Skip to main content Scroll Top

AI SEO Agency: What the Work Actually Involves

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

An AI SEO agency should be judged on whether AI answers cite you, because most AI SEO proposals are a content retainer with a new name on it. The work that decides whether AI answers cite you is narrower and more checkable than that — and it starts with a file most agencies never ask for.

On this page · 45 sections
  1. What is an AI SEO agency?
  2. What does an AI SEO agency actually do?
  3. Is AI SEO the same as AEO, GEO and LLM SEO?
  4. Does AI SEO replace traditional SEO?
  5. What is genuinely new, and what is just SEO?
  6. How do you choose between AI SEO companies?
  7. What are the warning signs?
  8. Can an AI SEO agency guarantee I appear in ChatGPT?
  9. How much does an AI SEO agency cost?
  10. What is a reasonable engagement shape?
  11. How long does AI SEO take to work?
  12. What moves the needle most?
  13. Which crawlers should be allowed?
  14. Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from Google Search?
  15. Why does rendering matter so much more here?
  16. How do I test rendering myself?
  17. What does answer-first structure mean?
  18. Does keyword density matter for AI SEO?
  19. Does schema markup help?
  20. Does llms.txt do anything?
  21. Do backlinks still matter?
  22. What is entity consistency and why does it matter?
  23. How is AI SEO measured?
  24. What should a monthly AI SEO report contain?
  25. Do I need an AI SEO tool as well?
  26. What is the difference between an AI SEO agency and an AI SEO consultant?
  27. What is an AI SEO expert or specialist?
  28. Does this work for B2B?
  29. Does it work for ecommerce?
  30. Does it work for local businesses?
  31. Is this worth it for a small business?
  32. What if I already have an SEO agency?
  33. Should AI SEO be a separate budget line?
  34. What does an AI SEO audit include?
  35. How often should the work be re-checked?
  36. What does Progression actually deliver?
  37. Do AI assistants send actual traffic, or just mentions?
  38. Should I block AI crawlers to protect my content?
  39. What happens if I do nothing?
  40. How is this different from what my SEO agency already reports?
  41. Can I do this in-house?
  42. What does a first month look like?
  43. What will you not do?
  44. How do I start?
  45. More from Progression Agency

The short answerAn AI SEO agency makes a business findable and quotable in AI-generated answers as well as in conventional search. The work is six things in order: crawler access proved from server logs, rendering that survives without JavaScript, indexation, answer-first structure, third-party corroboration, and measurement against a fixed prompt set. AI SEO, AEO, GEO and LLM SEO are four names for it. Nobody can guarantee placement in an AI answer, and anyone offering to is describing something that does not exist.

Updated September 2026. Crawler names and assistant behaviour change; the technical checks here are re-verified quarterly.

What an AI SEO agency is actually responsible forWhat an AI SEO agency is actually responsible for
An agency that only does the last two is selling a content retainer with AI in the name.

What is an AI SEO agency?

An agency that makes a business findable and quotable in AI-generated answers — ChatGPT, Google’s AI surfaces, Perplexity and Copilot — as well as in conventional search results. The work is crawler access, rendering, indexation, answer structure, corroboration and measurement.

The label is unsettled. The same service is sold as answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization, LLM SEO and AI search optimization. AI SEO is simply the phrase most buyers type, which is why this page uses it. Nothing about the engagement changes with the name.

What does an AI SEO agency actually do?

Six things, in order: proves from server logs whether AI crawlers can reach you, tests whether your pages render without JavaScript, fixes indexation, restructures pages so answers lead, builds third-party corroboration, and measures against a fixed prompt set.

Crawler access — Workstream. Letting the right bots in, proved from logs.
Rendering — Workstream. Answer present without JavaScript.
Indexation — Workstream. Conventional SEO, still the foundation.
Answer structure — Workstream. Passages that stand alone.
Corroboration — Workstream. What others say about you.
Measurement — Workstream. Fixed prompt set, re-run unchanged.

