI Overviews: measurable progress in 4-8 weeks once schema and content structure are live. (2) For ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini brand mentions, 2-4 months. The crawlers re-index on different cadences; LLM training-corpus inclusion happens on a much longer cycle. We measure progress monthly and surface it in the dashboard.
No. AEO and GEO only make sense alongside the local SEO they depend on: citations, GBP, reviews, content. Both are part of the £497+/mo Growth retainer.
Ready to see what you're working with?
The baseline audit already includes the AI-crawlability check: llms.txt presence + AI-crawler directives + a full SEO recovery sweep if you want the whole picture. Run it once, see where you stand, then we can talk about whether the AEO work is part of a Growth retainer or a one-shot.
A quick honest note.
Fees cover the work we do, not outcomes we don't control. Once a fee is paid, it's not refundable. The work begins immediately. Search engine rankings, third-party platform decisions, audience reception: those are outside anyone's control. What we control is doing the work, reviewing it personally, and showing you every step in the dashboard. Full terms.
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