Skip to main content

AI Search Optimization

Get found in Google. Get cited by ChatGPT.

Search is splitting in two: traditional engines and AI answer engines. Most agencies optimize for one and hope. I optimize for both, so your brand shows up in Google rankings and gets cited when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews answer questions in your market. I built a free audit tool that measures exactly this.

The Problem

A growing share of your buyers never see a search results page

When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity which product or consultant to choose, the answer is synthesized from sites those systems can read, understand, and trust. If your site is invisible to AI crawlers, has no structured data, and buries answers under marketing copy, you are not losing rankings. You are absent from the conversation entirely.

Traditional SEO still matters; Google still drives most commercial traffic. But the brands compounding an advantage right now are the ones treating AI visibility as a discipline: crawler access, schema depth, answer-first content, entity authority, and llms.txt as supporting signal.

This is not theory for me. I run these exact systems on this site, publish the methodology, and built the audit tool that scores any site on all 40 signals.

How I Work

Both halves of modern search, one system

  1. 1

    Audit

    Full technical and content baseline across SEO, AEO, and GEO: crawler access, schema, content structure, entity signals, and where you stand against competitors.

  2. 2

    Fix the foundation

    Technical SEO, robots.txt AI-crawler policy, llms.txt, JSON-LD schema coverage, canonicals, sitemaps, and Core Web Vitals. The machine-readable layer.

  3. 3

    Restructure content

    Answer-first pages that both Google and answer engines can lift: FAQ schema that matches visible content, citable proof points, and clean heading hierarchy.

  4. 4

    Build authority

    Entity and third-party signals that make AI systems want to cite you: consistent brand data, sameAs coverage, and content patterns engines prefer.

Proof

Proof from the field: a local service business now ranking top 3 with new customers arriving from ChatGPT recommendations, and a rebuild that scores 100/95/90 on the same public audit tool you can run right now.

Local Services / Home Services

Desert Rose Pool Care: Top 3 rankings, answer boxes, and customers arriving from ChatGPT

Desert Rose Pool Care is a Phoenix-area pool service company with 20+ years in business and a WordPress template site that was not bringing in new customers. Local search was the whole game, and they were losing it.

What I did: rebuilt the site as a fully custom build, researched what locals were actually searching for, and found service gaps competitors ignored, like pool care for short-term rental properties. I built differentiation landing pages for each gap and ran Google Ads as a bridge while SEO, AEO, and GEO matured; after about three months the ads came off.

Today they rank in the top 3 for many target searches, appear in Google answer boxes, and have signed new customers who said ChatGPT recommended them.

Top 3
Google rankings across many target local searches
3 mo
Google Ads runway before organic took over
$0
Ad spend today; campaigns retired
ChatGPT
Cited by new customers as how they found the company

Professional Services / Custom Web Build

FoundedByZ: from a Wix template to a 100-point SEO score on custom Next.js

foundedbyz.com is a keynote speaking and sales education consulting practice. The founder had a Wix template site that looked generic, had no scheduling path for prospects, and scored poorly across SEO, AEO, and GEO. I scrapped it and built a fully custom Next.js site with a hand-crafted design system, migrated hosting to Vercel, and eliminated her monthly platform cost.

What I did: rebuilt the site from the ground up with dedicated pages for her methodology, services, speaking, blog, and testimonials. Replaced a raw mailto CTA with a segmented contact form and Cal.com scheduling. Completed a full technical pass: seven JSON-LD schema types, canonicals, sitemap, AI-crawler-ready robots.txt, and llms.txt.

100
SEO Score (from 45)
95
AEO Score (from 10)
90
GEO Score (from 25)
$0
Monthly Platform Cost (was paying for Wix)
All case studies →

FAQ

Questions buyers actually ask

What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?

Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your website so AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Gemini can find, understand, and cite your content when answering user questions. Unlike traditional SEO, which targets rankings on a results page, AEO targets being the source an AI answer trusts.

What is the difference between SEO and AEO?

SEO optimizes for traditional search engine rankings on Google and Bing. AEO optimizes for AI answer engines. Both are essential: SEO drives organic traffic today, while AEO determines whether your brand appears when AI tools answer questions in your space. The right strategy runs both from one content and technical foundation.

How do I get my website to show up in ChatGPT answers?

Your site needs AI crawler access (robots.txt permitting GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot), structured data that machines can parse, answer-first content written to be lifted, and an llms.txt file summarizing what your business does. Then the slower work: entity authority and third-party signals that make you worth citing. I implement all of it.

What is llms.txt and does my site need one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file, similar in spirit to robots.txt, that gives AI language models a structured summary of your site, services, and key pages. Google has said it does not use llms.txt, so treat it as a supporting signal for other AI systems rather than the core strategy. It costs little to implement and most sites still do not have one.

How do I know if any of this is working?

Start with a baseline: run my free audit for instant SEO, AEO, and GEO scores. From there the measurable signals are AI crawler activity in your logs, appearance in AI answers for your key commercial questions, schema validity, and the traditional organic metrics you already track. I set up the measurement alongside the optimization.

Find out where you stand in 30 seconds

Run the free audit for instant SEO, AEO, and GEO scores, then book a call to talk through what the results mean for your business.

Run Your Free AuditBook a Discovery Call