Get found where your customers are looking

SEO and AI search for owner-operators in Asheville, Western North Carolina, and anywhere else. The trade calls the second half GEO or AEO. I call it being the answer when someone asks. Measured in booked calls, not rankings reports.

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6 to 164 keywordstop-three to top-ten, Unique Places to Save, two years 43% of searchesshow an AI answer on top, Similarweb, July 2026 45% used AIto find a local business this year, up from 6%, BrightLocal 33 to 45 out of 100what three WNC practices scored before they were clients

What it did

Unique Places to Save

Search Console growth chart and an AI answer citing the site go here

6 top-three keywords to 164 top-ten in two years

The problem: A conservation nonprofit whose website ranked for six keywords in the top three, and whose donors and partners couldn't find it for the questions they actually ask.
What I built: The technical basics, the pages that answer buyer questions, a content engine of three to four expert posts a month, an internal-linking pass across 200+ blog posts and project pages, and an automated refresh system that keeps old content current.
What happened: 164 keywords in the top ten, 254 search features, domain authority from 17 to 26, and the site now surfaces in Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and ChatGPT answers.

Technical SEOContentAI search

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New Chapter Ventures

The search results page for the core question goes here

Found on Google, chosen over national groups

The problem: A church adaptive-reuse nonprofit launching with a small team. The search plan had to fill the pipeline slowly, not flood it.
What I built: An SEO and AI search plan around "adaptive reuse for churches" and related questions, built on research showing the other groups in the space mostly inactive online, plus the site and content it runs on.
What happened: Before the content plan had run, an out-of-state church group found the organization through a Google search, compared it with the national groups, and came to it. The initial results have been so good that the full plan has been slowed down so the team can catch up.

Search planAI searchContent

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Three Western North Carolina businesses

Redacted answer log goes here

Scores of 33 to 45 out of 100 on the questions their buyers ask

The problem: Aesthetics, functional medicine, and solar. All three ranked fine for their own name.
What I found: Invisible on the highest-revenue questions. Unclaimed profiles with ratings years out of date. An open slot on the main industry list that nobody had claimed. A whole category being handed to two national aggregators.
What happens next: The free playbook shows you the same ten answers for your business. The pattern is the same every time, and it's fixable. This is what I can help you with.

AI searchReviewsProfiles

Search split in two, and the second half doesn't show links

Google puts an AI answer on top of somewhere between a fifth and half of US searches. When it appears, the top result loses about 58% of its clicks. Outside Google, 45% of people used ChatGPT or a similar tool to find a local business this year. So there are two ways to be found now: ranked in the list, and named in the answer. You need both, and most SEO still only does the first.

Find out how you show up now

I take the ten highest-value questions your buyers actually ask and run them against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, plus Google and Bing. I log the verbatim answers, trace every answer to its source, and score you out of 100. That's the free playbook. Most people learn more from it than from a year of rank reports.

Make your site the best answer

The technical basics done properly, with the AI crawlers allowed in. Then pages that answer the questions people actually ask, with real prices, real comparisons, and plain language, because that's the format engines quote. And the layer the engines read: your Google Business Profile, the directories, the industry lists, the review sites, the profiles you didn't know existed, claimed and corrected so what they say matches what's true.

Earn the mentions

Four to six pieces a month written to be quoted: the buyer questions, the comparisons, the explanations your competitors are too busy to write. Pitches to get you into the roundups and lists that decide your category. Where it fits, a presence on the places engines lean on, which today means Reddit, YouTube, and the trade press more than anyone expected.

Measure the thing that matters

Every month, an AI Share of Voice report: the full twenty-five question set for your category, run against every major engine, with the verbatim answers and a trendline. Alongside it, the rankings, and the only number I really care about: how many people called or booked because they found you.

Why good businesses don't get named

When you search your own name, you rank fine. The problem is the question that doesn't include your name: "best med spa in Asheville," "who installs home battery backup near me." To answer that, the engine doesn't read your website. It reads everything else: the roundups, the review sites, the directories, the profiles you may never have claimed.

About 60% of what Google's AI answer cites in local searches is third-party sites, and 87% of what ChatGPT search cites matches Bing's top results, which most local businesses have never submitted to. Your competitors aren't beating you. The third-party layer is making the decisions for you, and if you're not managing it, then your business is at their mercy.

What it costs

AI Visibility Playbook Free

Ten questions, scored, walked through on a 20-minute call.

Ten buyer questions run against every major engine, scored out of 100, the verbatim answer logs, a source-by-source list of what's wrong, a 30-day quick-wins list, and a 90-day plan. Yours to keep and run yourself if you want.

Get the playbook

90-Day Visibility Sprint from $2,000/mo

Three months.

