If your consulting firm is choosing an AI search optimization agency, check four things before you sign: 1) how the AEO agency creates content for your consulting firm, 2) how it plans topics around your buyers, 3) whether its own content gets cited by AI, and 4) who will do your work.
I’ve been in your executive seat. As CMO at WealthEngine, I invested $20,000 a month with an agency whose real skill was placing ads, not creating rankable content. Before that, as CEO of MailerMailer and GovCon, I grew both companies mostly through SEO and sold both to public firms. At another high-growth company, I invested $80,000 a month with agencies that knew the ad market well. The investments that had the highest ROI were those that used a specific process for creating content. Most agencies, even those claiming SEO expertise, don’t know the nuance of AEO for consulting firms.
I’ve spoken with many consulting firms that hired a low-cost SEO company. The story is almost always a version of this: a year went by, none of the content that firm provided ranked. Zero. Some companies kept paying these agencies because it felt like at least something was happening. But the needle wasn’t moving. In this article, I’ll lay out how to screen an AEO agency so you find the one that is best suited for your needs.
Table of Contents
What to Look for in an SEO Company When AI Search Recommendations Is the Goal
I’ve included quite a few tips in this guide, but if you want the TLDR (top level don’t read) version, this table will guide you. Use the checklist below to compare every AEO agency you talk to, including us.
| What to check | What to ask for as proof |
|---|---|
| Where the content comes from | The questions the SEO company would ask your consultants |
| How topics get picked | The persona, keyword, and prompt research behind a sample plan |
| Whether the agency gets cited | Its own articles showing up when you search in ChatGPT or Perplexity |
| Who does the strategy work | A meeting with the person who will run your interviews |
| Experience with consulting buyers | The questions your buyers ask before they hire a firm |
| How it handles confidential clients | Its process for stories that don’t name the client |
| Technical structure | How schema, tables, topic clusters, and query fan-out shape each article |
| How it works with your marketing team | Who reviews drafts, who posts, and how often you meet |
Your Consulting Expertise Has to Come First
Your firm wins business because of what your consultants know and how they interact with clients, setting proper expectations of outcomes for every consulting project you take on. That in-house expertise also what gets you cited by AI. AI tools look for stories, examples, and insights they can’t find anywhere else.
There are many SEO companies that will hand your content assignments to junior writers who aren’t subject matter experts. Some have AI write it from what’s already available online. Either way, the content comes out generic, and AI has no reason to cite it because there’s nothing unique.
The only approach that works with an AEO agency is to have experienced interviewers debrief your experts with strategic questions that elicit your deep knowledge. At MakeMEDIA, we never have AI write your first draft. Every article starts as a conversation between you and me. AI helps polish your thoughts after that, so the article still sounds like you. Google and others don’t mind because you’re still conveying original thoughts.
When you meet with an AEO agency, ask where its first drafts come from. If the answer is a junior writer or an AI tool, your consultants’ experience won’t make it onto the page.
Ask to See the Interview Questions
The questions are what make an interview work. If you’re not asked the right questions, you won’t be able to share your real expertise, and the content will fall flat.
There are lazy questions and there are deep ones. A lazy question sounds like this: “What are the biggest pain points your clients are seeing right now?” It’s too broad. You’d have to stop and analyze to answer it well. If you can’t recall every important topic in that moment, it never makes it into the content.
A deep question puts the setup inside the question. Say your firm helps clients get their staff to use AI. I might ask you:
“An MIT report found that 95% of corporate generative AI pilots aren’t delivering measurable returns. Many companies see staff who resist AI or only use it in basic ways. You’ve started to see your clients make it work. Tell me about a moment when you saw it click. What was different about the conversation you had that others aren’t having?”
See how different that is to answer? Now you’re remembering a specific client meeting, and recall is fast. Those details are exactly what AI can’t find anywhere else.
Pro Tip:
Ask every AEO agency to show you five questions it would ask one of your consultants. If they read like a survey, your content will read like a survey too. And it won't get cited by AI.
My follow-up questions come from a buyer’s point of view, because I’ve hired many consultants as a CEO. They tend to lead experts to the stories they wouldn’t think to tell on their own.
