TL;DR. AI SEO is the practice of getting your business named and recommended inside AI answers, when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Google AI for the best option. This page is the full 7-step playbook we run for paying clients, taught free as seven hands-on projects. By the end of tonight you can run Step 1 yourself: the 10-prompt audit that tells you exactly who AI recommends in your market, in about 45 minutes.
Your buyers changed how they search. They no longer scroll ten blue links. They ask an assistant "who is the best in my area?" and act on the two or three names it gives back. If you are not one of those names, you lost the customer before a click ever existed. And it compounds: every month you are not the answer, the business that is the answer collects more reviews, more mentions, and more citations, and the AI gets more sure of its pick.
This is Part 3 of The Playbook, the five skills that run a local business. It is a project, not a lecture: you will DO Step 1 tonight, and each step below is a full project you can run this week.
Watch us pitch this AI SEO playbook live (60 seconds at an Austin networking event)
Matthew got sixty seconds in front of a room of Austin business owners. This page is the playbook he pitched, in full, so you can run it yourself.
Watch us run this AI SEO playbook on our own business (all 7 receipts)
We do not just teach this playbook, we run it on Breadchaser in public. All seven projects, executed on our own business in one day, every receipt posted:
- Watch us pitch this AI SEO playbook live (60 seconds at an Austin networking event)
- Watch us run this AI SEO playbook on our own business (all 7 receipts)
- What is AI SEO?
- What does AI SEO look like when it works?
- Why does being the AI's recommendation decide whether you get clients?
- What are the 7 steps of the AI SEO playbook?
- Which variation of the playbook fits your business?
- How do you start tonight? Run the 10-prompt audit
- How do you make this playbook your own?
- How do you train someone else on this?
- Where do you share your result?
- How do you grade yourself? The 0 to 5 AI-awareness score
- Frequently asked questions
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the umbrella for making your business visible and recommended in AI-driven search. It sits on top of classic SEO and adds two younger disciplines:
| Discipline | What it does | The win condition | Go deeper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic SEO | Ranks your pages in Google's traditional results | Page one for your terms | the foundation everything rides on |
| GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) | Gets you surfaced inside AI-generated results broadly | You show up in the AI's synthesis | what GEO is and how it works |
| AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) | Makes you the named, cited source in a direct answer | "The best option is [your business]" | AEO for health and wellness businesses |
The simplest way to hold it: classic SEO gets you ranked, AI SEO gets you recommended. A recommendation beats a ranking, because the AI already did the buyer's comparison shopping. The whole secret, and the thesis behind every step below: AI visibility is mostly disciplined fundamentals plus reading the citations carefully. Not magic prompt tricks.
What does AI SEO look like when it works?
Put yourself in one client's shoes before you run it yourself. Advanced Recovery Cryo, a cryotherapy studio in Modesto, California, was invisible to AI when we started. We rebuilt their presence with this exact playbook and they hit number one on Google and ChatGPT in 15 days, recovered 406 appointments, and booked 4,457 appointments across 2025. The dated receipts are in the full case study.
It scales down and up. Kinetic Blueprint, a clinical training studio in Austin, got a 26-page answer-shaped site in under 3 days. And a handcrafted home-sauna brand selling nationally came to us already cited by ChatGPT for its signature craft but named in only 17% of the buyer questions that matter; the first scan named the incumbent taking the rest and listed the exact sources AI was reading. Same playbook, national board.
And we dogfood it. Matthew stood up at an Austin networking event with sixty seconds on the clock and pitched exactly what you are reading. The system you are learning is the system that found you.
Why does being the AI's recommendation decide whether you get clients?
Think of AI as the concierge your buyers now ask. Classic SEO buys you a listing in the phone book. AI SEO makes you the name the concierge gives out. Nobody cross-checks the concierge.
- Buyers ask AI before they buy. High-consideration purchases, anything trust-heavy, now start with a question to an assistant. That question is the moment you win or lose.
- The field is wide open. Local AI visibility in 2026 is where Google was in 2010. The businesses that do the boring fundamentals now get remembered by the machines for years.
- AI sends pre-sold buyers. Someone who arrives on the AI's recommendation arrives trusting you, because the assistant vouched for you.
One bar to respect: AI engines are cautious with claims, especially in health and anything with consequences. They prefer sources that back statements with named evidence. Most competitors will not do that work. That caution is your moat.
