How to get cited by AI search (a guide for local businesses)

Your next customer might never see a list of blue links. Instead, they’ll ask ChatGPT for “the best roofer near me,” read the answer, and call whoever it names. If that isn’t you, you’re invisible — no matter how good your traditional SEO is.

This is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): getting cited directly inside an AI answer. Here’s how it works and what to do about it.

Why AI search is different

Classic SEO competes for position on a results page. Answer engines collapse that page into a single recommendation. There’s no page 2. Being “pretty good” isn’t enough — you either make the shortlist the model recites, or you don’t.

Models build that shortlist from signals they can parse and trust:

• Structured data that unambiguously says who you are and what you do
• Consistent citations across the web (directories, reviews, maps)
• Clear, quotable answers to the questions buyers actually ask
• Crawlable pages for every location and service you offer

Four moves that get you cited

1. Add LocalBusiness and FAQ schema

Structured data is how you tell engines, in their own language, exactly what you do and where. LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and HowTo schema give the model high-confidence facts to attribute to you.

2. Publish an llms.txt

An llms.txt file is a clean, plain-language summary of your business written for AI crawlers: services, service area, credentials, and answers to common questions. Think of it as a résumé you hand directly to the models.

3. Write citable answer blocks

For each high-intent question — “how much does a roof replacement cost in Boise?” — publish a concise, specific answer. Models prefer to quote text that already reads like an answer.

4. Cover every location and service

If you serve ten neighborhoods and five services, that’s fifty citable pages an engine can pull from. Programmatic location and service pages, each with structured data, give the models evidence for every query.

Start by measuring

You can’t fix what you can’t see. Run a free AI visibility check to find out exactly how the major engines answer when someone asks for a business like yours — and which competitors they recommend instead.

The businesses that win AI search aren’t the biggest. They’re the ones that made themselves the easiest to cite.