Crawler access

Allowing GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and Bingbot, then proving from ninety days of logs that they actually arrived. Robots.txt states an intention; a log records what happened.

Rendering

Fetching every commercial template with JavaScript disabled and reading what remains. This is where the expensive failures live, and no browser test will show it to you.

Indexation

Conventional technical SEO. AI search surfaces draw on web indexes, so a page that is not indexed cannot be retrieved from them.

Answer structure

Rewriting so each section answers its own heading immediately and the passage still makes sense lifted out of context.

Corroboration

Trade coverage, accurate listings, client-hosted case studies. The slowest workstream and the one that most separates cited businesses from uncited ones.

Measurement

A fixed prompt set, re-run with identical wording, reported separately from the technical work.

Is AI SEO the same as AEO, GEO and LLM SEO?

Substantially, yes. Four labels for one body of work, which emerged from four different communities — buyers, practitioners, academic writing and technical teams.

This matters only because it makes comparison harder. Two agencies can describe identical deliverables under different names, and a third can describe something much narrower under the same name as the first two. Ignore the label and compare what is actually delivered.

AI SEO — Term. What most buyers type.
AEO — Term. Answer engine optimization.
GEO — Term. Generative engine optimization.
LLM SEO — Term. The technical framing.
AI search optimization — Term. Enterprise and analyst phrasing.
AI visibility — Term. The outcome, not the method.
The same service under five namesThe same service under five names
1 = low, 3 = high. AI SEO is the phrase most buyers type and the least precise of the five.

Does AI SEO replace traditional SEO?

No. It depends on it. The AI search surfaces retrieve from web indexes, so a page that is not indexed cannot appear in an AI answer at all. Anyone selling AI SEO as a replacement is describing a dependency as an alternative.

What is genuinely new, and what is just SEO?

Two things are new: a second set of crawlers with their own rules, and rendering requirements much stricter than Google’s. Everything else is emphasis.

Genuinely new: a second crawler set

Conventional SEO never had to think about GPTBot or PerplexityBot. Blocking them by accident is the commonest failure we find, and it is invisible to every conventional SEO audit.

Genuinely new: stricter rendering

Google renders JavaScript reasonably well. Many AI crawlers execute little or none, so a rendering fault that costs a little in Google costs everything here.

Emphasis: passage structure

Always good practice; now decisive, because retrieval selects passages rather than pages.

Emphasis: corroboration

Always mattered through links; now matters directly, because assistants weigh what third parties say.

Emphasis: entity consistency

Always untidy; now produces visibly wrong answers about your business.

Unchanged: indexation and site health

The foundation, and the part that serves both channels at once.

Always mattered through links; now matters directly, because assistants weigh what third parties say.

How do you choose between AI SEO companies?

Ask whether they want your server logs. It is the one artefact that settles whether anyone has actually examined your site, and a provider who does not want it is not checking the only thing that can be checked.

How to choose between AI SEO companiesHow to choose between AI SEO companies
A provider who answers all four clearly is doing the work, whatever they call it.

Do you want our server logs?

Without them, the crawler-access stage is guesswork, and that is the stage most sites fail.

Which crawler user agents will you test, by name?

The list is short and public. ‘All major AI platforms’ means nobody has opened a log file.

Will you render our templates without JavaScript and show us the output?

Ten minutes per template, and it finds the most expensive failure there is.

What will you measure before we start?

A baseline against fixed wording, handed to you. Without it, no later claim of improvement can be checked.

Who implements the fixes?

Much of this is developer work. A provider producing recommendations for your team should say so, because it changes your cost and timeline.

What will you not claim?

Honest scopes name their limits. Guaranteed placement in an AI answer cannot be sold by anyone.

What separates an AI SEO agency from an SEO agency with a new pageWhat separates an AI SEO agency from an SEO agency with a new page
The first row eliminates more candidates than the other eight combined.

What are the warning signs?

Guaranteed AI placements, a proprietary score presented as the outcome, more blog posts offered as the remedy, no interest in your server logs, and an inability to name a single crawler.

