At least once a week a firm owner forwards me an agency pitch quoting two or three thousand dollars a month for "GEO services," and when I read the deliverables, most of it is work their office manager could do in a slow week. So here's the entire playbook, free, in enough detail to actually execute. If you'd rather have the diagnostic part done for you, that offer is at the end, but nothing below requires it.
Three acronyms, one job
SEO is the one you know: optimizing so Google ranks your pages when someone searches. GEO, generative engine optimization, is optimizing so that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini name your firm when someone asks who to hire. AEO, answer engine optimization, is optimizing for anything that gives one direct answer instead of a list of links, which covers Google's AI Overviews too, and those now appear above the traditional results on a large share of searches.
Here's the thing the acronym vendors don't lead with: it's mostly the same work. A clear, machine-readable site with strong reviews and consistent listings wins in all of them. What changed is the scorekeeper. Google rewarded position; AI engines reward being nameable and verifiable. The reason to care about the new scorekeepers is money: Semrush measured AI search visitors converting at about 4.4 times the rate of traditional organic visitors, because the comparison already happened inside the answer before they ever clicked.
Now the checklist.
Step 1: the buyer-question audit (one hour, do this first)
You can't fix a score you've never seen. Write down ten questions your real buyers ask, as full sentences, with your city in them. Not "estate attorney Dallas" but "who's a good estate planning attorney in Dallas for a family that owns a small business?" Pull them from your actual intake calls if you can.
Ask each question in ChatGPT, then repeat the full run in Gemini and Perplexity. For every answer, record four things in a spreadsheet: which firms got named, whether you were one of them, what reasons the tool gave, and which sources it cited (Perplexity shows its citations, which makes it the most useful diagnostically). Then repeat the whole exercise monthly, because these answers move.
This spreadsheet is your scoreboard for everything else in this post. Roughly 6 in 10 consumers already say AI answers influence what they buy, so treat an empty "you" column the way you'd treat being absent from page one of Google in 2015.
Step 2: finish your Google Business Profile, every field
AI tools lean heavily on the same structured sources Google does, and your Business Profile is the anchor. Most firm profiles I audit are maybe 60% complete. Go fill in the rest: primary category chosen precisely (not "lawyer" but "estate planning attorney"), every service listed, hours, real photos of actual humans, and a description written in plain language about who you serve. Answer the Q&A section yourself before strangers do.
This is boring work with an outsized payoff, because it's the one profile every answer engine can see and cross-check.
Step 3: build a review system, not a review wish
Volume matters and recency matters more than most owners think. A firm with 40 reviews whose newest is 14 months old reads as dormant, to buyers and to machines. What you need is an asking system, meaning your firm has a real answer to who makes the ask and exactly when it happens.
The version that works: the person who had the relationship makes the ask at the moment of thanks, the day the matter closes or the plan gets delivered, and follows up with a text containing the direct review link. Reply to every review you get, including the rough ones. If you're wondering what number you're actually aiming for, I broke down how many Google reviews you need by profession and market.
Step 4: make your site readable to a machine
An AI model can't recommend what it can't parse. Four fixes, in order of effort:
- State your services and locations in plain HTML text. One clear page per service, city names written in real sentences on the page, not trapped inside images or a JavaScript widget. If a machine read only the text of your homepage, would it know what you do and where?
- Add FAQ content that answers the question in the first two sentences. Answer first, nuance after. Pages that open with three paragraphs of throat-clearing before addressing the question get skipped by engines that are hunting for a direct answer.
- Add basic schema markup. JSON-LD for your business type (LegalService, FinancialService, MedicalBusiness, or AccountingService) with name, address, phone and hours, plus FAQPage schema on your FAQ content. Your web person can do this in an afternoon, and Google's Rich Results Test will confirm it's valid for free.
- Check robots.txt. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and make sure GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended aren't disallowed. Lots of sites blocked AI crawlers by default in 2023 and forgot. You cannot be the answer if the answer engines are locked out.
Step 5: get cited where your profession actually lives
When an engine decides whether to trust that your firm is real and good, it looks for agreement across sources. Your basic details (name, address, phone number, website) should be identical everywhere. Then make sure you exist in the directories that carry weight in your field: for attorneys that's Avvo, Justia, FindLaw and your state bar profile; for medical practices, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Vitals and WebMD; for financial advisors, your CFP Board profile plus NAPFA or XYPN if you qualify; for CPAs, your state society directory and the IRS preparer listing. Free tiers are fine. Presence and consistency beat premium placements.
Step 6: publish answer-shaped content
Your audit spreadsheet from step 1 now doubles as a content plan. Every question where competitors got named and you didn't is a page worth writing: title the page as the question and answer it directly in the first two or three sentences, then go deep with the specifics only a practitioner knows, including real price ranges and timeframes where you can say them.
Two genuinely useful pages a month beats thirty pieces of thin AI-generated filler, and I'd argue the filler is actively harmful, since these engines are getting better at recognizing it.
What this actually costs you
Being honest about the hours: the audit is an hour a month, the Business Profile is an afternoon once, the review system is fifteen minutes a week forever, the site fixes are a weekend (or a few hundred dollars to your web person), and content is two or three hours per page. That's the whole thing. No retainer required.
The one piece people quit on is the audit, because asking thirty questions across three tools and logging the answers every month is tedious. That part we'll do for you free at scalewithquail.com/ai-visibility, and the rest of the playbook works the same whether or not you ever talk to us. The firms getting named in these answers next year aren't going to be the ones with bigger budgets. They'll be the ones who started while their competitors were still deciding whether this was real.
Questions people ask
What's the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO?
SEO earns you a position on a results page. GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) earn you a mention inside AI-generated answers. In practice it's mostly the same work, clear pages, strong reviews, consistent listings, and content that answers questions directly, just judged by a different scorekeeper.
Can I do AI search optimization without hiring an agency?
Yes. The core work is auditing what AI tools say about your market, completing your Google Business Profile, building review volume, and making your site readable to machines. None of it requires paid tools, just a few focused hours a month.
How do I check whether AI crawlers can read my website?
Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for lines disallowing GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended. If those bots are blocked, the AI systems behind ChatGPT and other tools may not be able to read your pages at all. Plenty of sites blocked them by default in 2023 and never revisited the decision.