The short version
If your SEO is sound, you’re most of the way there.
If your SEO is sound, you’re already most of the way to showing up in AI search, because AI search tools pull their answers from the same pages, the same indexes and the same signals that SEO works on. The panic in marketing circles about AI replacing search has sold a lot of new packages. For a plumber, roofer or HVAC company with a well-built site, very little of it is needed.
The URL of this post puts a number on it: 90 percent. That’s our opinion from doing the work, not a measured statistic. When we list everything that gets a service business cited in an AI answer, nearly the whole list is work a good SEO program already does. The rest is short, and it fits inside the same program.
Google agrees with the core of this. Its guidance on AI features says the established SEO practices still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that you don’t need new AI text files, special schema or extra technical work to appear.
The argument
Why the overlap is so large.
The sources are the same. AI search tools don’t know your business from thin air. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode write from Google’s index. ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Copilot crawl the web and draw on search indexes, with Copilot leaning on Bing. If your pages rank in search, they’re in the pool AI tools pick from. If they don’t, they mostly aren’t.
The quality signals are the same. SEO rewards pages that answer the searcher’s question with specific, trustworthy information, on a site other people vouch for through links and reviews. Those are the pages an AI tool wants to cite, because citing a weak page makes its answer weak.
The local facts are the same. Local SEO already makes you keep your name, phone, hours and services consistent across your site, Google Business Profile and directories. AI tools build their picture of your company from those same places.
The technical base is the same. A fast site whose pages can be crawled, with the important content in plain text and sensible internal links, is the starting point for both.
What carries over
The SEO work that already counts for AI search.
If your SEO program does these things, it’s already doing AI search work, whatever the invoice calls it:
- A fast site that Google and Bing can crawl and index
- A page for each service and each main town you cover
- A complete Google Business Profile with the right categories
- Matching listings on Bing, Apple and the major directories
- A steady flow of detailed customer reviews
- Internal links that tie services, towns and guides together
- Schema that describes your business and services
- Pages that answer the questions customers ask
- Links and mentions from local and trade websites
- Tracking that ties traffic to calls and booked jobs
If something on that list is missing, fix it before you buy anything labeled “AI.” Each item helps you in regular search and AI search at the same time, which makes it the best value on the table. If any term on the list is unfamiliar, the marketing glossary explains it.
What’s left
The short list of what to add.
Here’s the remainder. None of it is a new channel, and all of it fits inside the SEO work you’re already paying for.
Answer-first writing
Open each key section with a direct, two- or three-sentence answer that makes sense when quoted alone. Plenty of pages that rank still bury the answer in paragraph five.
Stricter fact consistency
AI tools combine many sources into one answer, so a stale phone number on an old directory hurts more than it used to. Clean up the long tail of listings, not only the big ones.
Mentions beyond links
Reviews, trade association listings, manufacturer dealer pages and local press all shape how AI tools describe you, linked or not.
Open doors for AI crawlers
Let OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in through robots.txt, and check that your firewall or CDN isn’t blocking them by default.
Bing, not only Google
Submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools and claim Bing Places. Copilot draws on Bing, and it’s easy to forget.
Watching the answers
Spot-check your key questions in the main AI tools each month, and track AI referral visits in GA4 as their own channel.
We also add an llms.txt file, a proposed convention that points AI tools at a site’s key pages. It takes minutes, so it’s worth doing, but Google says it doesn’t need one and it’s nowhere near the top of this list. The answer engine optimization guide walks through every item step by step.
Save your money
What to skip.
A separate AI readiness audit. If your agency does SEO well, it already knows whether your pages are indexed, specific and consistent. Paying a second time for the same review buys you a report, not a result.
Guaranteed AI mentions. No one controls which sources ChatGPT or an AI Overview cites, and answers change from one search to the next. A guarantee here is a sales line.
Mass-produced AI content. Publishing hundreds of AI-written pages to “cover every question” runs into Google’s spam policy on scaled content, which targets low-value pages made in bulk to manipulate rankings, however they’re produced. It can drag down the pages that were working.
A site rebuild “for AI.” If your site is fast, crawlable and well organized, AI search doesn’t need a new one. It needs better answers on the pages you have.
Special AI schema. Google says no special markup is required for its AI features. Accurate, standard schema that matches the page is all you need.
Keep score
How to tell whether it’s working.
Google counts clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the regular Web search totals in Search Console, with no separate filter. So the same report you use for SEO already includes Google’s AI features. Watch the trend on your service and question pages.
Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini show up in GA4 as referral traffic from their domains. Group them into an “AI search” channel so you can see the line grow. Once a month, run your ten most important customer questions through those tools and note whether you’re cited and whether your facts are right.
Then judge it by the number that pays the bills: calls, estimates and booked jobs. If AI search work isn’t adding to those over time, it isn’t working, whatever the screenshots say.
How we handle it
AI search is part of the SEO program, not an add-on.
At Lithium Marketing, AI SEO is built into every SEO program , which typically runs $1,300 to $3,000 a month. The scope includes answer-first content, specific facts on every key page, schema, consistent business facts across the web, topical depth, llms.txt and AI crawler rules. We never price it separately, and we don’t sell a standalone AI audit.
It works the way this article argues it should. Sarkinen Plumbing holds 44 number-one rankings in AI search, and Dixie Glass has 39 AI mentions and an AI audience reach of more than 150,000. Both came from SEO programs, not separate AI projects. No one can promise you an AI mention; what we guarantee is the work.
Want the basics first? Read what AEO is and AEO vs GEO vs SEO . For Google specifically, read how to appear in Google AI Overviews .