Guaranteed AI placements — Warning sign. Nobody can sell these.
A proprietary score as the outcome — Warning sign. Comparable to nothing outside the tool.
More blog posts as the remedy — Warning sign. Volume dilutes; clarity concentrates.
No interest in your logs — Warning sign. The one checkable artefact, skipped.
'All major AI platforms' — Warning sign. Name them or you have not looked.
Twelve-month lock-in — Warning sign. Work that proves itself needs no cage.

Can an AI SEO agency guarantee I appear in ChatGPT?

No, and nobody can. There is no ad inventory inside a ChatGPT answer, no submission process, and no paid placement. What can be guaranteed is the controllable part: that crawlers can reach you, that your pages render, that your answers lead, and that measurement exists.

How much does an AI SEO agency cost?

It is scoped like a technical audit plus an editorial programme — driven by template count and how many commercial pages need restructuring, rather than by a per-keyword rate.

Compare carefully across this category, because the same words cover very different products. Some AI SEO services are a visibility dashboard subscription. Some are a content retainer with AI in the name. Some are the technical work described on this page. Ask which before comparing any numbers.

What is a reasonable engagement shape?

A fixed-scope audit first, remediation second, and an ongoing programme only once there is something worth maintaining. Starting with a twelve-month retainer inverts that.

Fixed-scope audit — Engagement. One to two weeks, six deliverables.
Remediation — Engagement. Access, rendering, structure, entity.
Ongoing programme — Engagement. Corroboration plus monthly measurement.
Advisory only — Engagement. We direct, your team implements.
Measurement only — Engagement. Prompt set built and run, nothing else.
Nothing yet — Engagement. Check manually first; it costs an hour.

How long does AI SEO take to work?

Crawler access changes appear in server logs within days. Rendering and structural changes take weeks. Citation frequency against a fixed prompt set moves over months.

The last stage is slow and noisy because it is a rate, sampled from a system that varies between runs. Treat a trend as real when it persists across three measurements, not when it appears in one.

The order the work happens inThe order the work happens in
Steps three onward cannot compensate for a failure in step two.

What moves the needle most?

Unblocking crawlers, then server-side rendering, then answer-first structure. The first is binary and takes minutes; the second is usually a configuration change; the third is a bounded editorial project.

Where the gains come fromWhere the gains come from
Ranked from our audit work. Not a measured index.
Effort against payoffEffort against payoff
Our judgement from audit work, not a measured study.

Which crawlers should be allowed?

At minimum GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot and Bingbot — unless there is a deliberate business reason to exclude one.

GPTBot — Crawler. OpenAI's general crawler.
OAI-SearchBot — Crawler. ChatGPT's search surface.
ChatGPT-User — Crawler. Fetches when a user asks about a page.
PerplexityBot — Crawler. Live retrieval, most citation-dense.
Google-Extended — Crawler. Google AI surfaces, not Googlebot.
Bingbot — Crawler. Feeds Copilot and Bing.
The crawlers, and what each one controls
CrawlerOperatorWhat allowing it affectsCost of blocking
GPTBotOpenAITraining and general retrievalHighest
OAI-SearchBotOpenAIThe ChatGPT search surfaceHighest for linked citations
ChatGPT-UserOpenAIFetches when a user asks about a pageHigh for branded queries
PerplexityBotPerplexityLive retrieval and citationHigh — most citation-dense
Google-ExtendedGoogleGoogle AI surfaces only, not SearchModerate to high
ClaudeBotAnthropicAnthropic model accessModerate
BingbotMicrosoftBing index, which feeds CopilotHigh, and affects Bing Search

No. It is a separate control from Googlebot and affects only Google’s AI surfaces. Confusing the two is a common and expensive mistake in both directions.

Why does rendering matter so much more here?

Because many AI crawlers execute little or no JavaScript. A page that assembles its content in the browser can return a shell to them while looking perfect to you.