The Plan Should Start With Your Buyer Personas
Before anyone writes a title or pulls keyword data, a good AEO agency should understand your ideal client profile and the personas inside it. In a consulting sale, several people usually shape the decision to hire you. A C-suite leader may make the final call. Directors and managers weigh in. So do the people who will carry out your recommendations. Each of them has different concerns.
We walk through the buyer journey for every persona. We list the questions each one has at the awareness, consideration, and evaluation stages of the customer journey. Then we line those questions up with what your consultants know, through structured interviews. Content for your clients after the sale matters too, and we can add it later.
See our free AI Persona Generator to build a buyer persona in minutes.
Your Keywords Should Come From Your Buyers
You may already have a word in mind that you’d love to rank for. When an accountant tells me they want to be found for “accountant,” I tell them it’s probably the worst word they could pick. It’s so competitive that the odds of getting cited are tiny.
The intent is also all over the map. Someone typing “accountant” could want a job, a definition, a bookkeeper, or help passing a DCAA audit for a government contract. “Management consultant” has the same problem for your firm. It pulls in students and job seekers along with buyers.
The right words are usually already in your head. They’re also in your files. If you have recorded sales calls or client conversations, that’s a goldmine. We keep them fully confidential and mine them for the phrases your prospects actually use. That gives us your first set of topic clusters, keywords, and prompt ideas. Then we run them through the AI agents for marketing we built for AI search, so your content plan sounds like your buyers.
Client Confidentiality Shouldn’t Stop Your Stories
I completely understand the confidentiality you owe your clients. You’ll probably hit a point in an interview where you say, “I can’t talk about that client.” That’s fine. A good AEO agency knows how to ask the question so you don’t have to name anyone.
You can talk about your process and your approach. You can share results in general terms, like savings of 30% over two years, with no dollar figures. Those stories can turn into case studies with the client’s name left out. And if you have clients who are happy to be named or would give you a testimonial, let’s use that too.
If a client is willing to talk, that’s even better. We’ll prep questions for you and for them, then get on a Zoom call where you interview your client. That’s first-party information AI will never have from anyone else, because the only one who has your clients is you.
Pro Tip:
Ask each AEO agency how it handles a consultant who can't name the client. A clear answer about how they handle confidentiality tells you that they have done this before.
Your Own Data Can Get Cited Fast
Some firms have data no one else has. Maybe you’re the consulting arm of a product company with log files full of usage data. Maybe you survey your clients every year and the answers are sitting in spreadsheets. A trend report built from that data gives AI something original to cite, and AI loves that kind of content.
I’ve done this before. At MailerMailer, we turned billions of email data points into a metrics report that hundreds of media outlets covered. It brought in links and clients we would have otherwise paid for with ads. Ask whether the AEO agency can help you do the same with your data.
Technical Work Should Be Part of the Package
Just producing content isn’t going to work. Your articles need structure that AI can read. A good AI search optimization agency builds technical SEO and AEO into every article. That means schema, word choice, semantic variations, topical density, topic clusters, and query fan-out. Query fan-out is how AI tools break one prompt into many related searches. It also means tables built a certain way and lists where a list helps the reader.
Every article should carry trust signals too. Look for an author box and a published date, plus an updated date when it’s refreshed. Also ask about the content you already have. Refreshing it is often your lowest-hanging fruit, and it helps your new content get found.
See our SEO best practices checklist for the on-page basics.
One Conversation Can Go a Lot of Places
Since we record every conversation, you can get more out of it than articles. If you want, your team can cut short clips in your actual voice and post them on YouTube and LinkedIn. YouTube is worth it for AI search. BrightEdge data shows YouTube is the most-cited domain in Google AI Overviews, with a 29.5% share, though ChatGPT cites it much less often. Low-cost clip tools can do the editing, and your marketing team may already have one.
How to Evaluate an SEO Agency’s AI Search Claims
If you’re deciding how to choose an AEO agency, these are the same checks I used when I hired agencies as a CEO and CMO. Give every AEO agency on your list about 15 minutes of this.
