The SEO & AIO Starter Checklist

Before you hire me — or anyone — here's the straight truth about what it takes to show up in both Google and AI search. No fluff, no jargon. If you've got these basics (or a real plan to get them), we can do great work together. If you don't yet, I'd rather tell you here than halfway through a sales call.

Three things you need before you start

• A genuine reputation. Real reviews, a real presence, and nothing nasty dominating your name in search. Both Google and the AI answer engines lean heavily on trust signals — if your reputation is thin or damaged, that's the first thing to fix, before a single line of code.
• A real, commercially-zoned address Google will approve. For a local service business, this isn't optional — it's the single biggest factor in whether you appear in Google's local "map pack," which is where the highest-intent local searches are actually won. You need a verified Google Business Profile, and that means a genuine commercial address: not a coworking desk, not a PO box or mailbox service, and not a home address dressed up as a business. Fair warning — Google's approval process can be slow, inconsistent, and frankly arbitrary. Verifications get delayed, profiles get suspended for no clear reason, and reinstatement takes patience. It's worth every bit of the hassle, because without it, local rankings are simply off the table.
• Ownership of, and access to, your own domain. You'd be surprised how many businesses don't actually know who controls their domain when we begin — an old developer, a registrar login nobody can find, a relative who set it up a decade ago. Track down your domain and DNS access early. Sorting it out after the fact is one of the most common, and most avoidable, headaches in this entire process.

What to realistically expect

It takes time. Plan on anywhere from one to twelve months to start appearing on page one for some of the phrases you care about. The denser and more competitive your market, the longer and costlier it gets — but the bigger the payoff when it lands. Anyone promising you page one in 30 days is selling something.

What winning looks like. When it comes together, my best clients hold a top-three organic spot and a top-three place in Google's local map pack at the same time — and some stack Local Service Ads or PPC on top of that, effectively owning half the page for their most valuable searches. The goal was never one lonely listing; it's a wall of them.

It's ongoing, not one-and-done. Rankings aren't a trophy you win and leave on a shelf. Competitors push back, Google shifts, AI engines evolve. That's exactly why I work on annual plans — so I spend the year keeping you ranked instead of manufacturing monthly reports.

The cost has to actually make sense. I price around the real state of your business, what you can conservatively afford, and whether the ROI genuinely checks out. Here's the honest math: if the research shows only ~150 searches a month for your topic across all of Google, and twenty competitors already have sites, the numbers usually don't work — unless each customer is worth a lot. For architects, attorneys, dental practices, and other high-value services, low search volume can still be well worth chasing, because a single client can pay for the whole campaign. Part of my job is telling you honestly when it's not worth it yet.

SEO and AIO aren't two separate jobs

Here's the good news: the fundamentals above serve both at once. The same reputation, consistency, and genuinely useful content that earn Google's trust are what make AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews — willing to cite you. The extra piece for AIO is technical: your content has to be structured so machines can actually read it, and your site has to let the AI crawlers in (a surprising number of sites accidentally block the very bots they need). Build it right once, and you're working both fronts together — which is exactly how I build.

So… are you ready?

If you've got the three basics — or a clear plan to get them — and the expectations above sound fair, we're going to get along well. Request a free, no-strings SEO/AIO audit and I'll show you exactly where you stand with real data, or get a quote to start a conversation. Still sorting out the basics? That's completely fine — reach out and I'll point you in the right direction, even if it isn't toward me.