An AI SEO agency should get your firm found and chosen in both Google and AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and Copilot, and prove it in enquiries and revenue. In practice that means four things: fixing access so every major crawler can read your site, rewriting key pages so AI systems can quote them, building consistent mentions on the sites those systems trust, and reporting on customers won rather than traffic. If an agency cannot explain how it does each of those, the "AI" in its name is decoration.
I run one, so read this with that in mind. I have tried to write the guide I would want if I were hiring.
What does "AI SEO" actually mean?
The phrase gets used for two very different things.
- SEO for AI search. Getting your firm named in AI-generated answers. This is also called generative engine optimisation (GEO), answer engine optimisation (AEO) or LLM SEO.
- SEO done with AI tools. An agency using software to produce content or audits faster.
The first is a service you might want. The second is an internal method, and it tells you nothing about results. When you talk to an agency, ask which one they mean. Our view is set out on our AI search page.
What should an AI SEO agency do?
Here is the work I would expect, and what "good" looks like for each part.
| Area | What good looks like | What to be wary of |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Checks robots.txt for Googlebot, Bingbot and OAI-SearchBot; confirms text is in the HTML; verifies Bing Webmaster Tools | Skipping this because "the site is fine" |
| Research | A fixed list of real buyer questions, tested across several AI tools, several times each | One screenshot of one ChatGPT answer |
| Pages | Answer-first rewrites of your highest-value service pages, with sources, numbers and named authors | Dozens of generic blog posts produced at volume |
| Mentions | Aligning how directories, professional bodies, review sites and press describe you | Buying links or mass-posting on forums |
| Classic SEO | Technical fixes, local search, links and rankings, because AI answers draw on search results | Treating GEO as a replacement for SEO |
| Reporting | Enquiries and won clients first, visibility second | Traffic charts and "impressions" as the headline |
The research supports this shape of work. The GEO paper presented at KDD 2024 found that adding cited sources, quotations and statistics to a page improved its visibility in AI answers by around 27% on its main measure, while keyword stuffing made things slightly worse. And Google's guidance on AI features says there are "no additional requirements" or special optimisations for AI Overviews and AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. So any agency selling a secret AI trick is either wrong or not being straight with you.
What should an AI SEO agency not sell you?
A few things come up often enough to name.
llms.txt as a solution. It is a proposed standard from 2024 for giving AI agents a markdown summary of your site. Google's John Mueller said in June 2025 that "no AI system currently uses llms.txt". Adding one is harmless. Charging for it as a visibility fix is not reasonable.
Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT. OpenAI's publisher FAQ describes appearing in ChatGPT search in terms of crawler access and content. There is no paid inclusion. And because answers vary so much between runs, nobody can promise a fixed position.
Content volume for its own sake. Fifty thin articles written quickly will not get you cited. One excellent page on a question your buyers ask might.
Traffic as the proof. Pew Research found that when an AI summary appeared in Google, people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits against 15% without one. Traffic will often fall even when visibility rises. An agency that reports mainly traffic will either look bad for the wrong reasons or look good for the wrong reasons.
How should results be reported?
This is our position, and it is why we exist: most agencies report traffic, we report customers.
A useful monthly report from an AI SEO agency should answer, in this order:
- How many enquiries came in, and how many were qualified?
- How many became clients, and what are they worth (counted by your finance team, not the agency)?
- Where did they say they found you?
- How often are you named across the fixed question list, by tool?
- What changed on the site and off it, and what is next?
On one B2B services engagement, that approach meant we could point to 18 new accounts in eight months from enquiries we generated, worth about £40,000 as counted and invoiced by the client's own finance team. On a separate site rebuild, clicks from Google rose 66% and average position moved from 25 to 11, compared with the same months a year earlier. Both numbers came from sources the client controlled.
What questions should you ask before hiring one?
- Which crawlers do you check, and what do you do if our site blocks one?
- Show me how you test whether we appear in AI answers. How many questions, how many runs?
- Which of our pages would you change first, and why those?
- How do you build third-party mentions without buying links or spamming forums?
- What does your monthly report lead with?
- Who counts a won client: you or us?
- Is there any tactic you would refuse to use?
The answers tell you more than a case study page.
From our work
The test I would apply to any agency, including us, is whether the client's finance team can count the result. For one B2B services client, the work produced 18 new accounts in eight months, invoiced at about £40,000, and those numbers came from the client's own books rather than our dashboard. If an agency cannot show you something like that, all you have is a report about visibility.
What we'd do in your first 30 days
This is roughly what the first month looks like when a firm starts with us.
- Days 1 to 5: access and tracking. Crawler checks, indexing, Bing Webmaster Tools, AI referral tracking and a "how did you hear about us?" question on every enquiry route.
- Days 6 to 12: the question panel. 20 to 40 buyer questions, run across ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, three times each. A clear baseline of who gets named.
- Days 13 to 24: the first five pages. Answer-first rewrites of the services that bring in the most valuable clients, with named authors and sources.
- Days 25 to 30: mentions and reporting. Align directory and profile descriptions, agree with your finance team how a won client is counted, and set the monthly report.
You can see how this fits together on our generative engine optimisation and ChatGPT SEO pages. We work with law firms and accountants in particular.
FAQ
Is an AI SEO agency different from a normal SEO agency?
It should do everything a good SEO agency does, plus the work specific to AI answers: quotable pages, third-party consistency and AI visibility tracking. If it drops classic SEO, it is missing the base AI answers are built on.
How long before we see results?
Crawler and page fixes can show in weeks because AI tools search the live web. Mentions and reputation take months. Revenue follows enquiries, which depends on your sales cycle.
Should we hire a specialist in our sector?
It helps. Law and accountancy have regulatory rules and buyer questions that a generalist will take time to learn. Ask any agency to show you the buyer questions they would test for your firm.
What if our own site gets little search traffic today?
That is common, and it is not a reason to wait. For what it is worth, Pieo's own site gets very little search traffic today, and we are working on that like anyone else. Judge any agency on the results it can show from its clients' own numbers.
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