The best AI SEO agency for your business is one that improves the facts AI tools can read about you and measures the result honestly, not one that sells a dashboard or promises ChatGPT will always recommend you. AI SEO, also called GEO (generative engine optimisation), is mostly sound SEO plus three extras: consistent facts about your business everywhere AI tools look, structured data that states those facts plainly, and repeat testing of the questions your buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. xCreative™ offers AI search optimisation from Melbourne and runs the same methods on its own site, so this guide is written from doing the work.
What AI SEO actually involves
Start with what Google says. Its page on AI features and your website states that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisation is needed beyond normal SEO best practice. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. That is a useful reality check: any agency selling a secret technique for Google’s AI answers is selling something Google says does not exist.
Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Perplexity work differently from Google, but they also draw on web search results and on what they can read on your site and about your business elsewhere. In practice, careful AI SEO work covers:
- Entity consistency. Your business name and address, your services and your history matching across your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories that list you. Contradictions make AI tools less likely to state facts about you.
- Structured data. Schema markup that describes the organisation and its services in a form machines read as facts.
- Citable pages. Service and about pages that state concrete facts (where you are, what you do, for whom, since when) rather than slogans. AI answers quote facts.
- Normal SEO. Crawlable pages, good titles, internal links and a site Google trusts. Our SEO service covers this side.
Some agencies lead with an llms.txt file. The llms.txt proposal is a simple text file that summarises a site for language models. We publish one and it costs little to add, but treat it as a small step, not the core of the service.
How AI visibility should be measured
AI answers change from one run to the next, so a single screenshot proves very little. A credible agency agrees a fixed list of buyer questions with you, for example “which branding agency in Melbourne works in English and Chinese”, and runs that list on a schedule across several AI tools. Each run should use a fresh, logged-out session, because a chat that already knows your business will mention it. The report should show the actual answer text, whether your business was named, and which sources the tool cited.
Ask how they separate their own testing from real customer behaviour. Website analytics can show visits referred from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and similar sites, and a contact form can ask how people found you. Those numbers are smaller than the visibility scores some tools produce, but they are real.
Claims to walk away from
- “We promise ChatGPT will recommend you.” Nobody controls what an AI model says. Visibility can improve; it cannot be promised.
- A dashboard with no site changes. If the monthly fee buys a score but nothing changes on your site or profiles, you are paying for monitoring, not optimisation.
- Mass-produced pages “for the AI”. Hundreds of near-identical pages written to be scraped can breach Google’s spam policies on scaled content and damage the rankings AI tools rely on.
- Fake reviews or invented credentials. AI tools repeat what they read. Planting claims that are not true is misleading advertising, wherever it appears.
Where AI SEO fits in your budget
For most businesses AI visibility is a reason to do SEO properly, not a separate budget line. The work that helps you appear in AI answers, such as accurate service pages, consistent business details and a strong Google Business Profile, also helps you rank in normal search and convert visitors once they arrive. Be cautious of an offer that prices AI SEO as an extra package on top of SEO without explaining what changes on your site. Ask how the two pieces of work differ, and pay for the changes, not the label.
Questions to ask an AI SEO agency
Which questions will you test, how often, and in which tools? What will you change on our site and profiles in the first month? How do you report answers that do not mention us? Which of your clients can we ask about results? An agency doing real work answers each of these with specifics. For the general SEO questions, see questions to ask an SEO company. If your customers search in Chinese as well, ask about bilingual SEO, because AI tools answer in the language of the question.
Questions owners ask about AI SEO
Is AI SEO different from normal SEO?
Mostly no. Google says its AI features need nothing beyond normal SEO best practice. The additions are making your business facts consistent and machine-readable everywhere, and testing what AI tools say about you on a regular schedule.
Can an agency make ChatGPT recommend my business?
No one can promise it. An agency can make accurate, consistent information about your business easier for AI tools to find and quote, which improves the odds over time.
How do I check what AI tools say about my business?
Write down five questions a buyer would ask, then ask each AI tool in a fresh, logged-out session and save the answers. Repeat monthly. Note if your business is named, if the facts are right and which websites the answers cite.