Check Their Citations Yourself
Ask for proof that the AEO agency gets cited by AI. Then don’t just take their word for it. Go into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude yourself and ask questions about the AI search agency’s own topics. See whether its articles show up. That’s proof you saw with your own eyes.
See our AI search optimization case study, where one podcast interview got AI to recommend a firm in three weeks.
Ask How They Keep Citations From Fading
AI citations don’t last long. Scrunch and Stacker analyzed 3.5 million citation events and found the average source loses half its citation activity in about 4.5 weeks. ChatGPT drops sources even faster. Content that goes six months without an update often loses its citations completely, according to Everything PR.
So this process has to keep being fed. You can’t post something once and say two months later that you already covered it. A fresh take with new examples gives you a better chance of being cited again. So does a case study refreshed with newer trends. Ask every AEO agency how often it publishes for clients and how it decides what to refresh.
Take AI Visibility Tools With a Grain of Salt
AI visibility tools claim they can show you which prompts bring up your firm. They usually run $100 to $500 a month. The problem is that there’s no such thing as a neutral prompt. ChatGPT and Claude remember each user’s past conversations. The same prompt typed by two people can return two very different answers.
For example, say a manufacturing executive asks which operations consultants could improve their supply chain for materials in high demand. A hardware vendor types almost the same thing. To the manufacturer, “materials” might mean raw materials. To the hardware vendor, it might mean parts. Each one gets a different answer, shaped by their own chat history.
If your team already uses a visibility tool, we’re happy to work with it, and Semrush is our preferred data provider. We don’t sell one, for the reason above. Check citations yourself, and ask new prospects where they first heard about you.
Get the Whole Process
A lot of AI search agencies will tell you they can do this and show you one or two examples. You need to understand their whole process and see how it ties in with your business. Ask the AEO agency to walk you through every step. The level of detail in this article is the level you should expect before you sign.
Ask Whether They’ve Sat in Your Seat
It matters whether the person leading your work has run a business. I’ve managed large teams at fast-growing companies. I’ve sold three companies to publicly traded firms and been through due diligence each time. That’s why I come at this from a very different angle than someone who only does SEO or content writing.
Meet the People Who Will Do Your Work
I’ve seen many AI search agencies put a front man on the sale. Then the work gets passed to junior people who run the same playbook they run for everybody. Before you decide, talk to the people who will interview your consultants and build your plan. With us, that’s me. Our work is partner-led from start to finish, and we cap our roster at 10 clients so I can give each one that attention.
Make Sure They Focus on Consulting
Some SEO companies will work for anyone, from plumbers to contractors, and use the same playbook for your firm. An AEO agency that focuses on consulting knows what your buyers look for and what content answers their questions. We work only with B2B consulting firms. That’s the only playground we play in.
12 Questions to Ask AEO Agencies
| Question | A strong answer | A weak answer |
|---|---|---|
| Who will interview our consultants? | A named senior strategist who stays on the account | “Our content team,” or someone you haven’t met |
| Can we see the questions you’d ask one of our consultants? | Specific questions built around a client moment | Broad questions about pain points and trends |
| How do you handle a consultant who can’t name the client? | A process for stories that keep the client private | “We’ll keep it general” |
| What research happens before you pick topics? | Buyer personas, the buyer journey, keyword data, and prompt data | A keyword list pulled from a tool |
| Can you work from our webinars, podcasts, and sales calls? | Yes, with a plan to mine them for topics and buyer phrases | Only new interviews, or only new writing |
| Does AI write the first draft? | No. Drafts start from your experts’ recorded words | Yes, and an editor reviews it |
| How often will you publish and refresh content? | A schedule based on how fast AI citations fade | Whenever drafts are ready |
| How do you build technical structure into each article? | Schema, tables, topic clusters, and query fan-out | “We follow SEO best practices” |
| How will you work with our marketing team? | Standing meetings and shared review steps, with your team posting | “We handle everything” |
| How much consultant time will this take? | A set number of sessions per month, scheduled up front | “As little as possible” |
| Which consulting firms have you worked with? | Examples and the buyer questions they answered | Clients from every industry |
| Where can we see your interviews? | A podcast or published interviews | No public examples |
Red Flags When Choosing an SEO Agency for AI Search
If you see any of these while you’re comparing agencies, keep looking:
- The person who sold you the deal disappears, and junior staff without subject matter expertise take over.
