SEO, GEO, and AEO

Search changed. Half your customers now ask a chatbot instead of typing a query. I build the content, the structure, and the data so you show up on all of it.

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20+ Local Businesses Built and Running Woodbury, MN Based One Owner, Start to Finish

Why Local Businesses Stay Invisible in Search

Getting found on Google, on the map, and inside the AI answers your customers now ask instead of typing.

Buried on Page Two

Ranking where local customers never look, for the searches that actually turn into jobs.

Invisible on the Map

Competitors filling the local pack while your Google Business Profile sits untouched.

Missing From AI Answers

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews naming your competitors when someone asks who to call.

A Site With Nothing to Cite

Thin pages that never answer the real questions, so there is nothing for an engine to quote.

Who This Is Right For, and Who It Is Not

Search work compounds. It is the wrong purchase if you need the phone to ring next week, and the right purchase if you want to stop renting every lead you get. I would rather tell you that up front than take a check and disappoint you in month three.

This is a good fit if

Established local service businesses with real customers, real reviews, and a service area you can name on a map. Plumbing, HVAC, restoration, auto, chiropractic, home services, professional services.
Owners who are tired of paying for every single lead through ads and want a channel that keeps working after the budget stops.
Businesses that serve multiple cities and currently have one page trying to rank for all of them.
Companies whose competitors are showing up in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers while they are not, and who want to understand why.
Owners willing to spend twenty minutes a month answering my questions about the jobs they actually run, because that is where quotable content comes from.

This is probably not for you if

Anyone who needs leads in the next two weeks. Search is a six to twelve month build. If the schedule is empty right now, start with Local Services Ads and Google Search ads, and layer search work on after.
Anyone shopping for guaranteed first page rankings, purchased links, or review shortcuts. I will not do it, and the businesses that do eventually get their Google Business Profile suspended.
National ecommerce, dropshipping, or any business with no physical service area. My entire method is built on local intent, and you would be paying me to learn your category on your dime.

What You Get

What You Actually Get

No vague retainer. Here is the concrete list of what gets built, published, and maintained when you hire me for search.

Full Visibility Audit and Baseline

I crawl the site, pull Search Console and Google Business Profile data, check indexing, and run your top service and city queries by hand to see who is actually winning. Everything gets baselined so we can prove movement later instead of arguing about it.

Google Business Profile Buildout and Management

Primary and secondary category selection, services and products filled out, service area defined, photos, hours, attributes, Q and A seeded, and posts on a set cadence. Categories alone are the single biggest map pack lever most local businesses have never touched.

Service and City Page Architecture

A real page for each service you sell and each city you actually serve, with content specific enough that a person in that town recognizes their own situation. No spun templates with the city name swapped, because Google and the AI engines both flatten that.

Schema and Structured Data

LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, Article, and Breadcrumb markup written by hand and validated, so machines read your business, your service area, and your answers without guessing. Schema does not rank you, it removes ambiguity about what you are.

AI Crawler Access and Technical Foundation

Robots and sitemap configuration that lets GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended through instead of silently blocking them, plus page speed, canonical, and indexing cleanup. I check this on every site because default Cloudflare settings block AI crawlers outright.

Published Content on a Fixed Cadence

Question shaped articles written from your actual jobs, your actual pricing logic, and your actual service area, published on a schedule rather than in bursts. This is the material that gets quoted back inside an AI answer, and thin pages have nothing to quote.

Review Signal and Reputation Work

Review generation wired into your CRM so requests go out automatically after a completed job, plus response coverage on what comes in. Review volume, recency, and the words customers use all feed both the map pack and what AI tools repeat about you.

Monthly Reporting You Can Read

Search Console queries and clicks, map pack visibility, calls and form fills from organic, and manual prompt testing across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews to see whether you get named. One page of what moved and what I am doing next, not a fifty tab dashboard export.

