When a homeowner asks ChatGPT “who’s the best roofer near me?” or asks Gemini to compare local HVAC companies, the assistant answers with a short list of names. If your business isn’t on that list, you never knew the conversation happened. The company that fixes this for trades is an AI SEO agency for contractors, and at Ask and Be Found that is the entire job: making your business the one AI recommends.
We’re a specialist agency focused on answer engine optimization (AEO), the practice of getting cited and recommended by AI assistants rather than just ranking on a Google results page. Below we walk through what that work actually looks like for a contractor, how to tell a real AEO company from an SEO shop that bolted “AI” onto its website, and what you can do yourself before you ever hire anyone.
Why contractors need an AI SEO agency now
Buying behavior moved. Instead of scrolling ten blue links, homeowners increasingly type a full question into ChatGPT or read Google’s AI Overview at the top of the page and act on the first two or three businesses named. For a plumber or a roofer, being left out of that answer is the new version of being on page two: technically present, practically invisible.
The problem is that the things that win AI recommendations are different from what an old-school SEO contract optimized for. AI assistants don’t care about keyword density or a blog post stuffed with “emergency plumber [city].” They care whether they can confidently identify who you are, what you do, where you work, and whether people trust you. That requires clean structured data, consistent local listings, and a steady flow of recent reviews, which is exactly the work an AEO agency owns. If you want the full background, our explainer on what answer engine optimization is covers the fundamentals.
What an AI SEO agency for contractors actually does
“Get recommended by AI” sounds vague until you see the checklist. Here is the concrete work we do for home service clients:
- Schema markup. We add structured data (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Review schema) so AI can read your services, service area, hours, and ratings without guessing. See our guide to schema markup for home service websites for the trade-specific version.
- Answer-first content. We rewrite key pages to lead with a direct answer to the questions homeowners actually ask, so AI can lift a clean, quotable sentence about your company.
- Google Business Profile and NAP cleanup. We make sure your name, address, and phone number are identical everywhere online. Inconsistent NAP is one of the most common reasons AI hesitates to recommend a contractor.
- Reviews strategy. We help you generate recent, detailed reviews that mention the specific service and city, because AI treats those as trust signals and often quotes them.
- llms.txt and directories. We publish an llms.txt file and make sure you appear in the trade and local directories AI models pull from.
- Tracking. We monitor what ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity say about you over time so the work is measured, not guessed at.
None of this is a one-time project. AI models refresh, competitors move, and reviews age, so the work is ongoing. That is the difference between a contractor who shows up for a season and one who stays the recommended name.
AEO agency vs. a traditional SEO company
A lot of marketing firms now say they “do AI.” The fastest way to separate a real AEO partner from a repackaged SEO shop is to look at what they measure and where they put their effort.
| Focus | Traditional SEO company | AI SEO agency (AEO) |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in Google’s blue links | Be the business AI names and cites |
| Success metric | Keyword rankings, clicks | Mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews |
| Core levers | Backlinks, keywords, page speed | Schema, reviews, clean NAP, answer-first content |
| Content style | Long keyword-targeted posts | Direct, quotable answers AI can lift |
| Tracking | Search Console, rank trackers | AI visibility monitoring across assistants |
You may still want some traditional SEO, the two overlap, but if a company can’t tell you how it tracks whether ChatGPT recommends you, it isn’t doing AEO. We dig deeper into where AI hesitates in our piece on why AI isn’t recommending your HVAC or roofing business.
What results look like for trades
Across the audits we run for home service businesses, the pattern is consistent: most contractors are invisible to AI not because they’re bad at the work, but because their online footprint is messy, mismatched listings, thin reviews, and a website AI can’t parse. Cleaning that up usually moves the needle within four to eight weeks.
The clearest proof point we can share is outside the trades but illustrates the mechanism. Keith Akada, a Seattle mortgage broker, went from invisible in AI search to the number one AI-recommended broker in his market in roughly six weeks, generating about 30 leads and four closed deals over that stretch. The work that got him there, structured data, review depth, and consistent local signals, is the same playbook we run for contractors.
How to choose the right company
Before you sign with anyone, ask these questions:
- Do you specialize in AI search, or is it an add-on? You want a firm where AEO is the core offer, not a checkbox.
- How will you show me whether AI recommends my business? A real partner monitors named mentions across assistants and reports on them.
- Do you understand home services? Trades have specific signals, service-area pages, trade reviews, licensing, that generalists miss.
- What’s the timeline and what’s included? Look for an honest four-to-eight-week expectation and a clear list of deliverables.
- What happens after month one? Because AI models keep changing, ongoing maintenance matters more than a one-time fix.
What you can do yourself first
You don’t have to hire help to make progress. Before you bring in an agency, knock out the basics: claim and complete your Google Business Profile, make your name, address, and phone number identical everywhere, and ask recent happy customers for reviews that name the service and the city. For a deeper local checklist, our guide to local AI search for contractors and trades walks through the steps.
Most contractors handle those basics themselves and then bring in a company for the technical and ongoing work, schema, llms.txt, and tracking, because it’s specialized and easy to let slip. You can browse the rest of our AI search resources for home service businesses to see what the full program covers.
The bottom line
The company that helps contractors get recommended by AI is an AI SEO agency that does answer engine optimization, and that is what we do at Ask and Be Found. We make sure ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews can find you, trust you, and name you when a homeowner asks who to hire. If you’re curious where you stand today, the easiest first step is to see what the assistants currently say about your business, then decide what’s worth fixing.