- The AEO agency runs one playbook for every industry and can’t tell you what consulting buyers ask before they hire a firm.
- AI writes the first drafts, and your consultants only see them at review time.
- The plan chases broad terms like “consultant” that bring in people who will never hire you.
- The AEO agency promises you’ll get cited or land the top spot in ChatGPT. AI answers change from person to person, so no AI search agency controls that. Our comparison of AI SEO agencies covers what agencies can and can’t promise.
- The plan is one burst of content with no schedule for publishing or refreshing.
- A dashboard is the main proof of results, and you have no way to check citations yourself.
How to Choose an AEO Agency That Works With Your Marketing Team
An AEO agency should work alongside your marketing team and add the expertise it’s missing. We only work with firms that have at least one marketing person, and most have a small team. What they’re usually missing is deep AI search expertise, and that’s what we bring.
Working with us usually goes like this:
Our first meeting covers your goals and what you expect. Then we pick which consultants to interview and look at the content you already have. We figure out how much content it will take to move the needle. After that, we set a standing interview meeting, once or twice a month, in blocks of 30 minutes to an hour. We do the prep before every session, so your consultants can just show up and talk.
Every draft gets a full review. Your consultant reviews it if they’re quoted or named as the author. Your marketing team checks it for your voice and brand, then posts it. Whatever AEO agency you choose, ask who reviews drafts, who posts them, and how often the two teams meet.
See our comparison of the best AI SEO agencies for consulting firms for agencies side by side.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a consulting firm look for in an AEO agency?
Your firm wins business on what your consultants know, so look closely at where an AEO agency’s content comes from. Ask whether it interviews your consultants. Ask whether it can work from webinars and podcasts you’ve already recorded. And ask how it protects client confidentiality when an engagement turns into a case study.
Also ask how the AEO agency chooses topics. AI search agencies that base topics on keyword and AI prompt research can show you the data behind each article, including the search volume and related questions, before anything gets written.
How can you tell whether AI search agencies practice what they sell?
Look at what each AI search agency publishes for itself. Check the dates on its recent articles, and see whether it writes about AI search or about marketing in general. An AEO agency that hasn’t published in months is asking you to trust a method it isn’t using on its own site.
You can also ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude questions about the AEO agency’s own topics and see whether its articles get cited. AI search agencies that earn citations for their own work are showing you the result they sell.
Can an AI search agency create content from webinars and podcasts our consultants have already recorded?
Yes, and it’s often the fastest place to start. Your webinars and podcast interviews already hold your consultants’ expertise in their own words. A good AEO agency maps that material to your buyer personas and keyword research, then turns it into articles and LinkedIn posts. We start every content plan with recordings you already have, because they tend to get results quickly. You can watch our interview process in action on our Executive Signal podcast. Each episode becomes articles on our own site.
What should a consulting firm have ready before hiring an AI search agency?
You’ll want at least one marketing person who can review drafts and publish them. Gather any recordings you already have, such as webinars, podcast appearances, conference talks, and sales calls. Make a short list of the consultants whose expertise you want to feature. Then think about which clients might agree to be named or interviewed. If your experts can’t be available at all, we’d turn the work down, because your content depends on their experience.
Why do AI citations fade, and how often should a consulting firm publish?
AI tools like recent content. Newer articles on the same topics compete for the same spots in AI answers. Scrunch and Stacker found the average source loses half its citation activity in about 4.5 weeks. If your firm publishes once and stops, your citations can fade within a few months.
So publish on a steady schedule, and refresh your best pages with new examples or recent trends. Refreshing older content is often the quickest win. The page already has a history, and it can help your newer articles get found.
Where to Start
If you only do two things this week, check each AEO agency’s own AI citations, and ask each one to show you the questions it would ask your consultants. Those two steps will tell you most of what you need to know.
If you’d like to see how we’d approach your firm, take a look at our AI search optimization services for consulting firms and plans and pricing. Or book a call with me, and we’ll talk it through.