How I Actually Run Search Work

Baseline and Competitor Teardown

I find out exactly where you stand before touching anything.

I crawl the site, connect Search Console and Analytics, audit the Google Business Profile against the businesses currently in the map pack, and hand run your money queries plus the same questions inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. That gives us a dated starting point on rankings, map visibility, and whether AI tools name you at all. From you I need owner access to the Business Profile and Search Console, and one call to tell me which services actually make you money.

Technical and Crawler Access Cleanup

I fix everything blocking machines from reading and indexing the site.

Indexing errors, duplicate and thin pages, missing canonicals, broken internal links, page speed on mobile, sitemap accuracy, and robots rules get sorted first. This is also where I check AI crawler access, because a lot of hosts and CDN defaults block GPTBot and ClaudeBot without telling anyone, and a blocked crawler cannot cite you no matter how good the content is. Your part is small here, mostly DNS or hosting access if I do not already run the site.

Google Business Profile and Map Pack Work

I rebuild the profile that decides whether you show up in the three pack.

Category selection, service list, service area, business description, photos, hours, attributes, and seeded Q and A all get rewritten against what the current map pack winners are doing. Then review generation gets connected to your CRM so new reviews arrive steadily instead of in one suspicious batch. You will need to confirm your real service radius, hand over job photos, and let me set the automated review request to fire after a completed job.

Content Architecture and Publishing

I build the pages and articles that give search engines and AI something worth quoting.

Service pages, city pages, and question shaped articles get written and published in priority order, starting with the services that carry the most margin and the cities you most want to grow into. Every piece answers a specific question directly in the first paragraph, because that is the shape of content that gets pulled into an AI answer or a featured snippet. This step needs the most from you: twenty minutes a month telling me what customers actually ask, and a fact check pass before anything goes live.

Measure, Prompt Test, and Adjust

I track what moved, retest the AI engines, and reallocate effort every month.

Monthly I pull Search Console query and click data, check map pack position, count organic calls and form fills through the CRM, and rerun the same prompt set in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews to see if you are getting named yet. Pages that are ranking on page two get expanded, pages that went nowhere get rewritten or cut. You get a short written summary and a call, and the only thing I need back is a decision on where to push next.

Found First, However They Search.

SEARCH SURFACES COVERED: GOOGLE, MAPS, AND AI ENGINES

LOCAL

STRUCTURED CONTENT BUILT AROUND YOUR SERVICE AREA

PERSON WHO WRITES IT, SHIPS IT, AND WATCHES IT

Classic rankings, the local map pack, and the AI answers, worked at the same time.

Worth Understanding

How Local Search Actually Decides Who Shows Up

There is a lot of nonsense being sold under the AI search banner right now. Here is what actually drives local visibility in 2026, including the parts that are not flattering to my own industry.

The map pack runs on three things, and only two are in your control

Google ranks the local three pack on proximity, relevance, and prominence. Proximity is where the searcher is standing when they search, and you cannot buy your way out of it, which is why a shop across town outranks you for someone in their own neighborhood. Relevance is category and service data on your Google Business Profile, and it is the fastest lever most businesses have never pulled, because the primary category is frequently wrong or too generic. Prominence is review volume and recency, citations, and how much the rest of the web talks about you, and that one is slow but it is the moat once you have it.

AI answers are downstream of regular search, not a separate game

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews mostly run a live search, read the top handful of results, and summarize them. That means citation in an AI answer is largely a function of already ranking well and being described consistently across sources the model can reach, including your site, your Google Business Profile, review platforms, and directories. There is no separate AI index you can submit to and no back door. If you are on page three for a query, you will not be in the AI answer for it either.

llms.txt, AI schema, and content chunking do not do what vendors claim

Google has publicly said it does not use llms.txt. There is no such thing as an AI schema type, and chunking your content into engine friendly blocks is not a ranking factor anyone can point to in documentation. What is real and boring: let the AI crawlers through, publish content that answers a specific question in a way a machine can lift cleanly, keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere, and use standard schema.org markup correctly. If someone is selling you a proprietary AI optimization technique, ask them to show you the documentation.

