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AEO SEO Consultant: What They Do, How To Hire One, And How Your Agent OS Keeps The Receipts
An AEO SEO consultant is an expert who helps your brand rank in Google and get chosen, cited and recommended when people ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Mode a question.
My first pick is my own team at Goldie Agency, and I'm disclosing that bias straight away.
This quick start explains the role, the deliverables to demand and seven steps to hire one.
It also shows how your Agent OS keeps its own baseline of AI answers, so you never take a consultant's report on trust.
If you want help from day one, book a free strategy session and get a custom visibility plan for Google and AI.
What an AEO SEO consultant is
An AEO SEO consultant is an expert who helps your brand rank in Google and get chosen and cited in AI answers.
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation, which is the work of getting your content picked when an AI assistant answers a question.
SEO is the classic work of ranking in search results, and a good consultant does both in one plan.
You'll also hear GEO, which is generative engine optimisation, and most people use it for the same goal.
The classic work still matters, because Google's guide to AI features says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Google also says there are no extra requirements, no special schema.org markup and no new AI text files needed for those features.
How it differs from a classic SEO consultant
The difference shows up in what each one checks and what each one reports.
| Area | Classic SEO consultant | AEO SEO consultant |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | They ask whether you rank in Google. | They ask whether you rank and whether AI answers name and cite you. |
| Crawlers | They check Googlebot can reach your pages. | They also check OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. |
| Content | They match pages to search intent. | They also make each page answer the question in its first sentence. |
| Authority | They focus on backlinks. | They also plan mentions on reviews, comparisons and expert articles. |
| Facts | They check your About and contact pages. | They make your facts match everywhere so AI tools describe you correctly. |
| Reporting | They report rankings and clicks. | They also report dated AI answers for a fixed prompt list. |
What you should get
A real engagement leaves a trail of work you can check before results show up.
| Deliverable | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Prompt map | You agree twenty to fifty buyer questions together at the start. |
| Baseline | You get dated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google before any work begins. |
| Crawl review | You see whether Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot can reach your key pages. |
| Fact list | You get every place where your name, services or prices don't match. |
| Answer-first pages | Your money pages open with the answer and carry short FAQ sections. |
| Coverage plan | You get the reviews, comparisons and publications to target first. |
| Re-check | You see the same prompts asked again on a schedule, next to enquiries. |
If a proposal has none of these, you're buying a label rather than a service.
My first pick, with the bias disclosed
Goldie Agency is the SEO and link building agency I started on my own, and it now has 70+ people.It's my business, so weigh this section as the most biased on the page.
The agency site lists link building with manual outreach and no PBNs, a Complete Site Audit and an AI Automation service.
AI runs around 80% of our internal operations through the same Agent OS I teach on this site.
I'm not a solo freelancer, so when you book the session you speak with an experienced strategist from my team.
The strategy session page describes a free AI brand visibility session that helps brands get found, cited and recommended by Google and AI.
It names Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and it says the session is 100% free with no obligation.
It lists a custom visibility plan, a clear AI visibility roadmap, a strategy built around your brand, a competitor gap analysis and a plan for traffic, mentions and leads.
Paid work is scoped after the call, so I won't quote a price here.
Book a free strategy session and get your questions answered by an experienced strategist.🔥 Want the exact AI SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?
Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.
Quick start: hire an AEO SEO consultant in seven steps
This is the fastest safe route from a cold start to a signed first phase.
- First, write twenty buyer questions and ask each one in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google, saving every answer with the date.
- Second, open your robots.txt and check for rules that block Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot.
- Third, decide whether you want a one-off audit and plan, a monthly partner, team training or advisory calls.
- Fourth, shortlist three consultants who publish their own thinking on AI search.
- Fifth, ask every consultant the same questions, which are listed below.
- Sixth, ask each one for a sample report with tracked prompts and dated answers.
- Seventh, agree a first phase of around ninety days and put the re-check date in writing.
📞 Want to test a strategist against your own baseline?
Book a free strategy session with Goldie Agency, bring the AI answers you recorded and see what our competitor gap analysis finds that you missed.
How an AEO SEO consultant fits an Agent OS workflow
My Agent OS is a dashboard that runs a crew of AI agents, such as Hermes and Claude, under one shared memory.
That makes hiring a consultant safer, because you stop relying on their report as your only source of truth.