We measured a page ranking on the first page for a competitive AI SEO term that returned three words when fetched without JavaScript. Every content improvement ever made to that page was invisible to the systems it was aimed at, and nobody working on it would have had any way of knowing.

How do I test rendering myself?

Fetch the URL with a plain HTTP client, or disable JavaScript in a fresh browser profile and reload. Do not use a rendering-based crawler — its entire purpose is to run the script you are trying to test without.

Want this done for your site?We make your pages retrievable and quotable by AI answers, and report citation share against a fixed prompt set.

Get a free proposal

What does answer-first structure mean?

Writing the heading as the question someone would ask, then answering it in the first sentence or two, then explaining. It is the single editorial change that moves the most.

  1. Turn each H2 into the question a buyer would actually type.
  2. Answer it in the first sentence after the heading.
  3. Put reasoning, caveats and detail after that, in full.
  4. Keep each section to one idea so the passage is self-contained.
  5. Name the source of any claim inside the same paragraph.
  6. Cut hedging that does not change the meaning.
  7. Re-read each section alone and check it still makes sense.
  8. Do this for twenty commercial pages before doing it for two hundred.

Does keyword density matter for AI SEO?

No. Retrieval works on meaning rather than term frequency. Repeating a phrase produces a page that is harder to read and no more retrievable.

Does schema markup help?

When it agrees with the visible page, yes. Markup that contradicts the copy is worse than none, because it undermines confidence in everything else on the page.

Markup that contradicts the copy is worse than none, because it undermines confidence in everything else on the page.

Does llms.txt do anything?

Very little today. Adoption is limited and it is not a ranking factor. It costs ten minutes and belongs in the same category as a well-formed sitemap: hygiene, not leverage.

Indirectly and substantially. They affect indexation and authority, which affect retrieval on index-led surfaces, and third-party mentions are corroboration in their own right.

What is entity consistency and why does it matter?

One canonical description of your business, used without variation everywhere. Three different self-descriptions produce three different answers, and you do not get to choose which one an assistant repeats.

How is AI SEO measured?

With two separate systems. Technical measures come from logs and rendering and are fast and certain. Visibility measures come from sampling a fixed prompt set and are slow and probabilistic. Reporting them together is how weak programmes hide.

What should a monthly AI SEO report contain?

Which crawlers arrived and what they fetched, what changed technically, the prompt-set results against the same wording as last month, and who else appeared in those answers.

Crawler access report — Deliverable. Which bots arrived, from logs.
Render audit — Deliverable. What each template shows without JavaScript.
Answer-first rewrites — Deliverable. Restructured commercial pages.
Entity file — Deliverable. One description, everywhere.
Prompt set and baseline — Deliverable. Yours permanently.
Monthly report — Deliverable. Technical and visibility, kept separate.

Do I need an AI SEO tool as well?

Eventually. Not first. Ask the assistants your buyers’ questions manually before subscribing to anything — it costs an hour and tells you whether you have a problem worth paying to measure.

What is the difference between an AI SEO agency and an AI SEO consultant?

A consultant directs; an agency also implements. If you have a team who can action recommendations, a consultant is cheaper. If the changes need doing, an agency is the honest purchase.

What is an AI SEO expert or specialist?

The same skills sold individually rather than as a firm. Judge on the same four questions: logs, crawlers by name, rendering tests, and what gets measured before starting.

Does this work for B2B?

It is where it fits most often. Long sales cycles make attribution hard, and buyers increasingly shortlist by asking an assistant who does this kind of work.

Does it work for ecommerce?

Yes, and product and comparison pages are usually the priority. Product data rendered client-side is an extremely common failure in this sector.

Does it work for local businesses?

Increasingly. Assistants answer local questions, and the inputs are the same ones that drive local search: consistent listings, accurate hours, and a site that can be read.

B2B and SaaS — Fit. Long cycles, attribution already hard.
Professional services — Fit. Recommendation questions are the buying moment.
Ecommerce — Fit. Product and comparison pages are the prize.
Local services — Fit. Assistant answers increasingly local.
Healthcare and regulated — Fit. Accuracy and entity consistency matter most.
Small single-location — Fit. Cheapest to get completely right.

