What is the difference between SEO and AI search optimisation?
Less than the new names suggest. You will see it called GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AEO (answer engine optimisation), and it means making your site easy for AI assistants to read, understand and quote. Google's own guidance says that optimising for its AI answers is still SEO, because those answers are built on its normal search systems. The parts that are new are practical ones: making sure AI crawlers are allowed in, checking how assistants describe you today, and measuring citations as well as clicks. We treat it as one job, not two.
Can you guarantee a first-page ranking, or that ChatGPT will recommend us?
No, and nobody honestly can. Google says in its own guidance that no one can guarantee a number one ranking, and that even a page that meets every requirement is not guaranteed to be indexed or shown. AI assistants are less predictable still: the same question can produce a different answer for a different person on a different day. What we commit to is the work: the technical barriers we find removed, clear pages that answer real questions, open access for the crawlers you choose, and honest reporting on what changed.
Do we need an llms.txt file?
It will not hurt, and it is not a magic switch. llms.txt is a proposed convention, first published in 2024: a plain text file that gives AI tools a short summary of your business and links to your most important pages. Google has said plainly that Google Search, including its AI answers, ignores the file, so it will neither help nor harm you there. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity each publish one for their own developer documentation, but their crawler guidance, as we write this in October 2026, names robots.txt as the control and does not say that llms.txt affects whether a site is cited. We write and maintain one for you because it takes little effort and is useful to the tools that do read it. We do not sell it as a ranking factor.
Should we let AI crawlers read our site?
For most businesses that want to be found, yes for the search crawlers, and it is your decision for the training ones. The AI companies run separate crawlers for separate jobs. OpenAI, for example, uses one called OAI-SearchBot to show sites in ChatGPT's search answers and another called GPTBot to collect training material, and says a site can allow the first and refuse the second. Google's switch for Gemini, called Google-Extended, has no effect on your normal Google ranking. One caveat: when a person asks an assistant to open a particular page for them, OpenAI and Perplexity both say that visit may not follow robots.txt, so the file governs crawling, not every single visit. We show you what your site allows today, explain each option in plain English, and set the rules you choose.
How long before we see a change?
Crawling fixes show first: once a blocked page can be crawled, Search Console usually reflects it after Google next visits that page. Speed improvements take longer to show there, because Google's Core Web Vitals figures are built from real visits over the previous 28 days. Rankings and AI citations move more slowly still, because search engines need time to revisit the site and reassess it against everyone else's. Judge the work over months, not days. We report as we go, so you can see what has been done and what the data shows.
How do you measure whether AI assistants mention us?
With the reports the search engines provide, plus direct checks. Google Search Console has a generative AI performance report showing how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report showing how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. For ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity we track the visits they send you, and we re-run a fixed list of your buyers' real questions on a schedule and record who is mentioned and which sources are linked. Answers vary from one run to the next, so we report the trend, not a single score.
What does it cost?
Work on the site you already have is quoted as one fixed price, and the scope and the price are agreed in writing before any work starts. If the site itself is the obstacle, our website prices are published: a Startup Website is £1,999 and a Custom Website is £4,950, with an optional care plan at £99 a month after launch. The full list is on our pricing page.
We already have a website. Do you need to rebuild it?
Usually not. Most of this work is done on the site you already have: fixing what blocks crawlers, tidying structure and links, adding structured data, improving speed and writing better pages. If your platform will not let us change something that matters, we tell you exactly what and why, and you decide. If the site itself is the obstacle, we build websites too, at published fixed prices.
Do you build links to our site?
We do not buy links, swap links or use automated link-building services. Google's spam policies name buying links, excessive link exchanges and automated link building as link spam, and a site that breaks those policies can rank lower or drop out of the results altogether. What we do is make your pages worth referring to, and fix the basics that let other people find and cite you accurately. Links earned that way last.