The playbook tells you what's broken. The sprint is me fixing it: citation cleanup, four to six authority pieces a month, placement pitches, LinkedIn assets, and the monthly Share of Voice report. Local businesses land near the floor; national and B2B categories cost more because there's more to move.

Ongoing $1,500/mo

After the sprint.

After 90 days most of the structural work is done. Holding a position costs less than taking one, so the retainer costs less than the sprint. The report keeps coming every month.

Website Sprint $4,500 to $15,000+

When the site is the problem. Four to six weeks.

Most owner-operator sites are fine for the name search and missing the pages that answer buyer questions. When the site itself is in the way, I rebuild it so the engines can read it and people can book from it. Essential at $4,500 on a template with your copy, up to custom at $15,000 and up.

How it works

Playbook.
Ten real questions, every engine, scored, with the answer logs. You see exactly where you stand and what to fix first.
Fix the layer.
Profiles claimed and corrected, directories and lists filled in, the crawlers let in. Unglamorous, and where most of the early movement comes from.
Build the answers.
Pages and pieces written to be quoted, placements pitched, distribution where your buyers already are.
Measure.
Share of Voice, rankings, and booked calls, every month, with a decision on what to do next.

Who this is for

Established businesses whose customers ask a question before they buy. Independent practices, where ChatGPT runs no ads against health questions and the only way into the answer is to earn it. Local service companies: solar, home performance, contractors, HVAC. Professional services, whose category has the lowest AI citation rate of any, which means almost nobody has done this yet. Nonprofits whose donors and partners research them the way patients research a doctor.

Probably not a fit if you want to rank number one for a vanity keyword by Friday, you want to buy links, you're not willing to ask customers for reviews, or you're pre-revenue.

SEO Asheville

I live and work here. Two years after Helene, the top barrier owners name is reduced customer traffic, and being the business the engines name is the cheapest customer traffic there is. It doesn't stop when you stop paying for ads, and in most local categories here nobody is managing it yet.

I work with businesses in Asheville, Hendersonville, Waynesville, Black Mountain, Weaverville, Brevard, and Boone, and remotely with businesses anywhere in the country.

Questions people ask before they call

Is SEO still worth it in 2026?

Yes, with a change in what you're buying. Ranking still brings the majority of business traffic, but the click-through on a top result has fallen by more than half where AI answers appear. So the work has to earn two things now: the ranking and the mention.

If someone sells you rankings alone, they're selling you 2019. If someone sells you AI search visibility alone, they're selling you snake oil. Search and AI are blending, and you need to do both.

What's the difference between SEO and GEO (or AEO)?

SEO gets you ranked in a list of links. GEO, generative engine optimization, gets you named inside an AI-written answer. AEO, answer engine optimization, is the same idea with a different label. Google says they're the same discipline. In practice, GEO leans harder on third-party mentions, reviews, and pages that can be quoted, and it's measured in citations instead of clicks. I do both, because you need both.

Can you pay ChatGPT to recommend your business?

No. ChatGPT sells ads in some categories, but the recommendations inside an answer aren't for sale, and in health categories there are no ads at all as of this writing. The only way in is to be the business the sources the engine reads keep pointing to.

How do I get AI to recommend my business?

Five things, in order: a fast, crawlable site that the AI search bots are allowed to read; pages that answer buyer questions plainly enough to quote; a Google Business Profile and directory listings that are claimed, accurate, and current; recent reviews on the sites the engines trust; and mentions in the roundups and lists for your category. The free playbook tells you which of the five you're missing.

How long does it take?

Citation cleanup and profile fixes move within weeks; some AI answers change within the first month. Rankings for competitive terms take three to six months. The sprint is 90 days because that's how long it takes to do the structural work once and see the trendline move.

Do I need a new website?

Usually not. Most owner-operator sites are fine for the name search. They're missing the pages that answer buyer questions and the technical basics that let the engines read them. If the site is the problem, I'll say so, and I build sites too.

What is an llms.txt file, and do I need one?

It's a plain-text file that describes your site for AI tools. Google has said it ignores them, and no AI engine has said it uses them. I add one because it's free, but it isn't where results come from. Anyone selling it as the key to AI search is selling you a very expensive text file.

How do you measure it?

Three numbers, every month: your AI Share of Voice on the twenty-five questions that matter in your category, your rankings on the searches that matter, and how many people called or booked because they found you. If the third number isn't moving by the end of the sprint, we talk about why.

Start with the free call.

Sixty minutes. I'll ask a lot of questions, tell you what I'd do, and tell you what I think it's worth. Within 48 hours you get a written playbook you can run with or without me. No pitch, no obligation.

Book the free call Or send me a note first