AI SEO Agency London: Run The Engagement In 8 Steps (2026)

An AI SEO agency London businesses hire should run a fixed, checkable process, and this page lays out the eight steps I would run on a London site from the first login to the first report.

Every step is tied to what Google, OpenAI, Bing, Perplexity and Anthropic publish about their own search systems.

If you would rather have my team walk your site through it, book a free SEO strategy session and bring your Search Console login.

How a remote engagement with a London business is set up

Goldie Agency works with London businesses remotely.

There is no London office.

That matters less than people think, because every task below happens in Search Console, Business Profile, your CMS and your server settings.

Google's own hiring checklist asks a fair question: "What's your experience in my country/city?"

So the first call covers your boroughs, your competitors in the map pack and the questions your London customers type into Google and ChatGPT.

Ask any agency, remote or local, to answer that question with examples rather than a postcode on a letterhead.

Step 1: Grant read-only access and set the baseline

Google's guide to hiring an SEO says to grant only read access to Search Console at the audit stage.

Follow that to the letter.

Add the agency as a restricted user in Search Console.
Add them as a read-only user in Bing Webmaster Tools.
Share Google Analytics with viewer rights only.
Export the last 16 months of Search Console queries filtered to "london" and to your borough names.
Save a screenshot of your current map pack for your top three service terms.

That export becomes the baseline, so nobody argues later about where the numbers started.

Step 2: Clean up the Business Profile against Google's rules

Local results are where most London service firms win or lose, and Google's Business Profile guidelines are strict.

Name: use your real-world business name, exactly as it appears on your shopfront and website. No "Best Plumber Camden" stuffing.
Virtual offices: a rented mailing address you do not operate from is not eligible for a profile.
Co-working spaces: a desk in a shared workspace only qualifies if it has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your own people.
Service-area firms: keep one profile for the central base, hide the address if customers never visit, and keep the service area within about two hours' drive.
Categories: pick categories that describe the business, not keywords.

The co-working rule catches a lot of London start-ups and consultants, so check it first.

Step 3: Let the AI search crawlers in

Each AI search engine names its own crawler, and each one says blocking it removes you from its search answers.

Here is the robots.txt block I would start from on a London service site:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Training crawlers are a separate business decision
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

OpenAI's crawler overview says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that each setting is independent, so blocking GPTBot does not block search.

The same page says robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to be picked up.

Perplexity's crawler docs recommend allowing PerplexityBot to appear in its results, and Anthropic's help article says disabling Claude-SearchBot may reduce your visibility in Claude's search results.

On Google, the common crawlers page is clear: "Google-Extended does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search."

Gotcha: the robots.txt file can be perfect while your CDN or firewall still blocks the bots, so check the server logs as well.

📞 Want the eight steps run on your London site? Book a free SEO strategy session and my team will check your Business Profile, crawler access and map-pack rivals live on the call. → Get your free London strategy session

Step 4: Check the preview controls nobody remembers setting

Old themes and plugins often leave snippet limits in place.

Google's robots meta tag documentation says nosnippet also stops the content being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Bing's Webmaster Guidelines add that NOARCHIVE keeps content out of Copilot answers, and NOCACHE limits Copilot to the URL, title and snippet.

Run a crawl, list every page carrying nosnippet, max-snippet, noarchive or nocache, and remove the ones on pages you want quoted.

Step 5: Add LocalBusiness markup that matches the page

Google's LocalBusiness structured data guide treats LocalBusiness as a type of Organization, and its AI features page says markup must match the visible text.

A starting block for a London firm looks like this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Plumber",
  "name": "Example Plumbing Ltd",
  "url": "https://www.example.co.uk/",
  "telephone": "+44 20 0000 0000",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "London",
    "postalCode": "N1 0AA",
    "addressCountry": "GB"
  },
  "areaServed": ["Islington", "Camden", "Hackney"],
  "sameAs": ["https://www.example-profile-link.co.uk/"]
}
</script>

Swap the placeholders for your real details, and only list the areas you actually cover.

Google's AI features page also says there is no special schema needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, so treat this markup as a clarity fix, not a shortcut.

Step 6: Build borough and service pages people need

London buyers search by area, so area pages earn their place when they carry real local detail.

List the boroughs you have completed real jobs in.
For each one, write the job types, typical access or parking issues your team handles and a short project summary.
Add photos from those jobs and a direct answer to the top question for that area.
Link each page from the main service page with descriptive anchor text.

Do not clone one page 32 times with the borough name swapped.

Google's spam policies define scaled content abuse as many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings, however they are made.

Step 7: Earn reviews, mentions and links inside the rules

Google's review tips policy bans offering discounts or freebies for reviews.

The Maps contribution policy also bans selectively asking only happy customers, which is called review gating.

