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SEO and AEO

When someone asks ChatGPT for a contractor near them, does it know you exist?

AEO, or answer engine optimization, means making your business easy for AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews to find, understand, and cite. Shepard Consulting audits and fixes the technical SEO underneath it, including crawlability, canonicals, redirects, and schema, and rewrites key pages so they answer real customer questions directly.

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Everything happens by email. Replies within 24 hours from matt@shepardconsulting.ai.

The Problem

What is actually going on

People are asking AI assistants the questions they used to type into Google. Who does foundation repair in Arvada. Is this company licensed. What does a panel upgrade cost. The assistant answers from whatever it can read about you, and for most small businesses that is not much.

The fix is rarely clever. It is usually boring technical debt: pages that point their canonical tag somewhere else, markup that says one thing while the page says another, services buried in a paragraph instead of given a page.

What You Get

What is included

  • Technical audit

    Canonicals, redirects, sitemap, robots rules, indexation, page speed, and broken characters. Every finding comes with the exact file or setting to change.

  • Schema that matches the page

    Local business, service, FAQ, and person markup generated from the same content visitors see, so the two cannot drift apart.

  • Answer-first page rewrites

    A direct 40 to 60 word answer at the top of each key page, then the detail. That is the part assistants lift.

  • AI crawler access

    Robots rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended, plus an llms.txt file that maps your services.

  • One consistent identity

    Name, phone, services, and service area matching across your website, Google Business Profile, and social profiles.

  • Honest measurement

    Search Console and analytics, plus a straight answer about AI search: referral clicks from ChatGPT and Perplexity show up in analytics, and mentions that never produce a click do not.

How It Works

Three steps, all by email

  1. Send me the URL

    I run the audit and email the findings ranked by what is costing you the most.

  2. Fix the plumbing

    Technical problems first. There is no point rewriting a page that tells Google to ignore it.

  3. Rewrite the pages that matter

    Usually the home page and the top few services. Then I re-check after Google recrawls.

I Try It On Me First

Where this has already been proven

The same audit was run on this site in September 2026. It found a canonical tag pointing at a redirect, FAQ markup that did not match the visible answers, and a form button full of broken characters. All of it was fixed the same day. Your site has its own version of those.

I am Matt Shepard, a licensed general contractor in Colorado and the owner of Shepard Consulting. Every system I sell is one I run in my own businesses. Read the case studies.

Common Questions

SEO and AEO Optimization: questions people ask

What is AEO?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants and AI search features to find, understand, and cite: clear pages per service, direct answers, accurate schema, crawler access, and consistent business details everywhere you are listed.

Is SEO dead now that people use AI?

No. AI assistants lean on the same things search engines do: pages they can crawl, structure they can parse, and sources that agree with each other. AEO sits on top of good technical SEO. It does not replace it.

How long until I see results?

Technical fixes get picked up when Google recrawls, which is days to weeks. Rankings and AI citations move slower, and nobody controls them. Anyone promising a position is guessing.

Do FAQ rich results still show up in Google?

Mostly not. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results for most sites in 2023. The markup still helps machines parse the page, so I keep it, but I do not sell it as a way to get a bigger search listing.

How much does SEO and AEO work cost?

The audit and the fix list that comes out of it are each quoted up front. Send the URL in a message and I will reply by email.

Related

Website Design and Development

Fast, accessible sites with a page for every service you sell, built so Google and AI assistants can read them.

See how it works

Google Business Profile Setup and Management

Get on Google Maps and stay there. Verification, categories, services, photos, weekly posts, and a reply on every review.

See how it works

Website Accessibility and ADA Compliance

WCAG 2.1 AA audits and code-level fixes: keyboard access, screen readers, contrast, forms, and a published accessibility statement.

See how it works

Tell me what you need fixed

Send a message with your business name and what is not working. I will reply by email with what I would do and what it costs.

All services

Last updated September 20, 2026.