AI SEO Company: How I'd Run The Engagement In 8 Steps (2026)

An AI SEO company does three jobs at once: classic SEO for Google, AEO so answer engines can quote you, and GEO so ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini name you as a source.

This is the operator's version: the exact order I'd run the work in, the settings I'd check, and the gotchas that waste the first month.

If you'd rather have my team run it with you, book a free SEO strategy session and bring your Search Console login.

Step 0: Know what the engines themselves say

Every step below traces back to a platform's own docs, so start there.

Google: AI Overviews and AI Mode have "no additional requirements" beyond normal SEO, per its AI features page.
Google again: its generative AI optimization guide treats AEO and GEO as still SEO.
OpenAI: ChatGPT search needs OAI-SearchBot allowed, per its crawler overview.
Perplexity: PerplexityBot is the search crawler, per its crawler docs.
Anthropic: blocking Claude-SearchBot may cut your visibility in Claude search, per its crawler article.
Bing: Copilot runs on the same crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as Bing search, per the Webmaster Guidelines.

So the work is one stack, not five separate projects.

Step 1: Freeze a baseline in three dashboards

You can't prove progress without a dated starting point.

Search Console Performance report, "Web" search type, because Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic there.
The generative AI performance reports in Search Console, which show impressions, pages, countries and devices inside AI features.
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance, which shows total citations, cited pages and grounding queries across Copilot.

Add a crawl export with status code, canonical, meta robots and title for every URL.

In our own analytics, ChatGPT visits usually arrive tagged with chatgpt.com as the source, often as utm_source=chatgpt.com; that's our observation, not an OpenAI statement, so log it as a segment and move on.

Step 2: Open the doors for the search crawlers

This is the fastest win and the most common miss.

Search crawlers and training crawlers are separate tokens, so you can allow one and block the other.

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Training-only tokens: your call
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /

Gotcha one: robots.txt isn't enough if your CDN or firewall blocks the bot's published IP ranges, and OpenAI and Perplexity both say to allow those ranges.

Gotcha two: OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to be picked up.

Gotcha three: Google-Extended only governs Gemini training and grounding; Google's crawler page says it has no effect on inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

Step 3: Check the preview controls on every money page

A page can be crawlable and still be invisible to AI answers.

nosnippet stops Google using the text as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode, per the robots meta tag docs.
max-snippet:[number] caps how much text Google can show.
data-nosnippet hides one section only.
On Bing, NOARCHIVE keeps content out of Copilot answers and NOCACHE limits Copilot to URL, title and snippet.

Theme defaults and old plugins can add these site-wide, so grep the rendered HTML, not the CMS settings.

Step 4: Make the entity unambiguous

AI answers name brands, so the engines need to know exactly which brand you are.

Use the same business name, address and phone everywhere, matching your real-world signage.
Add Organization structured data on the homepage with name, url, logo and sameAs links to your real profiles.
Local firms add LocalBusiness, a subtype of Organization, and keep the Business Profile current.
Claim the business in ChatGPT's Business Hub if you're eligible; OpenAI's help centre says (Nov 2026) claiming doesn't guarantee more visibility.

Bing's guidelines say clear, consistent naming for people, organisations and products improves citation accuracy.

Structured data is good practice, but Google says no special schema is needed for AI features.

Step 5: Build pages worth citing

Google says unique, non-commodity content will likely shape your AI search presence more than anything else in its guide.

In practice that means first-hand detail a competitor can't copy: your process, your photos, your numbers, your mistakes.

Map one core question per URL; Bing says single-topic URLs are more likely to be picked for grounding.
Answer the question in plain text near the top, then go deep.
Cover the follow-ups a buyer asks next, because AI Overviews and AI Mode use query fan-out across subtopics.
Don't spin out a page for every phrasing; Google calls that scaled content abuse when it's done to manipulate rankings.

📞 Want steps 1 to 5 mapped to your site? Book a free SEO strategy session and we'll go through crawler access, preview controls and your first content gaps together. → Grab a strategy session slot

Step 6: Earn links and mentions inside the rules

Links still matter: Google's ranking systems guide still lists link analysis and PageRank, and Bing counts external links from relevant sites as a discovery signal.

Run it the clean way:

Manual outreach to real sites in your niche, with content written for each editor.
Any paid placement carries rel="sponsored", which Google's link qualification page prefers for ads and paid spots.
No private blog networks and no automated link programs, which Google's spam policies list as link spam.
Real brand mentions from real coverage; Google says chasing inauthentic mentions isn't as helpful as it looks.

Step 7: Ship changes through a written log

Google's hiring page asks whether your SEO will share every change and the reasoning behind it.

I make that a rule: one shared sheet, one row per change, with URL, what changed, why and the date.

Give read-only Search Console access during the audit stage; Google says not to hand out write access at that point.

Keep every account, the domain and the Business Profile in the client's name.

Step 8: Report on citations, not just rankings

Each week I'd pull the same four numbers:

Google AI feature impressions and the pages behind them.
Copilot citations and cited pages from Bing's AI Performance view.
Sessions from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in analytics.
Leads and calls from those sessions.

Google adds that clicks from results pages with AI Overviews tend to be higher quality, so track time on site and conversions too.

