How to choose an AI SEO agency (AEO and GEO services explained)

An AI SEO agency, also sold as an AEO (answer engine optimization) or GEO (generative engine optimization) agency, helps your business get named and cited in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews. Good ones do three kinds of work: make your site easy for AI systems to fetch and quote, get your brand mentioned accurately on the third-party sites those systems trust, and measure how often you appear for the questions your buyers ask. To choose one, ask how they measure visibility, what they change in the first 90 days and how they tie it to leads. Walk away from anyone who guarantees placement in AI answers.

The category is new, the labels overlap, and many agencies added "AI SEO" to an existing SEO package. This guide helps you tell real work from relabeling.

What does an AI SEO agency actually do?

The work splits into four areas. A complete service covers all four, though the mix depends on your starting point.

1. Access and technical readiness

AI search systems that browse the web need to fetch and read your pages. An agency should check:

• Whether robots.txt or firewall rules block AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot (see AI crawlers and robots.txt)
• Whether key content is in the HTML or only appears after JavaScript runs
• Whether your important pages are indexed in Google and Bing, since many AI tools start from search results
• Whether structured data describes your organization, services and locations correctly

2. Content that AI systems can quote

AI answers tend to lift short, self-contained passages. That favors pages that answer a question directly, use clear headings, define terms and back claims with named sources. An agency should rewrite or create pages around the questions your buyers ask. Our guide to writing content AI engines quote shows the patterns.

3. Off-site presence

When an AI assistant recommends providers, it often draws on review sites, directories, industry publications, comparison articles, Reddit and YouTube rather than brand websites. A serious AEO or GEO service includes work to get your business described accurately in those places. Our post on the sources AI engines trust explains which ones matter and why.

4. Measurement

You need a fixed set of buyer questions, run regularly across the main AI tools, with a record of whether you are mentioned, how you are described, which competitors appear and which sources are cited. Some agencies do this by hand, others use AI visibility tracking tools. Our overview of AI visibility tools covers what those tools measure.

Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?

They overlap heavily. Many AI answers are built from pages that already rank well in search, so a weak SEO foundation limits what AEO or GEO can achieve. The difference is in emphasis: AI search work cares more about passage-level clarity, brand mentions without links, consistency of your description across the web, and measurement inside AI tools rather than only in Google rankings.

If an agency tells you SEO no longer matters, be cautious. If an agency tells you AI search is identical to SEO and needs no new work, be equally cautious. Our explainer on SEO vs AEO vs GEO covers the overlap.

How are AEO and GEO services priced?

The pricing models mirror traditional SEO:

There is no settled market rate yet because the service is new and scopes vary widely. Compare proposals by the work and measurement they include. Our guide to how much SEO costs covers how to compare quotes.

What questions should you ask an AI SEO agency?

1. Which AI tools do you check, and how often?
2. How do you pick the questions you track, and can we add our own?
3. What did you find when you checked our brand before this call?
4. What will you change on our site in the first 90 days?
5. What off-site work do you do, and where?
6. How do you handle the fact that AI answers vary between runs?
7. How do you connect AI visibility to traffic and leads?
8. Which tactics do you not recommend, and why?
9. Who does the work, and is any of it outsourced?
10. What do we own if we leave?

Question 8 is useful. An agency that can tell you which popular tactics have weak evidence, such as relying on an llms.txt file (see llms.txt explained), is more likely to be honest about the rest.

What are the red flags?

• Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews. No one controls what a model writes.
• A single screenshot of one AI answer offered as proof. Answers vary by run, user and location. Ask for repeated checks over time.
• Mass-produced AI content as the main tactic. Publishing large volumes of generic pages tends to add little and can hurt your site under Google's spam policies on scaled content.
• Fake reviews, planted forum posts or paid placements disguised as editorial. These can damage your reputation and break platform rules.
• No measurement plan, or measurement that only counts mentions without checking accuracy.
• No technical check. If they never ask about your robots.txt or how your pages render, they are skipping the basics.

How should you judge results?

AI visibility moves differently from rankings. Track it as a trend:

• Share of tracked questions where you are mentioned, by tool, month over month
• Whether the description of your company is accurate
• Which sources are cited, and whether you appear in more of them
• Referral visits from AI tools in your analytics (see measuring AI search traffic)
• How new leads say they found you, captured on your forms or on sales calls

Expect live-search tools such as Perplexity and ChatGPT search to respond faster to changes than answers drawn from a model's training data, which update only when the model does.

When is an AI SEO agency worth it?

It makes the most sense when your buyers research before they contact anyone, which is true for most B2B services, professional services and considered purchases. Signs it should be a priority:

• Prospects mention they asked ChatGPT or saw an AI summary
• Competitors are named in AI answers for your category and you are not
• Your Search Console impressions are rising while clicks are flat, which can mean answers are being given on the results page

If your site has basic indexing problems or little content, fix those first. AI visibility builds on that foundation.

How Dravik approaches it

Dravik works on AI search visibility alongside SEO and automation for US businesses with up to 500 people. We usually start with a $199 fixed-price business audit: a 30 minute call and a written plan that includes a check of how your brand appears across the main AI tools, with a full refund if you do not find it worth it. The AI search visibility page explains how we work after that. If you are comparing agencies and want an independent baseline first, book a business audit.