So ask every customer the same way, with the same link, after every job.

For links, Goldie Agency's own wording is "manual outreach, no PBNs", and any paid placement should carry rel="sponsored" under Google's link spam policy.

London has a dense local press, trade bodies and borough business groups, which makes earned mentions realistic for most firms.

Step 8: Measure AI visibility, not just rankings

Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic sits inside the Search Console Performance report under the "Web" search type, and Google has added dedicated generative AI performance reports.
Bing and Copilot: the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools shows Copilot citations.
ChatGPT: in our experience, ChatGPT referrals usually show up in analytics with chatgpt.com as the source.

Report those three side by side every month, next to calls and form leads.

The ChatGPT Business Hub caveat for UK firms

OpenAI's help centre says (Nov 2026) that Business Hub lets a business claim its listing in ChatGPT and manage its details.

The same page says local stores and restaurants can currently claim only an existing U.S. listing.

A London café or salon cannot use it yet, so the website, the Business Profile and third-party mentions still carry the load.

OpenAI also says claiming does not guarantee more visibility, and advertising does not influence ChatGPT's independent answers.

Where AI agents speed the work up

Agents are good at the repetitive, checkable parts of this process.

Fetching robots.txt and response headers across every page and flagging blocked bots.
Listing every page with nosnippet or noarchive tags.
Drafting LocalBusiness JSON-LD from your contact page for a human to check.
Clustering Search Console queries by borough.
Researching local press and trade sites for outreach, as a draft list only.

People still decide which pages to write, sign off every fact and handle every outreach email.

If you want to learn AI SEO yourself and set these agents up in-house, the AI Profit Boardroom trainings walk through each one.

🔥 Want your own agents running Steps 3 to 8? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week, so you can learn AI SEO yourself. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Two London examples, step by step

A Hackney coffee roaster with a shop and online orders:

Confirm the profile uses the shop's real name and street address with permanent signage.
Allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, then check the CDN log a day later.
Add Store markup with opening hours that match the contact page.
Write one page answering "where to buy freshly roasted beans in Hackney" with real stock details.
Ask every buyer for a review with the same short link.

A Croydon accountant working from a serviced office:

Check the serviced office meets Google's staffing and signage rules before keeping the profile.
Build service pages for self-assessment, VAT and payroll, each with a plain-English answer at the top.
Pitch a practical tax-deadline guide to borough business newsletters.
Track Copilot citations in Bing Webmaster Tools each month.

Gotchas I see on London sites

Two Business Profiles for one firm after a move from one borough to another.
Location pages for areas the firm has never served.
A security plugin that silently blocks every crawler it does not recognise.
Different phone numbers on the website, the profile and directory listings.
A redesign launched without anyone checking redirects, which Google flags as the best moment to bring in an SEO.

What nobody can promise you

Google's hiring page says it plainly: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."

Bing says GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences, and OpenAI's ChatGPT search article says placement is not guaranteed.

Google's AI optimisation guide adds that optimising for generative AI search is still SEO.

So judge an agency on the process and the evidence in Search Console, not on a promise of first place or a guaranteed ChatGPT mention.

Goldie Agency runs this sequence on Julian Goldie's own published track record of 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns and 240+ clients, with 10+ years of results in tough niches.

📞 Ready to hand the eight steps to a team? Book a free SEO strategy session and we will tell you which step your London site needs first. → Book your strategy session now

🎁 Two free tools for this process Grab the 200+ AI SEO Prompts for Steps 4 to 6, plus the free link building book for Step 7. → Book a free SEO strategy session

Also On Our Network

FAQ: AI SEO Agency London Playbook

Does Goldie Agency have a London office?

No. Goldie Agency works with London businesses remotely, and all of the work happens in Search Console, Business Profile, your CMS and your server settings.

Which robots.txt bots matter most for AI search?

OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, PerplexityBot for Perplexity, Claude-SearchBot for Claude, plus Googlebot and Bingbot, which feed Google AI features and Copilot.

Can I keep a Business Profile at a co-working space?

Only if the space has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your own people, according to Google's Business Profile guidelines.

Should I block GPTBot?

That is a separate choice. OpenAI says GPTBot is for model training and is independent of OAI-SearchBot, so blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search.

How long until robots.txt changes reach ChatGPT?

OpenAI says changes can take about 24 hours to be picked up.

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About Julian

I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.

I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.

I've built a 7-figure SEO and link building agency, Goldie Agency, with a team of 70+ SEO experts.
I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
I wrote "Link Building Mastery".
My Udemy courses have taught over 29,000 students.

→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom

Run the eight steps in order, measure in Search Console and Bing, and book a free strategy session when you want a team to run the work as your AI SEO agency London customers can find in both Google and ChatGPT.