Most agencies now have "AEO" on their services page. Most of them added it in the last six months. The methodology behind it ranges from genuinely new to repackaged keyword stuffing with better marketing.

That is not an exaggeration. I have audited agency websites that list Answer Engine Optimization as a core offering while their own site has zero structured data, no entity markup, and an AEO score below 30. They renamed their SEO package and updated the landing page. The work stayed the same.

This article is for business owners who are looking to hire help with AEO and want to know what real AEO work looks like, what to ask in a sales call, and what should send you running.

What an AEO agency actually does

A real AEO engagement covers five areas. If an agency is not touching all five, they are doing partial work and calling it complete.

1. Structured data architecture

This means deploying specific schema types (Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Service, Product, Article, BreadcrumbList) based on what your business actually is and what queries you need to appear in. It is not "adding a schema plugin." A plugin generates generic markup. Architecture means choosing the right types, nesting them correctly, connecting them with @id references, and validating that AI models can parse the output. The difference between a plugin and proper architecture is the difference between a template resume and one written for the specific job.

2. Entity registration and consistency

AI models build entity profiles from multiple sources. Your Google Business Profile, your website schema, your industry directory listings, your social profiles, your press mentions. If your business name is "Smith & Associates" on Google, "Smith and Associates LLC" on your website, and "Smith Associates" on Yelp, the model has three partial entities instead of one strong one. Entity registration means auditing every source, unifying the data, and confirming the model resolves your business as a single recognized entity.

3. Content architecture for AI citation

This is not "write blog posts." This is structuring your content so AI models can extract clear, attributable answers. That means direct question-and-answer formats. Specific claims with supporting data. Content organized by topic clusters that establish authority in a subject area. A 2,000-word blog post that meanders through a topic without making a single citable claim is useless for AEO, no matter how well it ranks in Google.

4. AI citation tracking and measurement

Traditional SEO measures keyword rankings and organic traffic. AEO measures something different: how often AI models cite your business when users ask relevant questions. That means running structured queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, tracking which businesses get mentioned, and measuring your citation share over time. If your agency cannot show you this data, they are not doing AEO. They are doing SEO and calling it something else.

5. Monitoring model retraining cycles

AI models retrain on different schedules. ChatGPT's knowledge cutoff moves forward periodically. Google's AI Overviews pull from fresh index data. Perplexity searches the live web. A real AEO agency tracks these cycles and times content updates to maximize the chance of inclusion in the next training window. This is why AEO takes 90+ days to show results. You are waiting for models to ingest your improvements.

Five questions to ask before hiring

  1. "Can you show me a before-and-after on AI citation share?" This is the single most revealing question. If the agency can only show you ranking changes or traffic graphs, they are doing SEO with a new label. Citation share is the metric that matters in AEO. If they have never tracked it, they have never done the work.
  2. "What schema types will you deploy and why?" The right answer names specific types and explains the reasoning. "We will deploy Organization with sameAs links to your social profiles, LocalBusiness with geo coordinates for your service area, FAQPage for your top 15 customer questions, and Service schema for each of your offerings." If the answer is "we add schema markup," they do not understand the technical layer.
  3. "How do you measure results?" If the answer centers on traffic or keyword rankings, they are measuring the wrong outputs. AEO results are measured in citation share across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Traffic may increase as a side effect, but it is not the primary metric. An agency that leads with traffic numbers is still thinking in the old model.
  4. "What is your timeline to results?" The honest answer is around 90 days for initial measurable changes in citation behavior. Some improvements to structured data and entity signals show up faster because Google AI Overviews pull from fresh crawl data. But meaningful shifts in ChatGPT or Perplexity citations require model retraining cycles. If an agency promises visible results in 30 days, they are either confused about how AI models work or they are selling something that does not exist.
  5. "Do you practice this on your own site?" This is the easiest due diligence you can do. Go to check.neverranked.com and run their domain. If they score below 70, they are not practicing what they sell. An agency that claims AEO expertise but has not optimized their own site is like a personal trainer who cannot do a pushup.

Red flags

Walk away if you see any of these.

  • They call it "AI SEO" instead of AEO. These are different disciplines. SEO optimizes for rankings in a link list. AEO optimizes for citations in AI-generated answers. Calling it "AI SEO" means they have not understood the distinction. They are applying old thinking to a new problem.
  • They cannot explain the difference between ranking and citation. Ranking is your position in a list of links. Citation is when an AI model mentions your business by name in a generated answer. One is about position. The other is about trust. If an agency conflates these, their methodology is built on the wrong foundation.
  • Their own website has no structured data. Check their source code. Search for "application/ld+json." If nothing comes up, they have not implemented the most basic layer of AEO on their own domain. This is not a minor omission. It is like hiring an accountant who does not file their own taxes.
  • They promise specific citation outcomes. Nobody can guarantee what ChatGPT will say about your business. Anyone who promises "we will get you mentioned in ChatGPT's top answer for [keyword]" is lying. AI models are probabilistic. You can increase the likelihood of citation dramatically, but guaranteeing specific output is not possible. Honest agencies talk about improving citation share, not guaranteeing specific placements.
  • They charge by keyword count. AEO is not keyword-driven. Entity optimization generates visibility across thousands of query variations simultaneously. An agency that prices by "number of keywords targeted" is applying an SEO billing model to AEO work. The pricing structure reveals the methodology.

What it should cost

AEO services are still new enough that pricing varies widely. Here are the ranges I see across agencies doing legitimate work.

Audit: $500 to $2,000 depending on site size and complexity. A 10-page service business site is on the low end. An e-commerce site with 500 product pages is on the high end. The audit should include structured data analysis, entity consistency review, AI citation baseline measurement, and a prioritized implementation roadmap. If the "audit" is a generic PDF with a score and no specifics, it is not worth paying for.

Monthly retainer: $1,500 to $5,000. This covers ongoing implementation, citation monitoring, content optimization, and adjustment based on model behavior changes. The low end is appropriate for a local service business with a focused service area. The high end is for multi-location businesses or companies competing in high-value categories.

Here is the math that makes this straightforward. If your average customer is worth $2,000 or more over their lifetime, and an AI citation generates even one qualified lead per month, the ROI works at any of these price points. For most service businesses, the question is not whether AEO is worth the investment. It is whether you start building citation share now or let your competitors build it first.

Start with a baseline

Before you talk to any agency, know where you stand. Run your site through the free AEO health check. It takes thirty seconds and gives you a score based on the actual signals AI models use to decide who gets cited.

That score becomes your negotiating tool. When an agency pitches you, you can say: "My current score is 34. What specifically will you do to improve it, and what score should I expect in 90 days?" That question separates the agencies doing real work from the ones who renamed their SEO package.

You can also check whether your business currently shows up in ChatGPT to see exactly how AI models treat you today. If you are invisible now, the right agency can change that. If you hire the wrong one, you will pay for six months of work and still be invisible.