Where this sits in The Playbook: Booking Appointments and Closing Deals turn attention into revenue. This part makes sure the attention finds you first.
What are the 7 steps of the AI SEO playbook?
Each step is a full project with a drill you actually run. The time budgets are honest: some steps are one evening, one is a part-time job. A dollar saved is a dollar earned, but a minute saved is a minute earned; you choose which minutes to spend and which to buy back.
| Step | The project | Time budget | Our run, live |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Run your AI visibility audit: the 10-prompt test | 45 minutes, tonight | we scored 2 of 10 |
| 2 | Mine Google Search Console for the prompts buyers ask | one evening | 48 queries, mostly our own misspelled name |
| 3 | Google Business Profile optimization: the fundamentals AI reads | one weekend | our phone was on zero pages of our own site |
| 4 | Answer-shaped pages: FAQ schema and the two-sentence test | 2 to 3 evenings | our money pages scored zero question headings |
| 5 | The citations roadmap: backlinks, Reddit, and the lists AI trusts | 2 hours a week, ongoing | 119 citations mapped, ours were 4 percent |
| 6 | Topic clusters and pillar pages: why one post does nothing | the part-time job | our 14-page cluster, link map checked |
| 7 | Share of voice: measure AI visibility like revenue | 30 minutes a week, forever | re-measured same day: flat on purpose |
July 2026 data upgrade, folded into the steps: the 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey now scores AI visibility separately from Google Maps, and the two disagree in ways that reorder effort. Your Google Business Profile carries 32% of Maps weight but only 12% of AI weight; on-page content is the #1 AI signal at 24%; citations nearly double in importance for AI; and reviews are the only signal in the top two of both columns. The single strongest AI factor of all 187 measured is presence on expert-curated "best of" lists. (Whitespark, 2026) Step 3, Step 5, and Step 7 each carry a dated upgrade layer with what this changes in their drills, including the measurement rule our own three-industry baselines forced on us: count brand-prompted and unbranded mentions separately, because only unbranded mentions are recommendations.
Which variation of the playbook fits your business?
The 7 steps above are written for a local service business, because that is where AI recommendations are won and lost fastest. If that is you, run them as written. If not, the steps stay the same and the moves swap:
| Your business | Run this | What swaps |
|---|---|---|
| Local service (gym, med spa, clinic, studio) | this page, as written | nothing, this is the default |
| B2B software / SaaS | Variation 1: LLM SEO for B2B SaaS | G2 and Capterra replace the Business Profile, problem-language prompts replace city prompts, brand mentions replace local citations |
| eCommerce / products | Variation 2: eCommerce SEO for AI | the product feed layer, the star-rating gate, and the listicle rails that get products into ChatGPT Shopping |
How do you start tonight? Run the 10-prompt audit
This is the drill, and it is Step 1 in miniature. Do not just read it. Open ChatGPT and Perplexity right now and ask each one these ten questions, filled in for your business:
- best [your category] in [your city]
- best [your category] near [your neighborhood]
- [your category] [your city] prices
- is [your main service] worth it
- [your main service] vs [the common alternative]
- where should I go for [the problem you solve] in [your city]
- [your category] with the best reviews in [your city]
- best [your category] for [your ideal customer] in [your city]
- [your business name] reviews
- who do locals recommend for [your service] in [your city]
For each answer, score four things: Were you named? Named first? Who was named instead? What sources did the AI cite? Save every cited link. Those links are the entire roadmap for Step 5, because the pages the AI already reads are your to-do list. Your share of voice today is the number of answers that named you, out of ten. Most local businesses score zero, which is exactly why this works.
The full Step 1 project turns tonight's audit into a repeatable system. If you were named first for your money question, congratulations: you are the incumbent this playbook teaches everyone else to attack. Defend it. The steps are the same.
Day one of running this exact playbook on ourselves, in public: share of voice 2 of 10 on ChatGPT, 1 of 10 on Perplexity, and the same-day re-measure did not move it. That flat number is the honest headline: engines move on weeks of reviews, citations, and crawls, not on one heroic day. What day one did change: our Google Business Profile went from 1 of 5 drill checks toward complete, our phone number finally exists on our own website, our buyer page's five headings became the literal questions from our 50 prompt list, seven listicle pitches are drafted, and the weekly ten-prompt re-run is on the calendar.
