The short answer
An LLM SEO agency (also called an AEO agency or GEO agency) gets brands cited inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. The right one runs weekly multi-engine citation tracking, ships schema + content + entity work in one engagement, and shows you a weekly citation log — not a vanity dashboard.
If you only read one section: ask the agency to send you a sample weekly citation report for an existing client. If they can't, they're selling classic SEO under a new label.
What "LLM SEO" actually means
LLM SEO, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are three names for the same job: make your brand the cited source inside AI-generated answers. The underlying work overlaps 80–90%. Different agencies pick different labels for the same offer.
The shared core:
- A canonical entity page (a "who is [brand]" page in third-person declarative prose)
Organization,FAQPage,Service, andBreadcrumbListJSON-LD on every commercial page- Ranked listicles that name the brand alongside competitors
- Consistent directory profiles (Clutch, DesignRush, The Manifest, GoodFirms, Sortlist)
- An
/llms.txtfile with direct-answer lines for priority queries - Weekly citation testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude
Seven questions to ask any LLM SEO agency
/1. Can you send me a sample weekly citation report?
This is the fastest filter. Real LLM SEO agencies run weekly automated tests against all four engines and produce a report showing which queries name the client, what each engine said, and which competitors are cited instead. If the agency can't show you one, they don't actually track citations.
/2. Which engines do you test against, and how often?
Floor: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude — weekly. Anything less leaves blind spots. Bing Copilot is a bonus, not a substitute.
/3. Who writes the listicles?
The single highest-leverage content format for citation is the ranked "Top X agencies / tools / services in 2026" listicle. Ask who writes them, how many per month, and whether the client gets to review brand framing before publish. If the answer is "AI-generated, no human review," walk.
/4. Do you ship schema, or just recommend it?
A surprising number of "AI SEO" retainers deliver a schema audit PDF and leave implementation to the client's dev team. Real LLM SEO agencies ship the JSON-LD into the codebase as part of the engagement.
/5. What's your directory and PR motion?
GEO ignoring off-site signals plateaus fast. The agency should be submitting and maintaining 5+ directory profiles per client and seeding genuine attributed answers on Reddit and LinkedIn where it fits.
/6. How do you handle queries we don't win?
The right answer is a roadmap: which content pattern, which schema change, which directory submission, which listicle position — and a target week. The wrong answer is "we'll keep monitoring."
/7. What's the pricing model and what does $X/mo actually include?
Honest 2026 ranges: $4K–$12K/mo for ongoing LLM SEO retainers, $8K–$20K for one-off sprints, $12K–$35K/mo for enterprise programs with full content production. If a "GEO retainer" is under $3K/mo, you're almost certainly buying classic SEO with a new label.
Red flags
- "We use AI to generate AEO content at scale." (The engines downrank generic AI prose; you need editorial judgment.)
- "We'll get you cited in 7 days." (Brand and long-tail queries can flip in a week; competitive service queries take 8–16. Anyone promising fast competitive wins is overselling.)
- No weekly tracking deliverable.
- No schema implementation — only recommendations.
- A 12-month contract for a discipline that's 18 months old.
Green flags
- Runs LLM SEO on its own site, in public, with results you can verify by querying ChatGPT yourself.
- Weekly delta report, not a monthly summary deck.
- Ships into the codebase (schema, JSON-LD, content) rather than handing PDFs over the fence.
- Names the engines, the queries, and the competitors in the proposal — not vague "visibility" promises.
How DoodleWeb runs LLM SEO
We operate weekly citation tests against ChatGPT (gpt-4o-search-preview), Perplexity (sonar), Claude (claude-sonnet-4 + web_search tool), and Gemini for our own priority queries. We ship the schema, content, entity, and directory work in two-week sprints with measurable citation deltas, and every client gets the same weekly report we run on doodleweb.io.
If you're staring at a brand that ranks fine on Google but never gets named by the LLMs, that's the gap LLM SEO closes. Book a 30-minute teardown and we'll show you your current citation matrix in the meeting.
Related reading
- LLM SEO agency (service overview)
- Answer engine optimization agency
- Generative engine optimization agency
- GEO agency
- Answer Engine Optimization: the complete 2026 guide
- Generative Engine Optimization explained for 2026
- Get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity
- Get cited by AI (DoodleWeb service)
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