Guides
The lessons teach the sequence. These guides answer the single questions that come up while you work: what a term means, which option to pick, how often to do something, what to do when it goes wrong. Each one links back to the lesson it belongs to.
Across the whole course
Pages that sit above any single lesson.
AI Search Glossary: 10 Terms Local Business Owners Need
GEO, AEO, RAG, grounding, citation, NAP, schema, entity and AI Overviews, defined in plain language, each with why it matters to you.
The 90-Day Local AI SEO Checklist
Every task from the course sequenced into a dated 90-day plan, grouped by month, with time estimates and a definition of done for each.
Lesson 1: How AI Search Picks Local Businesses
The retrieval-and-citation mechanics behind every AI recommendation of a local business.
AEO vs GEO vs Local SEO: Which One Are You Actually Doing?
One-line definitions of each, where they overlap, what a local business should actually care about, and why most vendor distinctions are marketing.
ChatGPT Search vs Google AI Overviews vs Perplexity: Where Each One Gets Local Business Facts
Which sources each engine leans on for local queries, what a citation looks like in each, and where to spend your effort first.
How Retrieval-Augmented Generation Decides Which Local Business to Name
Query, retrieval, grounding, answer: walk the four steps an AI assistant takes, and see exactly where your business can intervene.
What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
A plain definition of GEO, how it differs from classic SEO, and what a local business actually changes, without the vendor jargon.
Which AI Crawlers Read Your Site: GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and OAI-SearchBot
What each named AI crawler is, who runs it, the difference between training and search crawls, and how to spot them in your server logs.
Why AI Assistants Recommend a Competitor Instead of You
The usual causes, thin profile, no citable page, stale third-party data, how to check each one, and what to fix first.
Lesson 2: Google Business Profile for AI Search
Making your Google Business Profile the clean, consistent fact source AI engines prefer.
Google Business Profile vs Apple Business Connect vs Bing Places: Which to Claim First
Which assistants read which profile, the effort-to-payoff for each, and a claiming order for an owner with limited time.
How Often to Update Your Google Business Profile
A realistic cadence for posts, photos, hours and review replies, plus a 20-minute monthly routine and what is just busywork.
How to Pick Your Primary Google Business Profile Category
Why primary category outweighs every secondary one, how to research what competitors use, and what happens after you change it.
NAP Consistency Explained: Why One Wrong Phone Number Breaks AI Answers
What NAP consistency means, how one mismatch spreads through data aggregators, and a simple audit pass you can run this week.
Service-Area Businesses With No Public Address: What to Do
How hiding your address changes what AI can verify, how to set service areas correctly, and what to put on your site instead.
Lesson 3: Local Site Content AI Can Cite
What on-page content AI assistants are willing to quote, and how to write it.
How to Write a Service Page an AI Will Cite
A section-by-section structure for the pages that matter most commercially, with a worked example you can adapt.
Long-Form Guides vs Short Answer Pages: What AI Search Actually Pulls From
Why passage-level clarity beats word count, when a long guide is justified, and how to split a bloated page.
What Makes a Page Quotable by an AI Assistant
Self-contained answers, specific verifiable facts, clean headings and dates: the properties that make a passage citable, with examples.
Lesson 4: Schema and Structured Data for Local AI SEO
Machine-readable facts so AI engines can resolve your business as an entity.
Do You Need Schema to Appear in AI Overviews?
A direct answer: what schema demonstrably helps with, what it doesn't, and who should skip it and do content work first.
How to Add JSON-LD to a Local Business Site
Where the script tag goes, how to do it on WordPress or a site builder, how to validate it, and the mistakes that silently break a block.
Marking Up areaServed When You Serve Several Towns
areaServed shapes, how many places to list before it stops helping, and keeping schema consistent with your profile service areas.
Using sameAs to Link Your Business to Wikidata and Your Real Profiles
What sameAs does, which profiles to list and in what order, whether you need a Wikidata item, and how to check the links resolve.
What LocalBusiness Schema Is and Which Fields Matter
The LocalBusiness type and its subtypes, the fields worth filling, the ones that change nothing, and a minimal working example.
Lesson 5: Build a Local Site AI Can Find
The technical baseline that lets AI crawlers reach and read your site.
llms.txt for Local Businesses: What It Is and Whether It Helps
What the proposed standard is, which engines consume it today, a minimal example, and an honest verdict on effort versus payoff.
robots.txt for AI Crawlers: Allowing GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot
Per-bot user-agent strings, allow and disallow blocks to copy, what blocking actually costs you, and how to verify the file is live.
Website Builder vs WordPress for an AI-Findable Local Site
What each platform makes easy or hard for schema, speed and control, migration cost, and a decision rule by situation.
Lesson 6: Reviews, Mentions and Citations
How off-site signals feed the facts and sentiment AI assistants repeat.
Citations vs Unstructured Brand Mentions: Which Moves AI Visibility
What each is, how each reaches an AI answer, why directory volume plateaus, and where to spend your next 10 hours.
How AI Reads Your Reviews: What Sentiment Analysis Picks Up
What aspect-based sentiment analysis extracts from review text, which attribute words recur, and why a few specific reviews beat many generic ones.
How to Ask for Reviews Without Breaking Google's Rules
What Google prohibits, timing and wording that work, SMS and email templates, and how to handle a negative review.
Lesson 7: Measure Your AI Search Visibility
A way to tell whether any of the previous work is landing.
How Often to Re-Check Your AI Search Visibility
Why weekly checking produces noise, a monthly and quarterly rhythm that works, and what to log each time.
How to Test Whether ChatGPT and Perplexity Recommend Your Business
Build a prompt set that mirrors real customer questions, run it across engines, and record results without fooling yourself.
What to Do When AI Search Says Something Wrong About Your Business
Why the error usually starts off-platform, how to fix the underlying source, the feedback routes that exist, and realistic timelines.
Lesson 8: Where to Go Next
An honest assessment of what the course covers and where its ceiling is.
What to Do After You Finish the 90-Day Checklist
The recurring monthly and quarterly tasks, what to re-audit and when, and the signs your foundation has slipped.
When Foundation-Level AI SEO Stops Being Enough
The signals you've outgrown the basics, what advanced work involves, and an honest DIY-versus-hiring comparison.
The guides support the course, they do not replace it
If you have not read Lesson 1 yet, start there. It explains the mechanics every guide assumes.
No signup. No paywall. 8 lessons, ~80 minutes.