// resources · primer
SEO & AEO for service businesses.
Your next customer searches two ways now: they type into Google, or they ask an AI assistant for a recommendation. SEO gets you ranked in the first. AEO — answer engine optimization — gets you cited in the second. Here's what actually moves each one for a service business, without the agency mystique.
The shift you can't ignore
When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity "who's a good therapist near me" or "how much should a dental website cost," the assistant composes an answer from sources it can read, parse, and trust. If your site isn't structured for that, you're invisible in the fastest-growing slice of search — even if you rank fine on Google. The good news: the two overlap heavily — do SEO properly and AEO is mostly a structured-data layer on top.
SEO: the five things that still matter
- One page per question your customers ask. A page has one job and one target query. "Services" pages that list nine things rank for none of them.
- Titles and headings that say the thing. "Emergency plumbing in Bend — same-day service" beats "Welcome to our website." Search engines are literal; so are the people scanning results.
- Speed on a phone. Most local searches happen on mobile. A site that loads in under two seconds on a phone connection outranks a prettier, slower one.
- Internal links with real anchor text. Every important page linked from at least two others, with links that say where they go — not "click here."
- A page for every place you serve if you're local — real content per area, not a find-and-replace of the city name (Google caught onto that years ago).
What stopped working (save your money)
- Keyword stuffing and word-count padding. A tight 600-word page that answers the question beats 2,500 words of filler.
- Bulk backlink packages. Ten links from real local organizations beat a thousand from link farms — which now actively hurt.
- Monthly "SEO retainers" with no deliverable. Ask any vendor what changed on your site last month. Silence is your answer.
AEO: getting cited by AI assistants
Answer engines quote sources that make their job easy. Four moves cover most of it:
- Answer questions directly on the page. A visible FAQ that says "A full custom website costs $7,500 and takes 7 days" gives an assistant a clean, quotable fact. Vague marketing copy gives it nothing.
- Schema markup. Structured data (LocalBusiness or ProfessionalService, FAQPage, Article) is machine-readable labeling for who you are, what you charge, and where you operate. Assistants and search engines both read it. Most service-business sites have none.
- Publish real numbers. Pages that state prices, timelines, and specifics get cited; "contact us for a quote" pages don't. Transparency is now a ranking strategy.
- Be the source for your niche. One genuinely useful guide in your specialty ("what a crown costs without insurance in Oregon") earns citations for years.
The order of operations
1) Fix the technical floor: speed, mobile, clean URLs, one H1 per page. 2) Rewrite titles and headings to match real queries. 3) Add schema — business, FAQ, and article markup. 4) Publish direct answers to the ten questions you get asked most. 5) Then, and only then, worry about links and content cadence. Most service businesses never need step five to dominate their local niche — steps one through four are that neglected.
How we ship it
Every site we build includes the full stack above as the baseline — speed budget, semantic structure, schema markup, and answer-ready content — checked before launch, not sold back to you later as a retainer. It's in the fixed price. See how it fits the 7-day build, or ask the assistant in the corner what we'd fix on your site first.
Want this done for you
by next week?
Everything in this guide ships standard on every site we build — designed, written, and live in 7 days at a fixed price.