AI search optimization, so assistants can find and cite you

AI search optimization is the work of getting your business named and cited inside AI-generated answers, not just listed in blue links. People now ask an assistant "who should I hire for this?" and get a short answer with a handful of sources. If your site isn't one of those sources, you're not in the conversation.

You'll also hear it called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO). The labels overlap. Our guide to what generative engine optimization is covers the definition, and GEO vs SEO vs AEO explains where the terms differ. What matters for you is the outcome: when someone asks an AI tool about the thing you sell, your business is part of the answer.

Every engagement covers seven parts, from technical access to monthly tracking:

• AI visibility audit. We ask the main assistants the questions your buyers ask and record who gets named today, you or someone else, then audit your site against our AI search optimization checklist.
• Crawler access. We check that your robots.txt and hosting don't block the crawlers AI tools use. Our guide to robots.txt for AI crawlers shows what we look for.
• llms.txt. A plain-language map of your most important pages, written for AI tools.
• Structured data. Organization, Service, FAQ and article markup, so machines can tell who you are and what each page covers. See structured data for AI search.
• Answer-ready content. We rewrite key pages so the answer comes first under every heading, in sentences that make sense when quoted alone. That's the format assistants lift from. More in how to get cited by ChatGPT and optimizing for Google AI Overviews.
• Entity and citation work. Consistent business details across the web and mentions on sites assistants already trust, so your brand reads as one clear entity.
• Tracking and reporting. A monthly report on mentions, citations and AI-referred visits.

Because our team also shoots video and designs pages in-house, we can make the assets worth citing, such as explainers, comparison pages and original visuals, instead of only telling you to make them.

We measure AI search visibility by running a fixed set of buyer questions through the main assistants every month and logging whether you're mentioned, cited with a link, or missing. Using the same questions each month means a change in the results reflects a real change, not a reworded prompt.

Alongside the prompt tracking, we report:

• Share of answers: how often you're named across the question set, compared with last month.
• Citations: which of your pages get linked as sources, so we know which formats are working.
• AI-referred traffic: visits from AI tools in your analytics, and what those visitors do next.
• Technical health: crawler access, schema errors and indexing.

The metrics behind this are in our guide to AI visibility metrics and KPIs. The method is in how to track AI mentions, and the report layout is our AI search reporting template. You get the same view we work from.

AI search optimization sits on top of SEO rather than replacing it. Google's own guidance on AI features and your website (opens in new tab) says the same SEO best practices still apply to AI Overviews: pages need to be crawlable, indexable and genuinely helpful.

So if your site has technical problems or thin pages, those come first. That's where our SEO services come in. Once the foundations are sound, AI search work adds the layer that's specific to being quoted: answer-first formatting, entity consistency and tracking inside AI tools.

Site structure carries over too. For Techy, we built a location page framework that let a franchise network add local pages without creating duplicate content. That kind of clean, consistent structure is what both search engines and AI tools reward. If your site needs rebuilding to get there, our web team handles it in-house.

An engagement runs in four stages: audit, fixes, content, then monthly reporting.

1. Audit. We benchmark your current AI visibility on a set of buyer questions and audit your site's technical setup, structured data and content. You get a prioritized list, not a hundred-item spreadsheet.
2. Fixes. We clear the blockers first: crawler access, llms.txt, schema, indexing and business details that don't match across the web.
3. Content. We rewrite your key pages answer-first and build the new pages and assets your buyers' questions call for.
4. Monthly reporting. We rerun the question set, report on mentions, citations and AI-referred traffic, and pick the next month's priorities from what moved.

Throughout, you know what's being changed on your site and why.

AI visibility tends to build on the same timeline as classic SEO, which we break down in how long SEO takes to work.

AI search optimization is quoted per engagement after the audit, because the cost depends on your site's current state, how much content needs building and how competitive your market is. We don't publish a price because a figure that ignores those things wouldn't be honest.

Things that shape the quote:

• Technical starting point. A site with clean structure and schema needs far less work than one with crawler blocks and duplicate pages.
• Content volume. How many pages need rewriting and how many new ones your buyers' questions call for.
• Ongoing scope. Whether you want monthly tracking and content after the initial fixes.

Tell us about your site and the questions you want to be the answer to, and we'll come back with a scope and a quote.

We've written the playbook publicly. Our AI search guides cover crawler access, schema, citations, tracking and reporting step by step. You can read exactly how we think before you talk to us, and you're welcome to do the work yourself with them.

If you'd rather have it done for you, the same team that wrote those guides runs the work, alongside in-house video, design and web development. That means the fixes and the content get made without handing you a to-do list for three other vendors.

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