Is this worth it for a small business?

Often more than for a large one. A twelve-page site’s technical surface can be made completely correct inside a fortnight, and retrieval rewards specificity rather than size.

What if I already have an SEO agency?

Ask them the four questions. Many competent SEO agencies can do this work and simply have not been asked to. Hiring a second agency to do part of the first one’s job is rarely the right answer.

Should AI SEO be a separate budget line?

No. It belongs inside the search programme, run by people who can read a log file. Separating it is how businesses end up paying twice for overlapping work and receiving two reports that contradict each other.

What does an AI SEO audit include?

Crawler access from logs, render testing per template, indexation, answer structure, entity consistency, and a dated baseline. Six deliverables, all inspectable.

How often should the work be re-checked?

Crawler behaviour quarterly, because user agents and rules change. Visibility monthly, against identical prompt wording.

What does Progression actually deliver?

The audit, the remediation, and the measurement — with the prompt set handed over on day one. There is no proprietary score and nothing that stops working when the engagement does.

AI SEO, AEO, GEO, LLM SEO — the same work under four labels
LabelWho uses itWhat it emphasisesMonthly US searches
AI SEOMost buyersContinuity with SEO they know~8,100 head, ~5,000 commercial
Answer engine optimization (AEO)Practitioners and agenciesBeing the answer, not the link~2,400
Generative engine optimization (GEO)Academic and vendor writingThe generative surface~4,400
LLM SEOTechnical teamsThe model and retrieval layer~880
AI search optimizationEnterprise and analyst writingThe search surface specifically~1,300
What each AI SEO workstream costs and returns
WorkstreamEffortTime to showImpact
Unblocking crawlersMinutesDaysDecisive — binary
Server-side renderingConfiguration to build changeWeeksVery high
Answer-first restructuringEditorial pass per pageWeeksHigh
Indexation fixesHours to daysWeeksHigh
Entity reconciliationAn afternoonWeeks to monthsModerate
Schema reconciliationHoursWeeksModerate
CorroborationOngoing, monthsMonthsHigh, slow, durable
Measurement setupHalf a dayImmediate as a baselineEssential
What an AI SEO agency can and cannot promise
ClaimHonest?Why
Your crawlers will be unblockedYesEntirely within our control
Your pages will render without JavaScriptYesA technical change we can verify
Your answers will lead their sectionsYesAn editorial change we make
You will have a dated baselineYesWe build it
You will appear in ChatGPT for term XNoNo placement can be sold by anyone
Your visibility score will hit NNoProprietary scores mean nothing externally
Results within 30 daysNoCitation frequency moves over months
Engagement shapes, and when each fits
ShapeDurationFits whenDoes not fit when
Fixed-scope audit1-2 weeksYou need the diagnosisNobody has checked manually yet
Audit plus remediation6-12 weeksFindings need implementingYour team will implement
AdvisoryOngoing, lightYou have a capable teamNobody can action recommendations
Full programme6-12 monthsCorroboration is the constraintThe technical work is undone
Measurement onlyOngoingWork is done, proof is missingYou have not fixed anything yet

Why the label you search for does not change the work

Five terms, one discipline. The only practical consequence is that comparing providers is harder, because two can describe identical deliverables under different names.

Why exact wording still matters for finding a provider

Search engines and assistants both match on the phrasing people actually use, which is why a provider who only ever writes ‘answer engine optimization’ is invisible to the larger number of buyers typing ‘AI SEO agency’.

Why the technical half is the half that gets skipped

It requires developer access and a log file, and it produces no deliverable a marketing team can show in a meeting. It is also where most sites are actually failing.

Why corroboration is the slowest and most durable lever

It cannot be bought in bulk, it compounds, and it is the difference we most often see between businesses that are cited and businesses that have done everything technical correctly.

Why measurement has to be handed over

A prompt set you cannot run yourself is a dependency rather than a measurement. If an agency leaves, the baseline should stay.