Your agents keep the baseline and do the repetitive asking and logging, and the consultant spends their time on judgement.
| Job | Your Agent OS handles it | The consultant handles it | You handle it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt baseline | An agent asks your buyer prompts on a schedule and saves every dated answer and cited source. | The consultant chooses which prompts matter and reads the patterns. | You confirm the prompts match real buyers. |
| Crawl watch | An agent reads robots.txt and flags new blocks for the AI search crawlers. | The consultant checks firewall and CDN rules with your host. | You approve any change to the live site. |
| Fact file | An agent keeps one file of your brand facts and lists mismatches it finds. | The consultant decides which mismatches to fix first. | You confirm every fact is true. |
| Answer-first drafts | An agent drafts first-sentence answers and FAQ sections for review. | The consultant edits them for accuracy and intent. | You add the real experience only you have. |
| Coverage log | An agent logs every new review, byline and mention into shared memory. | The consultant plans which sources to target next. | You give interviews, quotes and approvals. |
| Monthly report | An agent compares this month's answers with last month's. | The consultant explains what changed and adjusts the plan. | You decide whether to continue. |
The shared memory is what makes this work over months.
Every prompt, answer and mention lands in one place, so any agent can compare this month with last month.
That means you can check a consultant's claims against your own dated records without arguing about screenshots.
It also means you pay the consultant for thinking rather than for copying answers into a spreadsheet.
🔥 Want the exact AI SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?
Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.
Setting up the agent side
Here is how I'd set it up before the first consultant call.
- I'd keep one file with the buyer prompts, the money pages and the brand facts, and every agent would read from it.
- I'd give the prompt agent a written skill file, which is a recipe that says which AI tools to ask, how often and what to log.
- I'd tell it to save the raw answer, the date, the brands named and the cited sources, never just a score.
- I'd give the crawl agent the official crawler names from OpenAI and Perplexity so it knows what to look for.
- I'd share the monthly comparison with the consultant before each review call.
Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is counted in the "Web" search type of the Search Console Performance report, so feed those numbers into the same memory.
Microsoft's AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools adds Total Citations and Average Cited Pages for Copilot and AI summaries in Bing.
My King of AEO guide covers the answer-engine setup I run every day.
📞 Want a strategist to read your agent logs with you?
Grab a free strategy session and get a clear AI visibility roadmap plus a plan for traffic, mentions and leads.
Questions to ask every AEO SEO consultant
- Which buyer prompts will you track, and can I choose them with you?
- Which AI tools will you check, and how often will you re-ask the prompts?
- Will I see the raw dated answers and the cited sources, or only a score?
- How do you check that OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot can reach my pages?
- Which third-party sources would you target first, and why?
- How do you use AI in your own work, and what does a person review before anything goes live?
- Can you work from the baseline my own agents keep?
- Who owns the content, accounts and data if we stop working together?
Red flags
- Walk away from any consultant who guarantees a mention in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI.
- Walk away from any consultant who sells an AI text file or special schema as the secret, because Google says neither is needed.
- Walk away from any consultant who won't record a baseline before they start.
- Walk away from any consultant who hides raw answers behind a score.
- Walk away from any plan built on thousands of AI pages with no human review.
Nobody can guarantee what a model says
Nobody can guarantee what a model says, and that includes me and Goldie Agency.
None of the companies behind ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude publishes a formula for which brands they recommend.
Google's guide says meeting its requirements doesn't guarantee crawling, indexing or serving.
A consultant controls the footprint those systems read and the honesty of the reporting, and nothing more.
Where to go next
If you need delivery as well as strategy, my AI SEO optimization agency quick start explains the six jobs an agency should run.
My best SEO consultant guide covers respected classic consultants.
From this same batch, my best AEO consultant ranking covers individual AI search experts, and my AEO audit guide shows the first-month checks.
Also On Our Network
FAQ
What is an AEO SEO consultant?
An AEO SEO consultant is an expert who helps your brand rank in Google and get chosen and cited in AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Mode. They combine classic SEO with answer engine optimisation in one plan.
How is it different from a classic SEO consultant?
A classic SEO consultant focuses on rankings, clicks and backlinks. An AEO SEO consultant also checks AI crawler access, answer-first content, brand facts, third-party mentions and dated AI answers for buyer prompts.
Who does Julian Goldie recommend as an AEO SEO consultant?
Julian puts his own team at Goldie Agency first and discloses that bias. The way in is a free strategy session that the page describes as a free AI brand visibility session.
Can an AEO SEO consultant guarantee AI mentions?
No. Nobody can guarantee what a model says. A good consultant improves the footprint AI tools read and reports the answers honestly.
How does an Agent OS help when I hire a consultant?
Your agents can ask your buyer prompts on a schedule, save dated answers and cited sources, watch robots.txt and log new mentions. That gives you an independent baseline to check the consultant's reports against.
Is the free strategy session a written report?
No. The page lists a custom visibility plan, an AI visibility roadmap, a competitor gap analysis and your questions answered by an experienced strategist.
Final word on hiring an AEO SEO consultant
Keep your own baseline, ask every consultant the same questions and never pay for a guarantee.
If you'd like my team to look at your brand first, book a free strategy session and leave with a plan for traffic, mentions and leads.
That's how you hire the right AEO SEO consultant.
About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an AI entrepreneur, SEO expert and the founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
My YouTube channel has 400,000+ subscribers, and I run Goldie Agency, a seven-figure SEO agency.
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