Introduction: The Question Your Clients Are Starting to Ask
Sooner or later, one of your clients will ask you a version of the same question. "I searched for what we do and an AI answer came up. Why weren't we in it?" It might be a Google AI Overview, a ChatGPT reply, or a Perplexity summary. Either way, they've noticed that the way people find businesses is changing.
In our earlier post, SGE and AISEO - These new Digital Marketing acronyms explained, we introduced the ideas behind AI-driven search and what they could mean for businesses. This post is the practical follow-up. We'll look at how AI search tools decide which businesses and pages to mention, what a Digital Agency can realistically do to improve a client's chances, how to measure progress honestly, and how to turn all of it into a service clients will happily pay for.
One thing is worth saying up front. Nobody can guarantee that a business will be cited in an AI answer. Anyone promising that is overselling. What you can do is make a client's business clear, credible, and easy for these systems to understand, which is also exactly what good search engine optimisation has always asked for.
How AI Search Actually Chooses What to Cite
Most AI search experiences don't answer purely from memory. They run searches in the background, pull in pages they consider relevant and trustworthy, and write a summary based on what they found, often with links to the sources.
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google's own search index. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot use their own crawlers and search partnerships, with Bing's index playing a significant role for several of them. The detail changes often, but the principle holds: if a page can't be found, crawled, and understood by a conventional search engine, it's very unlikely to appear in an AI answer either.
Beyond simply being findable, these systems tend to favour content that answers the question directly and clearly, comes from a source that appears credible, and is backed up by what other trusted websites say about the same business. That's why the term generative engine optimisation, sometimes shortened to GEO, is best understood as an extension of SEO rather than a replacement for it. The fundamentals haven't gone anywhere. They've become more important.
What a Digital Agency Can Actually Do for a Client
Almost everything that improves a client's chances in AI search is work you can plan, deliver, and report on. None of it relies on tricks. It's about making the business clear and credible, on its own website and across the wider web.
Write answer-first content and clear FAQs
AI tools are built to answer questions, so content that answers questions plainly is easier for them to use. For each key service page, open with a short, direct summary of what the business does, who it's for, and where it operates, before going into the detail.
A well-written FAQ section is one of the simplest wins here. Questions like "How much does a boiler service cost in Leeds?" or "Do you offer weekend appointments?" mirror the way people now phrase searches. Keep the answers honest, specific, and short enough to stand on their own.
Add structured data
Structured data, often called schema markup, is code that describes a page's content in a standard format search engines can read. For most small business clients, the most useful types are Organization, LocalBusiness (or a more specific subtype, such as a dental practice or a plumber), and FAQPage where there's a genuine FAQ on the page. These confirm the business name, address, phone number, opening hours, and services without guesswork.
It's worth being accurate with clients about what this does. Google has said there's no special markup required to appear in AI features, and schema isn't a switch that turns on citations. It removes ambiguity, which is valuable, and it should always match what's visible on the page.
Complete and maintain the Google Business Profile
For local businesses, the Google Business Profile is one of the most important signals there is. Make sure every section is filled in properly: categories, services, opening hours, service areas, photos, and a clear description. Keep it updated whenever anything changes.
Consistency matters just as much. The business name, address, and phone number, usually shortened to NAP, should match exactly across the website, the Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, and the main directory listings, often called citations. When these details disagree, search engines and AI tools have less reason to trust any of them.
Build a steady flow of genuine reviews
Reviews do two jobs. They influence the people reading them, and they give search engines and AI tools more information about what a business is actually like. A steady flow of recent, genuine reviews that mention specific services and locations is far more useful than a burst of generic ones. Help clients put a simple process in place for asking happy customers for reviews and responding to every one. As we covered in why every business needs to protect its reputation, how a business handles its feedback says as much as the feedback itself.
Make the business's identity unmistakable
AI systems work best when they can clearly identify who a business is. A proper About page, a detailed Contact page with the full address and phone number, named people where appropriate, and consistent branding across social profiles all help. Linking the website to the business's official social profiles, and those profiles back to the website, reinforces that they all belong to the same entity.
Earn mentions on trusted third-party sites
AI answers often lean on what other people say about a business, not just what the business says about itself. Mentions in local news, industry associations, trade directories, supplier pages, community organisations, and relevant "best of" lists all add to a business's credibility. This is steady, relationship-based work, but it compounds over time and helps traditional rankings too.
Keep pages crawlable and fast
None of the above matters if the pages can't be reached. Check that important content is visible in the page's HTML rather than hidden behind scripts, that the site loads quickly on mobile, and that nothing in the robots.txt file is blocking search engines by accident. It's also worth reviewing whether the site is blocking the crawlers used by AI search tools. Blocking them can be a legitimate choice, but it should be a choice rather than an accident.
Consider llms.txt, with realistic expectations
You may have heard of llms.txt, a proposed file that sits on a website and gives AI tools a simple summary of the site's most important content. It's cheap to create and does no harm. Be clear with them, though, that it's an emerging idea rather than an established standard, and major search engines haven't confirmed that they use it. Treat it as a small bonus on top of the fundamentals, never as a substitute for them.
Measuring AI Visibility Honestly
Measurement is where many agencies overpromise. AI search is harder to track than traditional rankings, and clients will respect you more for saying so and then showing them what you can measure.