On this page's own 0 to 5 score we grade a 4, with the missing point (a page the AI already cites naming us) in flight via Project 5. Every receipt is in the build-in-public thread, and each project page above carries its own worked example. Watch the scoreboard climb, or catch us confessing if it does not.
How do you make this playbook your own?
The seven steps are the recipe. Now improve the recipe. Every market has one question buyers keep asking that nobody answers well, and you hear it from your customers every week. That question is your step eight.
Write down the three questions new customers actually asked you this month, in their words. Pick the one no competitor answers anywhere. Build one page that answers it the way Project 4 teaches. That page has no competition, so it becomes the page AI cites for that question, and nobody can copy it because it came from your customers, not a keyword tool.
Want the worked example? We ran our own step eight on our own software product, Breadchaser Analytics, and it grew into Variation 1 of this playbook. The second one we ran for a national product brand became Variation 2. That is what a good step eight does: it starts as your unique improvement and ends up worth its own page.
How do you train someone else on this?
Teaching this is the deepest rep you can do. Pick one person, your office manager, your business partner, or another owner from your networking group, and run them through the 10-prompt audit on THEIR business. You explain each prompt, they score their own answers, and you both compare citation lists.
Bonus points for three: a peer, a mentee, and a mentor who will poke holes in your scoring. When you can teach the audit without looking at this page, Step 1 is yours, and the projects make the other six yours the same way.
Where do you share your result?
Post it publicly. The before-and-after is the content: "I asked ChatGPT who does [service] in [city]. Two weeks ago it did not know we existed. Here is what it says now." Put it on LinkedIn or your Google Business Profile, say what you changed, and link back to this playbook so the next owner can run it.
Sharing does two things. It commits you to the work in public, and it starts your own flywheel: the post itself becomes one more source AI can read about you. Tag us when you post it. We feature the best reader results on this page, with a link back to you.
How do you grade yourself? The 0 to 5 AI-awareness score
One point per capability, one capability per stretch of this curriculum:
- +1 Your 50-prompt list exists and gets re-run on a schedule (Projects 1 and 2)
- +1 GBP complete, reviews flowing on 3+ platforms, NAP consistent (Project 3)
- +1 Your top 5 pages are answer-shaped with schema (Project 4)
- +1 You are on at least one page the AI already cites for your market (Projects 5 and 6)
- +1 You track share of voice weekly and "heard from AI" leads monthly (Project 7)
Most local businesses score 0. A 3 puts you ahead of nearly every competitor you have. A 5 makes you the incumbent the machines defend.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is the practice of optimizing your business's online presence so AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI name and recommend you when buyers ask for the best option. It combines classic SEO with generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO).
Is AI SEO different from traditional SEO?
Yes. Traditional SEO competes to rank a page in a list of links a human scans. AI SEO competes to be the specific business an AI recommends inside a direct answer. They stack: strong traditional SEO feeds AI SEO, but AI SEO also needs answer-first structure, schema, and cited evidence.
Is AEO the same as AI SEO?
AEO (answer engine optimization) is one discipline inside AI SEO. AI SEO is the umbrella covering classic SEO, GEO, and AEO together. AEO specifically targets being the named, cited source in a direct AI answer.
How long does the playbook take?
Step 1 takes 45 minutes tonight. Steps 2 through 4 are evenings and one weekend. Step 5 is 2 hours a week, Step 6 is the real grind, and Step 7 is 30 minutes a week forever. Answer-first structure can influence AI answers within weeks; the citation and cluster work compounds over months.
Can I do AI SEO myself?
Yes. The seven projects on this page are the complete method, free. The method is not the hard part; the volume and the measuring are, and you will see exactly where that line is by Step 6. Do it yourself and win, genuinely, or bring it to us and buy the time back.
How much does it cost to have someone run AI SEO for you?
Our public pricing starts at $95 per month for the analytics platform, $397 per month for the AI chat and CRM layer, and $997 per month on a 6-month commitment for the full SEO, GEO, and AEO program. Scope and proof are on the AI SEO agency page.
Two ways to run this playbook. Get your free AI Visibility Score in about 30 seconds: the machine-run version of tonight's audit (50 prompts, 3 AI engines, scored live), your own dashboard, plus a free 20-minute walkthrough with Matthew. Or get The Playbook and do it yourself. Either way, you leave knowing exactly where you stand.