Why we recommend an audit before a retainer

Because the audit frequently finds that the retainer is not what you need — and a provider unwilling to discover that is not the right provider.

Why nobody can sell you placement

There is no advertising inventory inside an AI answer today, no submission queue, and no paid tier that changes standing. That is also why the technical work has leverage.

Why this belongs inside your search programme

The overlap with conventional SEO is large, the dependencies run one way, and separating the budgets produces two reports that contradict each other.

Why small sites frequently do better here

A twelve-page technical surface can be made completely correct. A two-thousand-page one cannot, and retrieval does not reward size.

Why we publish the method

The difficulty in this work is execution and measurement discipline, not secrecy. A method that only works while hidden is not a method.

Why the first month matters most

Almost everything decisive is discoverable in the first two weeks, and almost everything cheap to fix is fixed in the first month. Programmes that skip straight to content spend a quarter before finding out the crawler was blocked.

Almost everything decisive is discoverable in the first two weeks, and almost everything cheap to fix is fixed in the first month.

Do AI assistants send actual traffic, or just mentions?

Both, and they are different outcomes. A mention names you with no link and no click. A citation links, and that is the one that sends a visitor. Any report that merges the two is overstating the result.

Not sure which of these applies to you?Tell us the situation and we will say plainly what we would do first, and what we would not.

Talk it through

Should I block AI crawlers to protect my content?

That is a legitimate business decision and it has a cost: you guarantee you are never cited. Publishers with a subscription model sometimes choose it deliberately. Businesses selling a service almost never should, and most that have blocked did so by accident.

What happens if I do nothing?

Nothing visible, which is the trap. The site keeps working, the crawlers keep being blocked or the pages keep rendering empty, and competitors who fixed it accumulate citations you never see.

How is this different from what my SEO agency already reports?

Conventional SEO reporting has no column for whether GPTBot fetched your pages, and rank tracking has nothing to track inside an AI answer. Both can be excellent and still tell you nothing about this channel.

Can I do this in-house?

The technical half, yes, with developer access and the ability to read a log file. The part in-house programmes usually drop is the measurement cadence, because running the same prompts every month is dull and easy to postpone.

What does a first month look like?

Logs requested on day one, crawler access answered by the end of week one, render testing through week two, and a dated baseline before any change is made — so that everything after it can be checked.

What the engagement involvesWhat the engagement involves
Everything here is inspectable. None of it is a proprietary score.

Want this run properly?

We audit crawler access from your server logs, render-test every commercial template, restructure the pages that matter, reconcile your entity description, and hand you the prompt set and baseline. You keep all of it.

/contact-us

What will you not do?

Guarantee placement in any AI answer, sell a proprietary visibility score as an outcome, or recommend publishing volume as a remedy. All three are common in this category and none of them survive contact with a log file.

How do I start?

Ask the assistants ten questions your buyers would ask, write down who appears, and pull ninety days of server logs. Those two steps cost an hour and a request, and they determine everything that should happen next.

More from Progression Agency

The rest of the library, by what you are trying to do

AI, AEO and what is changing

Websites and design

Choosing and working with an agency

Social, content and brand

By industry and by situation

Prefer to see the numbers on your own site?We will run the audit described above and walk you through what it finds.

