AEO for Local Services · Industry niche
People stopped typing "best plumber near me" into Google a year ago. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and voice assistants. We do AEO specifically for service-area businesses — dentists, plastic surgeons, attorneys, plumbers, contractors, premium real-estate, medical practices. Niche multiplier 0.65× (cheaper because the radius is smaller).
The shift
Local search has not died. It has split. Half the queries that used to land in Google's blue-link results now resolve inside an AI answer — before the user ever sees a map. The other half still pass through the Local Pack, but the Local Pack itself is increasingly assembled by the same AI layer that builds AI Overview.
Old local search marketing was a checklist: claim GBP, get reviews, build citations on Yelp and BBB, sprinkle city names into the H1. That still helps. But it stops at the Local Pack. It does not get you cited when someone asks ChatGPT "good orthodontist for adults in Brooklyn" or asks Siri "what dental practice is open right now".
Concrete example. A dental practice in Park Slope, three locations, 4.8 average rating, decent SEO. Twelve months ago, the query "best dentist near me" returned the Local Pack — the practice ranked #2. Today, the same query returns an AI Overview that names two competitors and skips them entirely. Why? Both competitors have LocalBusiness schema with practitioner Person markup. The Park Slope practice has plain Organization schema and a Wix-default footer. Same reviews, same address, different machine-readable layer.
That is what local AEO fixes. Same buyer, different surface, different optimisation layer.
Six mechanics
These are the six things we ship on every local engagement. None of them are exotic — they are the unglamorous middle layer that most local agencies still skip.
Pick the most specific subtype: Dentist, Attorney, MedicalClinic, RealEstateAgent, Plumber, Electrician. Populate geo (lat/lon), openingHoursSpecification, hasMap pointing at the Google Business listing, priceRange, paymentAccepted. The generic Organization schema gets you nothing in Local Pack and almost nothing in AI Overview.
One URL per service area — not a single "we serve Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx" pile. Each page gets its own LocalBusiness schema with that specific service area, its own H1 ("Family dentist in Park Slope"), its own AggregateRating pulled from local reviews. This is the unglamorous half of local search marketing that actually moves citations.
Reviews matter for AI extraction — but only if the schema declares where the rating came from. Use AggregateRating with reviewCount, ratingValue, and a sourceOrganization linking back to Google or the platform of record. ChatGPT and Perplexity both check this when assembling local recommendations.
Voice assistants pick one sentence — not a paragraph. Build a Quick Facts block at the top of every page: hours, address, price range, languages spoken, insurance accepted, emergency availability. Each row answers a voice query on its own. Keep direct answers under 25 words — that is the voice extraction budget.
Google Business Profile and on-site schema must agree on name, address, phone, primary category, and hours — to the comma. Mismatch is the single most common reason a clinic with a good site still loses Local Pack. We audit both sides, fix divergences, then submit the GBP for re-verification.
AI engines weight content authored by an identified practitioner — lead dentist, partner attorney, senior surgeon. Each clinical page or service page gets a Person schema with sameAs links to LinkedIn, the state bar registry, the medical board, and any published interviews. The named human is the E-E-A-T signal that wins citations.
Further reading — the local-services AEO playbook, voice search and conversational prompts, the schema stack for AI citation.
Where the demand is
Not every local business needs AEO. The verticals below have enough per-call value, enough query volume, and enough AI-search exposure to justify a sustained engagement. Below those, the math stops working.
Premium-local works at 1.0× — no discount. Luxury real estate, plastic surgery, top-tier corporate law, high-end aesthetics. The per-call value is high enough that the standard SaaS-equivalent rate is the right floor, not the ceiling.
How we work
We map 15-30 hyper-local queries — every city/neighbourhood crossed with every service variation. Benchmark the current Local Pack, snapshot what Siri, Google Assistant and ChatGPT say today. The discovery deliverable is a citation map of where you appear, where competitors win, and where the gap is widest.
LocalBusiness schema deployed per service area, AggregateRating wired to the right review source, GBP cleaned and aligned, named-practitioner Person schema published. Service-area pages get rewritten under the four-layer extraction recipe — Quick Facts, H2-as-question, direct-answer FAQ.
Weekly voice-snapshot — same 10 queries asked into Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, ChatGPT voice. Monthly Local Pack movement plus citation tracking inside AI engines. The local seo report is short on purpose — 10 queries, 4 surfaces, plain language. You read it in five minutes.
The discovery step uses the four-layer extraction recipe; the build step uses named-experts E-E-A-T; the track step feeds into the 90-day AEO roadmap.
Pricing
Local services run cheaper than crypto or SaaS because the radius is smaller, the schema is simpler, and the prompt cluster is shorter — 10-15 queries per location, not 60. Below is the base sheet against the local-niche price. Premium-local sits at 1.0×.
| Tier | Base price | Local (0.65×) | Min term | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $890 | ~$579 | 3 months min | Audit + punch-list for one location |
| Growth | $2,400 | ~$1,560 | 6 months min | Single-location practice, sustained AEO |
| Scale | $4,800 | ~$3,120 | 6 months min | Multi-location chain, 3-8 service areas |
| Enterprise | $8,900 | ~$5,785 | 6 months min | Multi-state chains, franchise networks |
| Performance | $3,200 + bonus | $3,200 + bonus | 6 months min | Flat retainer, no multiplier on performance |
Premium-local stays at 1.0× — luxury real estate (AOV $2M+), plastic surgery (LTV $15-40k), corporate law (per-engagement value $50k+). The per-call value supports full pricing, and these niches need additional YMYL filtering work that the discount tier does not include.
For the full local seo solutions catalogue and what each tier ships month by month, see the services index and the pricing page.
Disqualifiers
Four hard lines. They exist because every local seo company that promised these things eventually got their clients de-indexed or downgraded by Google's local quality systems. We have watched it happen and we won't repeat it.
FAQ
Yes — and it has to be claimed, verified, and complete. GBP is the strongest entity signal a local business has, and every AI engine cross-checks it against the on-site schema. Without GBP, local AEO is a dead start.
Local Pack is the three-result map block Google shows for local-intent queries — same as it has been for years. AI Overview Local is the generated paragraph above it, assembled by Google AI from your schema, your reviews, and the top organic results. Both surfaces feed off the same data, but the AI Overview rewards specificity — Quick Facts, FAQ answers under 30 words, named practitioners.
Voice and AI Overview lift typically shows in 6-10 weeks after schema and service-area pages ship. Local Pack movement is slower — 90-120 days — because Google re-crawls local content less aggressively. We track both separately.
Yes — plumbers, electricians, mobile dentists, home-care agencies all qualify. The schema type changes (use serviceArea instead of address-only LocalBusiness) and the GBP is set up as a service-area business, but the AEO mechanics are the same.
Different shape. Each location gets its own LocalBusiness schema, its own service-area page, its own GBP. The parent brand gets an Organization schema and a hub page that links every location. We run multi-location chains on the Enterprise tier — the per-location AEO work is mechanical, but the cross-location entity hygiene is where it gets expensive.
For a local clinic, voice is 30-50% of the AI-search surface — higher than any other niche. If you are not optimised for "best dentist near me" asked into Siri, you are leaving the largest slice of local AI traffic on the table.
Forty-seven checks, single report, twenty-four-hour turnaround. We look at LocalBusiness schema, GBP alignment, AggregateRating wiring, and the voice-snapshot for your top ten local queries. No call required to get the report.