What AEO and GEO mean for a trade business

Publishing an llms.txt file does almost nothing. Most sites that publish one get zero requests from the models. Keyword stuffing the business name in the Google Business Profile gets the profile suspended. Writing pages that only swap the city name produces thin content that gets filtered.

On a site we build, every service page starts with the direct answer. Schema is on the page. The Google Business Profile categories and services match the site. If you add the $449 a month AI search visibility service, we track a set of prompts across the major tools and record where the business is named. That is a measurement service, not a ranking guarantee.

The base work is still the website and the profile. A clean site with answer-first pages and a complete profile is what most contractors need before any extra AI tracking is useful.

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The models look for a short, complete answer near the top of a page. They look for consistent business information across the site, the Google Business Profile, and other listings. They look for reviews and third-party mentions that describe the same business. Those three things cover most of the citations a contractor can earn without a large content team.

Start with the service pages. Write the first sentence under each heading as the direct answer to the heading. "A furnace that is not blowing hot air is usually a filter, a thermostat, or a failed blower motor. The diagnostic is $X. We come out the same day inside the city." That sentence is what gets lifted.

Then check the Google Business Profile. The primary category matches the main service. The services list matches the pages on the site. The phone number is the same everywhere. Photos are recent. Reviews have replies that name the job.

Then look for existing mentions. Trade association directories, municipal rebate pages, local news that already named the business. Make sure the name and phone on those listings match. Do not create new listings just to have more. Inconsistent listings hurt more than missing ones.

If you want to know whether the business is being named, we can run a set of prompts each month across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The report shows which prompts named the business and which sources the models cited. That is measurement. It does not create the mentions. The mentions come from the pages and the profile.

The $449 a month AI search visibility service is that measurement plus the on-page adjustments that make the existing pages easier to cite. It is not a separate ranking product.

Most of the AEO and GEO advice written for software companies does not apply to a trade business. You do not need a large blog. You do not need to publish an llms.txt file. You do not need to buy mentions. You need the emergency page to answer the question, the cost page to publish a range, and the profile to be current. Those three things move more calls than any AI-specific tactic.

The website build and the Google Business Profile management already do most of the AEO and GEO work. The answer-first pages are part of the build. The profile consistency is part of the $149 management. The optional AI tracking is only useful after those two are in place. Starting with the tracking before the pages and the profile exist produces a report that shows zero mentions.

Call +1 (250) 344-1619 or book at https://www.wardorx.com/book. We will look at the current site and profile and say which of the three is the actual gap.

For a contractor the service pages do more work than blog posts. A page titled "Furnace replacement cost Calgary" that publishes a range and a financing number answers the query and can be cited. A blog post about "the history of heating" does not. We build the service and cost pages first. Blog posts are only added when they answer a specific diagnostic question that customers already ask on the phone.

Before any AI tracking is useful, the name, phone, and service area must match across the website, the Google Business Profile, and the main directories. We run that check as part of the profile management or the site build. Differences are corrected. Once the information is consistent, the models have a single entity to cite.

This work does not guarantee a mention in any AI answer. Models change. Prompts change. A business with clean pages and a current profile is more likely to be named than one without them. That is the extent of the claim.

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Customers search the symptom before they search the service. "Why is my furnace blowing cold air" or "toilet keeps running" are diagnostic queries. A short page that lists the common causes, states which ones are safe to check, and gives the starting price for a diagnostic gets cited by answer systems and converts the calls that are not DIY. These pages also feed the service pages through internal links.

We write the first draft from the questions your techs already answer on the phone. You correct the technical details. The page stays short.

The emergency page links to the cost page for people who are not in an emergency. The cost page links to the financing details. The diagnostic pages link to the relevant service page. The links use the actual service name, not "click here". That structure helps both search engines and the models understand which page answers which question.

Each service page carries LocalBusiness or the specific subtype schema (HVACBusiness, Plumber) plus the service details. The schema includes the phone, the service area, and the URL. It does not include fake ratings or review counts. The ratings come from the Google Business Profile, which is already public.

The $449 month runs a fixed set of prompts that match the services you sell. For an HVAC company the prompts include "furnace repair Calgary", "heat pump installer near me", and "furnace replacement cost". The report lists which tools named the business, which sources they cited, and whether the citation was the website or the profile. You can see the change month to month. If the citations are zero, the next step is usually more consistent information or more answer-first pages, not more tracking.

Call +1 (250) 344-1619.