Request an audit

AI, AEO and what is changing

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI SEO agency?
An agency that makes a business findable and quotable in AI-generated answers as well as in conventional search — through crawler access, rendering, indexation, answer structure, corroboration and measurement.
What do AI SEO services include?
Crawler access proved from server logs, render testing without JavaScript, indexation work, answer-first restructuring, third-party corroboration, and measurement against a fixed prompt set.
How much does an AI SEO agency cost?
Scoped like a technical audit plus an editorial programme — by template count and how many commercial pages need restructuring, not by a per-keyword rate.
Is AI SEO the same as AEO?
Substantially yes. AI SEO, AEO, GEO and LLM SEO are four labels for one body of work that emerged from four different communities.
Does AI SEO replace traditional SEO?
No, it depends on it. AI search surfaces retrieve from web indexes, so an unindexed page cannot appear in an AI answer at all.
What is genuinely new about AI SEO?
Two things: a second set of crawlers with their own rules, and rendering requirements far stricter than Google’s. The rest is emphasis on things that already mattered.
How do I choose between AI SEO companies?
Ask whether they want your server logs. It is the one artefact that settles whether anyone has actually examined your site.
Can an AI SEO agency guarantee I appear in ChatGPT?
No, and nobody can. There is no ad inventory, no submission process and no paid placement inside an AI answer.
What are the warning signs when hiring?
Guaranteed placements, a proprietary score sold as the outcome, more blog posts as the remedy, no interest in your logs, and an inability to name a single crawler.
Which crawlers should I allow?
At minimum GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot and Bingbot.
Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from Google Search?
No. It is a separate control from Googlebot and affects only Google’s AI surfaces.
Why does JavaScript rendering matter so much?
Many AI crawlers execute little or none, so a page that assembles content in the browser can return a shell to them while looking perfect to you.
How do I test rendering myself?
Fetch the page with a plain HTTP client, or disable JavaScript in a fresh browser profile and reload. Do not use a rendering-based crawler for this test.
What is answer-first structure?
Writing the heading as a question, answering it in the first sentence or two, then explaining. It is the single editorial change that moves the most.
Does keyword density matter?
No. Retrieval works on meaning rather than term frequency.
Does schema markup help?
When it agrees with the visible page. Markup that contradicts the copy is worse than none.
Does llms.txt help?
Very little today. It is hygiene rather than leverage — cheap to add, not a substitute for crawler access or rendering.
Do backlinks still matter for AI SEO?
Indirectly and substantially, through indexation and authority, and directly as third-party corroboration.
What is entity consistency?
One canonical description of your business used everywhere. Three different self-descriptions produce three different answers, and you do not choose which is repeated.
How long does AI SEO take?
Crawler access shows in logs within days, rendering and structure over weeks, and citation frequency over months.
How is AI SEO measured?
Two separate systems: technical measures from logs and rendering, and visibility measures sampled from a fixed prompt set. Reporting them together hides weak work.
What should a monthly report contain?
Which crawlers arrived and what they fetched, what changed technically, prompt-set results against identical wording, and who else appeared.
What is the difference between an AI SEO agency and a consultant?
A consultant directs; an agency also implements. If your team can action recommendations, a consultant is cheaper.
Do I need an AI SEO tool as well?
Eventually, not first. Ask the assistants your buyers’ questions manually before subscribing — it costs an hour.
Does AI SEO work for B2B?
It is where it fits most often, because buyers increasingly shortlist by asking an assistant who does this kind of work.
Does it work for ecommerce?
Yes, and product and comparison pages are the priority. Client-side rendered product data is a very common failure in this sector.
Is it worth it for a small business?
Often more than for a large one — a small technical surface can be made completely correct, and retrieval rewards specificity rather than size.
What if I already have an SEO agency?
Ask them the four questions. Many competent SEO agencies can do this and simply have not been asked.
Should AI SEO be a separate budget line?
No. It belongs inside the search programme, run by people who can read a log file.
How often should this be re-checked?
Crawler behaviour quarterly, because user agents change. Visibility monthly, against identical prompt wording.
What is an AI SEO expert or specialist?
The same skills sold individually rather than as a firm. Judge on the same four questions.
How do I start?
Ask the assistants ten questions your buyers would ask and write down who appears, then pull ninety days of server logs.

Want this done for your site?We build and maintain the search, content and paid programmes described on this page.

Get a free proposal

Get a free marketing proposal

Tell us what you are trying to grow and we will come back with a plan, not a pitch deck. Same-day reply on weekdays.

Privacy Preferences
When you visit our website, it may store information through your browser from specific services, usually in form of cookies. Here you can change your privacy preferences. Please note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our website and the services we offer.
Contact Us