One page cannot rank for eight cities, and eight identical pages cannot either

The most common local SEO mistake I see is a single service page with a list of towns crammed into the footer, hoping to catch all of them. The second most common is a batch of city pages that are byte for byte identical except for the town name, which both Google and AI summarizers treat as low value duplication. What works is a page per city that says something only a business that has actually worked in that city could say, like local water hardness, the housing stock and its era, the permit office, or common failures on homes built in a specific decade. That is why I ask about your real jobs instead of writing from a template.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long before I see anything from this?

Google Business Profile work can move map pack visibility in four to eight weeks because the profile is the fastest surface to influence. Organic rankings and AI citations typically take three to six months to move meaningfully and nine to twelve months to compound into steady lead volume. If a competing agency promises faster, ask what specifically they are doing in week two that I am not, and then ask whether it violates Google's guidelines.

Can you guarantee I show up first, or that ChatGPT recommends me?

No, and nobody honest can. I do not control Google's ranking systems, and AI models regenerate answers on every query with different results for different users. What I will commit to is doing the work that measurably improves your odds, showing you the baseline before we start, and reporting the real numbers every month even when a month was flat.

Do I need llms.txt or special AI schema to get into AI answers?

No. Google has stated it does not use llms.txt, and there is no AI schema standard. Getting cited comes from ranking well in normal search, letting AI crawlers reach your site, having clear answers a model can lift, and being described consistently across your site, your Business Profile, and review platforms. Good fundamental SEO is the AI optimization.

How do you even measure whether AI tools are mentioning my business?

Honestly, imperfectly, and I will say so out loud. Referral traffic from AI tools shows up only partially in analytics, so I supplement it with manual prompt testing every month, running the same set of buying questions your customers would ask across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews and logging whether you get named. It is a sample, not a census, but the trend line is real and you can read it yourself.

My Google Business Profile got suspended. Can you fix it?

Sometimes, and it depends on why. Suspensions usually trace back to an address that does not match a real staffed location, keyword stuffing in the business name, a category that does not match what you do, or a sudden batch of reviews that look purchased. Reinstatement means correcting the underlying violation and filing an appeal with documentation like utility bills, licenses, and signage photos, and I would rather set your profile up so it never happens.

Do I have to rebuild my website before you can do search work?

Not always, but it comes up. If your current site is slow on mobile, cannot support new pages without a developer, or is built on a platform that fights schema and clean URLs, then search work will underperform no matter how good the content is. I will tell you straight in the audit whether the site is a foundation or a ceiling, and if it is workable, I work with it.

Are city pages and service pages just SEO filler?

They are filler if they are generated from a template with the town name swapped, which is exactly what most agencies ship. Done properly, a city page mentions the housing stock, the water conditions, the permit realities, and the specific problems that town actually calls about, which is genuinely useful to the reader and is why it holds up. That is also the material AI engines pull from, since a generic page has nothing quotable in it.

Do reviews actually affect rankings, or just look good?

Both. Review count, recency, and the language customers use all feed local prominence, and AI tools regularly summarize review sentiment when someone asks who to call. That is why review generation is part of the search work rather than a separate product, and why I wire the request into your CRM so it fires automatically after a completed job instead of when someone remembers.

What if I already run ads? Does search work overlap or compete?

They cover different moments and they feed each other. Ads buy you the top of the page today and give me real query data about what converts, which I then use to prioritize which pages get built first. Search work is what keeps the phone ringing when you pull budget, and running both means you own more of the page when someone searches your service in your town.

Listen

Three Episodes on Getting Found

Short Tech Tips episodes on what decides the local map pack, whether AI names you, and the Google Business Profile that both of those read first. A few minutes each.