Guide · Long Island AEO
How to AEO a Long Island service business
Ten steps. ~30 days. The exact playbook a contractor or therapy practice runs to get cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
What you need before starting
- Admin access to your website
- Google Business Profile (claimed)
- Free silvo.systems/audit baseline run
- Optional: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, or Perplexity for citation testing
Step 1
Run a free AEO audit
Score your site at silvo.systems/audit. You get a Technical, On-Page, Content, Performance, Local, and AEO score plus a live citation snapshot from Anthropic and OpenAI. Save the score. This is your Day-0 baseline. You will re-run this in 30 days to measure lift.
Step 2
Capture a citation baseline
Pick 10 queries a real prospect would type. Mix branded (your business name reviews) with discovery (best Long Island plumber, therapy near me Commack, kitchen contractor Nassau County). Run each query in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Note whether your business is mentioned and which source each LLM cited. Save screenshots. This is your Day-0 citation rate.
Step 3
Add the four core schemas
Drop JSON-LD on your homepage for: Organization (with knowsAbout array of 10 to 15 topical authority terms), LocalBusiness (with full address, areaServed, telephone, openingHoursSpecification), FAQPage (10 to 15 real prospect questions with 50 to 100 word answers), and Person (your founder, with sameAs links to LinkedIn and any other public profiles). Skip aggregateRating on the parent Organization. Self-serving review schema is a Google manual-action risk. Reference: schema.org/Organization.
Step 4
Publish llms.txt and llms-full.txt at the root
Create /llms.txt with an H1 of your business name, a blockquote summary, and H2 sections listing your key pages with one-line descriptions. Add /llms-full.txt with the concatenated full text of every important page on one URL. The first file is the index. The second is the one-shot ingestion file. Both follow the convention at llmstxt.org.
Step 5
Update robots.txt with an explicit AI bot allowlist
Replace any wildcard rules with explicit User-agent allows for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, GoogleOther, Applebot, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, FacebookBot, Bytespider, CCBot, cohere-ai, MistralAI-User, Amazonbot, DuckAssistBot, YouBot. Each on its own block with Allow: /. Decide consciously whether to allow training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, FacebookBot) or only retrieval bots.
Step 6
Optimize Google Business Profile
Claim and verify your GBP listing. Set the primary category that matches your business type exactly. Add 5 to 10 secondary categories. Fill every service field. Set service area to your actual coverage radius. Add 20+ photos including team and work-in-progress. Post weekly updates. Respond to every review within 48 hours. Google AI Overviews pulls heavily from GBP for local-intent queries.
Step 7
Submit 30 to 50 vertical-directory citations
Pick directories LLMs trust for your category. For contractors: Houzz, Yelp, Angi, BBB, HomeAdvisor, BuildZoom, Porch, plus your trade-specific lists. For therapists: Psychology Today, Healthgrades, GoodTherapy, Zocdoc, TherapyDen, Theravive. For both: Better Business Bureau, Yellow Pages, Bing Places, Apple Maps, your local chamber of commerce. NAP (name, address, phone) consistency across every listing matters more than the count.
Step 8
Publish 4 source-grounded blog posts per month
Each post answers one specific question a prospect would ask. Front-load the answer in the first 30 to 60 words. Include 2 to 3 inline citations to authoritative sources (research papers, .gov, .edu, industry data). Embed at least one statistic with a named source. Add direct quotes from experts where possible. Use FAQPage schema on Q&A blocks and Article (BlogPosting) schema on the post itself. The Princeton GEO study (arXiv:2311.09735, KDD 2024) showed these three tactics each produce 30 to 40% relative citation lift.
Step 9
Pitch local press and earn editorial mentions
Long Island has Newsday, LIBN, Long Island Press, Patch, niche trade publications, and dozens of vertical podcasts. Send 10 to 20 pitches per month with a real story angle (not a press release). Earned editorial appears in LLM citation training data at a meaningfully higher rate than self-published content. Skip press release distribution services. Press releases are 0.04% of LLM citations (per ALM Corp's 2025 analysis).
Step 10
Build a continuous citation tracker and re-audit Day 30
Set up a daily cron that hits Anthropic, OpenAI, Perplexity, and (when accessible) Gemini with your 10 baseline queries. Parse responses for your business name and source URL. Store results in a database. Render a dashboard showing share-of-voice over time. On Day 30, re-run the audit and compare. AEO score should lift 15+ points from on-page work alone. Citation rate movement comes from steps 6 through 9.
Common questions
What is AEO?
Answer Engine Optimization. The practice of getting your business cited as a source when AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews) answer questions in your category. It overlaps with SEO by about 80%. The 20% delta is structured Q&A content, llms.txt, AI-bot allowlists, and brand mentions on platforms LLMs trust.
Can I do AEO without doing SEO?
No. LLMs cite sites that are already authoritative. Authority comes from the same signals that rank pages on Google: links, mentions, technical health, topical depth. Skipping SEO and doing only AEO is not a real strategy. The work overlaps too much.
How long does it take to see results?
Audit-score lift is same-day. Publishing schema and llms.txt moves AEO scores immediately. Citation rate (the metric that matters for revenue) takes 60 to 90 days. That is how long press placements, directory citations, and content compounding need to register in LLM training and retrieval indexes.
Do I need a custom-built site?
No. Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, and Webflow all support custom JSON-LD injection, llms.txt at the root, and robots.txt edits. The audit at silvo.systems/audit works on any platform. Some platforms cap your AEO score at around 80 because of bloat or limited schema support; if that becomes the ceiling, then a rebuild makes sense.
What does this cost if I hire it out?
Self-doing the steps in this guide takes 30 to 50 hours over a month for a typical service business. If you hire Silvo Systems, the productized AEO Foundations tier ($2,000 setup + $2,000/mo) covers schema, robots.txt, llms.txt, GBP, 30 vertical citations, basic citation tracker, and 2 source-grounded blog posts per month. The Authority tier ($4,000 + $4,000/mo, default tier) adds press pitching, full tracker dashboard, and 4 blog posts per month.
Want this run for you?
Three founding spots open at 50% off the retainer in exchange for a published case study. AEO Foundations or Authority tier.
Book a 30-min scoping call