If you run a small business, you've probably noticed something over the last year: people stopped just Googling. They started asking. "What's the best florist in Bristol for a same-day bouquet?" goes into ChatGPT. "Who fixes boilers near me on a Sunday?" goes into Perplexity. And even on Google itself, the AI Overview at the top of the page now answers the question before the blue links get a look in.
This is a real shift in how customers find businesses, and it has its own name: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO. It's the cousin of SEO — and the good news is that most of the work overlaps. If you do the basics well, you show up in both. But there are a handful of extra moves worth making, and most small-business sites miss them. Here are the eight to check before next Monday.
1. Structure your content so the answer is liftable
AI engines work in two passes: they lift the answer, then they decide which source to credit. If your opening hours are buried in an image, or your prices are inside a PDF, the engine can't lift them — so it quotes a competitor who put them in plain text.
Use real headings that describe what the section says. Keep paragraphs short. Use lists and tables for anything structured — prices, hours, service areas. The more liftable your content, the more often you get quoted.
2. Have a real About page
Authority matters more to AI engines than it ever did to classic search. They want to know a real business, run by real people, stands behind the answer. A genuine About page — with a named owner, a real address, how long you've been trading, a photo — is worth more than ten thin landing pages stuffed with keywords.
3. Mark your business up with schema
Schema is structured data that tells engines exactly what your page is: a LocalBusiness, an FAQ, a product, an event. It's invisible to visitors but enormously helpful to crawlers. Avago wires up LocalBusiness, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList automatically.
4. Don't hide the answer behind JavaScript
Some site builders render everything with JavaScript, which means if a crawler arrives with JS switched off, the page is blank. The AI engine sees nothing, so it can't quote you. Make sure your important text is in the HTML the moment the page loads.
5. Write the way people actually ask
There's a gap between how businesses describe themselves and how customers search. "Award-winning bathroom installation specialists" is how the agency wrote it. "Who can fit a new bathroom in Leeds" is what the customer typed. Mirror your customers' language somewhere on the page.
6. Get cited by other sites
AI engines lean heavily on what other trusted sites say about you. Your Google Business profile, local directories, your trade body's listing, the odd press mention — they all feed your authority. Spend an afternoon getting listed properly and consistently. It compounds.
7. Keep your details identical everywhere
Same business name, same address, same phone number, formatted the same way, on every property you own and every directory you're listed in. Inconsistencies make engines uncertain.
8. Check what the engines actually say about you
Once a fortnight, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity a question a customer would ask in your category and town. Do you get mentioned? Do your competitors? Is what's said about you accurate?
The bottom line
None of this is magic, and none of it requires an agency on retainer. It's the same disciplined SEO basics — clean content, real authority, consistent details — with a few moves tuned for the way AI engines read the web.