Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Get cited by ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini when your customers ask AI for home services recommendations.
We track your prompts weekly across all four engines, publish AEO-optimized articles every week, and build the entity signals answer engines need before they will recommend a business.
Included in every Intleacht package. The website rebuild comes first.
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of making a business citable by AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini when a customer asks them for a recommendation. It works on four things an answer engine checks before naming any business: entity authority, schema markup, content structure, and citation consistency across third-party sources.
AEO is distinct from search engine optimization. SEO competes for clicks on a results page. AEO competes for citations inside an AI-generated answer. The two share foundational work — schema, page speed, content quality — but the optimization goals differ, and a business that wins one and loses the other is only capturing half its market.
Intleacht includes AEO in all three packages: Basic at $11,000, Starter at $16,000, and Growth at $26,000, each running six months with a website rebuild included.
Service Details
Our AEO service runs continuously from the day your new website launches. We track your prompts every week across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini to see exactly where your business is being mentioned and where your competitors are getting cited instead.
We publish AEO-optimized articles every week, targeting the specific questions your customers ask AI. We build authority signals through strategic citations and backlinks that reinforce your entity definition. Every action is measured against your AI mention rate, so you see the work land in real time rather than at the end of the program.
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of getting your business cited when customers ask AI platforms for recommendations. When a homeowner asks ChatGPT “Who is the best roofer in Dallas for storm damage?” or asks Google AI Overviews “Where can I get my HVAC inspected this week?” – AEO determines whether your business is one of the companies the AI mentions.
If your business is named, the customer clicks through to your site or saves your number. If your business is not named, the customer never knows you exist. There is no second page of AI results. There is no scroll-and-discover. AEO is a binary outcome: cited, or invisible.
Traditional SEO focuses on ranking your website higher in Google’s blue-link results. AEO focuses on getting your business cited as a fact when AI platforms answer questions. The two practices share some foundational work – schema markup, page speed, content quality – but the optimization goals diverge significantly.
SEO competes for clicks. AEO competes for citations. AI platforms cite businesses based on entity authority, factual accuracy, citation consistency across third-party sources, and direct-answer content patterns. None of these signals are optimized by traditional SEO. We do both. Most agencies do neither correctly.
What's Included Every Month
Every Intleacht package includes the same eight deliverables every month. We do not unbundle services and we do not negotiate the scope down to reduce price. The eight deliverables work together — each one reinforces the others, and removing any one of them measurably reduces results.
What changes between packages is volume, not scope.
Deliverable 1: AI prompt tracking
We track industry-specific and location-specific prompts for your business every week across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. You see exactly where your business is mentioned, where competitors are mentioned instead, and where citation gaps exist that we can close. This is the foundational data layer that drives every other decision in your program.
Deliverable 2: AEO-optimized articles
We publish AEO-optimized articles on your website every week, each one engineered for AI citation. Topics are selected from your prompt tracking data - we write what your customers are actually asking AI, in the format AI platforms reliably cite. Articles include FAQ sections, direct-answer paragraphs, schema markup, and entity-rich content. This is the single largest driver of monthly AI mention growth.
Deliverable 3: Strategic backlinks
High-quality backlinks every month from authoritative websites in your industry or geography. These are not generic directory submissions or low-quality guest posts. Each link is selected for its ability to reinforce your entity authority and improve how AI platforms cross-reference your business identity. Link domains are typically DR 30 or higher.
Deliverable 4: Directory citations
Citations every month across high-trust directories: industry-specific listings, regional business associations, review platforms, and authoritative local directories. Citations reinforce your business name, address, and phone number consistency across the web - the foundational data AI platforms cross-check before citing any business in a local recommendation.
Deliverable 5: Schema markup maintenance and expansion
We continuously monitor and expand your schema markup as your business grows. New services get Service schema. New locations get LocalBusiness schema. New team members get Person schema. As Schema.org publishes new specifications and AI platforms update their citation behavior, we adapt your markup to match - every month, automatically.
Deliverable 6: Entity definition monitoring
We monitor your entity consistency across the web every month. If a directory listing has the wrong phone number, if a third-party site lists an old address, if a review platform misspells your business name - we find it and fix it. Entity drift is the silent killer of AI visibility. Most businesses do not know it is happening to them.
Deliverable 7: Monthly reporting and diagnostic
A report delivered every month showing AI mention rates across all four engines, prompt-level performance, competitor citation tracking, traffic growth, and schema health. Every month you also receive a scored 7-Pillar AI Visibility Diagnostic — a breakdown of exactly where your foundation is strong, where it is weak, and what moved since the previous month.
Deliverable 8: Custom AI agents
We build custom AI agents on your brand, your voice, and your services, and hand them to your team. A Graphic Design Agent for on-brand social creative and Google Business Profile posts. A Social Media Agent for captions and posts. A Video Script Agent for short-form video. The number of agents depends on your package, and you keep them.
Our packages are structured for compounding results, which is why they run for six months — that is the timeframe in which AI mention growth becomes measurable and stable.
AEO is included in all three Intleacht packages — Basic at $11,000, Starter at $16,000, and Growth at $26,000, each running six months. The website rebuild is included in every package and comes first, because the AEO work depends on the foundation it creates.
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FAQ
Frequently asked questions about AEO services
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a business so AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini cite it when customers ask for recommendations. AEO focuses on entity authority, schema markup, content structure, and citation consistency across third-party sources. It is distinct from SEO, which focuses on Google blue-link rankings.
SEO optimizes your website to rank higher in Google's blue-link search results. AEO optimizes your business to be cited as a fact when AI platforms answer customer questions. SEO competes for clicks. AEO competes for citations. The two practices share foundational work like schema markup and content quality, but the optimization goals are different. Modern home services businesses need both to win.
AI mention rates typically improve within the first 60 to 90 days as we publish optimized content and AI platforms re-crawl your website. Significant compounding growth becomes measurable by months four through six. We track every metric weekly across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini, and report monthly, so you see progress as it happens rather than at the end of the program.
We optimize for ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. These four platforms account for the overwhelming majority of AI-driven business recommendations in the home services category. Each platform uses different signals, so our work covers entity authority for ChatGPT, schema and local data for Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google's broader knowledge graph for Gemini.
No. AEO depends on technical foundations that must be built into the website from the start, including schema markup, content structure, entity definitions, and on-page semantic patterns. We tested optimizing existing client websites for one year and consistently produced significantly worse results than rebuilding from scratch. Every Intleacht engagement begins with the website rebuild, and it is included in all three packages. No exceptions.