Gotchas that waste the first month

Fixing robots.txt but not the firewall. Bot-management rules at the CDN often block AI crawlers before robots.txt is even read, so test with the vendor's published IP ranges in mind.
Treating ChatGPT-User as the search bot. OpenAI says ChatGPT-User is triggered by users and isn't used to decide what appears in search; OAI-SearchBot is the one that counts.
Blocking Google-Extended to "protect" rankings. It doesn't touch Google Search either way, so the decision is purely about Gemini training and grounding.
Content that only renders after scripts run. Google says important content should be available as text, and Bing warns against hiding key content behind client-side rendering.
Schema that disagrees with the page. Google's AI features page says structured data should match the visible text, so a wrong phone number in markup is worse than none.
Reporting only rankings. AI answers show up as impressions and citations, so a rank tracker alone will miss most of the movement.

Each of these takes minutes to check and weeks to discover if you don't.

Where AI agents speed up the work

An agent can do the repeat work while a person keeps the judgement calls.

Weekly crawl and diff of robots.txt, canonicals and meta robots.
First drafts of Organization and LocalBusiness markup, checked against the visible page.
Clustering Search Console queries into content briefs.
Researching outreach targets, with "draft only" set so nothing gets sent without a person.

Approval of every live change stays human.

The vetting checklist I'd give any AI SEO firm

These come straight from Google's Do you need an SEO? page, plus the AI checks:

Do you follow Google Search Essentials, and do you cite official docs for your advice?
Is your AEO and GEO advice aligned with Google's guidance on generative AI features?
Which crawlers will you allow, and which training bots will you leave to me?
How will I see every change you make?
What results do you expect, by when, and how do you measure them?

Walk away from anyone who promises #1, claims a special relationship with Google, or offers "priority submit"; Google warns against all three.

Bing says the same for AI: GEO doesn't guarantee grounding or citations.

For the full hiring sequence, see our guide to how to hire an SEO agency.

🔥 Want to run these eight steps yourself? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you learn AI SEO yourself: step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS for the weekly crawl and draft jobs, and four live coaching calls a week. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Worked example: how Goldie Agency frames the engagement

Goldie Agency describes itself as an SEO, GEO, AEO and link building agency.

Its homepage splits AI visibility into three moves it calls the Answer Engine: be the source, be everywhere, and be first.

That maps onto steps 5, 6 and 2 above: pages worth quoting, consistent mentions on trusted sites, and fast indexing of new pages.

Its link building is described in its own words as "Manual outreach, no PBNs".

Its AI SEO service list also includes llms.txt setup; Google's guide says Google Search itself doesn't use llms.txt files, so don't count that line toward Google results.

Julian's own published numbers: 240+ clients served across 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns, a 100% Upwork Job Success Score, and 425K+ YouTube subscribers.

His about page also says new AI SEO, GEO and AEO tactics get trialled on the agency's own sites every week before clients see them.

Two small-business run-throughs

A roofing contractor

Day 1: export Search Console, the gen AI report and Bing's AI Performance view.
Day 2: find that a security plugin blocks OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot; allow both and whitelist their IP ranges.
Day 3: remove a site-wide nosnippet left by an old theme.
Week 2: add Organization and LocalBusiness markup that matches the contact page word for word.
Weeks 3 to 6: publish one page per service with real job photos and the questions customers ask on site visits.
Week 8: compare the baseline and decide which pages earn outreach.

An online tea shop

Check that product pages render their text in the HTML, not only after scripts run.
Keep Merchant Center details current, as Google's AI features page advises.
Write brewing guides from the owner's own tastings, not rewrites of other blogs.
Pitch three food writers with a sample pack and a real story, and mark any paid feature as sponsored.

📞 Rather hand the whole playbook to a team? Book a free SEO strategy session and leave with a 30-day plan for Google, ChatGPT and Copilot visibility. → Book your free session

🎁 Two free extras for operators Download the 200+ AI SEO Prompts for audits and briefs, and get the free link building book before you plan Step 6. → Book a free SEO strategy session

Run the steps in order and keep the log; if you'd rather keep the work in-house, join the AI Profit Boardroom and learn the whole stack.

Also On Our Network

FAQ: AI SEO Company Playbook

What is the first thing an AI SEO company should check?

Crawler access. If robots.txt, a CDN or a firewall blocks OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot, nothing else in the plan can get you into those answers.

Should I block GPTBot and ClaudeBot?

That is a business choice. They are training crawlers, and OpenAI and Anthropic treat them separately from their search crawlers, so blocking them does not remove you from ChatGPT or Claude search.

Does an AI SEO company need special schema for AI Overviews?

No. Google says there is no special schema.org markup for AI features, though Organization and LocalBusiness markup still help it understand who you are.

How do I measure the work week to week?

Use the Search Console generative AI reports, Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance and chatgpt.com referrals in analytics, then tie each one to leads.

Can any agency guarantee a ChatGPT mention?

No. OpenAI says placement is not guaranteed, and Google says nobody can guarantee a number one ranking.

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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

Allow the right crawlers, fix the previews, publish first-hand pages, earn real links, and book a free strategy session when you want a proven AI SEO company running the playbook with you.