Manual prompt checks
The simplest method is also one of the most useful. Build a short list of questions a real customer might ask, such as "best wedding photographer in Bristol" or "who fixes flat roofs near Chester", and run them each month in Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot. Record whether the client is mentioned, which competitors appear, and which websites are cited as sources. The results will vary from one day to the next, so look for trends over several months rather than reading too much into a single check.
Referral traffic from AI tools
When an AI tool links to a website and someone clicks, that visit usually shows up in analytics as referral traffic from a domain such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, or copilot.microsoft.com. Setting up a simple report or segment for these sources in Google Analytics lets you show clients whether AI tools are sending real visitors, and which pages they land on. The numbers may be modest at first, but they're real.
Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console remains essential. At the time of writing, clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the overall search performance figures rather than reported separately, so you can't isolate them neatly. What you can do is watch for changes in impressions and click-through rates on the queries that matter, and check that the important pages are indexed without errors. Bing Webmaster Tools is worth setting up too, given how many AI tools rely on Bing's index.
Packaging AI Search as a Service Clients Will Pay For
Clients are already curious about AI search, which makes it a natural conversation starter. For most agencies, the simplest package is a one-off audit followed by an ongoing monthly service.
Start with an AI visibility audit
An audit gives the client something concrete and gives you a clear picture of where to focus. It might cover the results of a set of prompt checks, the state of the Google Business Profile, NAP consistency across citations, structured data, the quality of the FAQs and service pages, review volume and recency, crawlability and speed, and the third-party mentions the business already has. Present it as a short, prioritised report in plain English. Our guide on how to conduct a digital audit is a useful starting point for the structure.
Follow with a monthly retainer
Almost everything in this post is ongoing. Content needs adding and refreshing, reviews need requesting and answering, profiles need maintaining, citations need checking, and prompt checks need repeating. That makes it ideal retainer work. Define the deliverables clearly, for example a set number of new FAQs or content updates each month, Google Business Profile management, review response, citation monitoring, and a monthly visibility report. As we explored in Retainers vs Projects, specific deliverables make a retainer easier to sell, deliver, and review.
Set expectations clearly
Be honest in the proposal. Explain that AI citations can't be guaranteed, that results build over months rather than weeks, and that the work also strengthens traditional search visibility, the Google Business Profile, and the website's ability to turn visitors into enquiries. Positioned that way, the client is investing in a stronger online presence across every kind of search, not betting on one uncertain outcome.
How iOB Business Supports Partners With AI Search
AI search moves quickly, and keeping up with it alone while running an agency is a lot to ask. AgencyOS gives Partners the platforms, systems, and standard operating procedures to deliver services like this consistently, so they can offer AI search work with confidence rather than improvising it client by client.
When a client agrees to the work, our in-house Fulfilment Team can support delivery, which means Partners can sell an audit and a monthly retainer without being limited by the hours in their own week.
The 4L Pathway, Learn, Launch, Leverage and Lead, supports this progression too. In the Learn and Launch stages, Partners build their understanding of search fundamentals and how to explain them to clients. In Leverage and Lead, services like AI visibility become part of a broader set of recurring offers that deepen client relationships and build predictable monthly revenue.
Conclusion: Clear, Credible, and Easy to Find
AI search can sound intimidating, but the practical response is reassuringly familiar. Make sure a client's website answers real questions clearly. Describe the business accurately with structured data. Keep the Google Business Profile and citations complete and consistent. Build a steady flow of genuine reviews and credible third-party mentions. Keep pages fast and crawlable. Then measure what you can, honestly.
None of this guarantees a place in every AI answer, and no one can promise that. But it gives a business the best realistic chance, while strengthening its visibility everywhere else at the same time. For a Digital Agency, that's a valuable, ongoing service built on sound fundamentals, and one that clients are already asking about.
FAQs
Q: What is generative engine optimisation?
A: Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of improving a business's chances of being mentioned or cited in AI-generated answers from tools such as Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and Copilot. It builds on traditional SEO rather than replacing it.
Q: Can an agency guarantee a client will appear in AI Overviews?
A: No. AI tools decide which sources to cite based on many factors that no agency controls, and the answers change frequently. What an agency can do is make the client's business clear, credible, and easy for search engines to understand, which improves their chances.
Q: Is AI search replacing traditional SEO?
A: Not in the sense of making it redundant. Most AI search tools rely on search engine indexes to find the pages they summarise, so a page that performs poorly in conventional search is unlikely to be cited in an AI answer. Good SEO fundamentals remain the foundation.
Q: How can I tell if a client is getting traffic from AI tools?
A: Check the referral sources in the client's analytics for domains such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and copilot.microsoft.com, and set up a simple report to track them over time. Combine this with regular manual prompt checks and Google Search Console data to build an honest picture of progress.
Q: How should I price AI search services for clients?
A: Many agencies start with a one-off audit that identifies the priorities, followed by a monthly retainer covering ongoing content, profile management, reviews, citations, and reporting. Keep the deliverables specific and set realistic expectations about timescales.
Q: How do I find out more about running a Digital Agency with iOB Business?
A: The best place to start is by exploring the AgencyOS and 4L Pathway pages on our website. When you're ready to discuss the opportunity in more detail, you can book a call with our team to explore whether the iOB Business model is right for you.
To find out more about how you can start your own Digital Agency, please contact a member of our team.
Until next time, take care.
