AEO and GEO Explained: How to Get Your NJ Business Recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring your pages so a search engine can lift a direct answer from them. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your business the one an AI assistant names when someone asks for a recommendation. Both rest on the same foundation: answer-first pages, clear entity data, structured markup, open crawler access, and corroboration from other sites. Here is how a local business in New Jersey or New York does each one.

SEO, AEO, and GEO in one table

How AI assistants decide whom to recommend

When someone asks an AI assistant for a dentist in Teaneck or an app developer in Bergen County, the engine does three things. It retrieves pages that directly answer the question. It checks whether the business behind those pages is a clear, consistent entity: the same name, address, phone, and profiles everywhere. And it looks for corroboration from other sources such as directories, reviews, and mentions before it names anyone.

Everything below maps to one of those three checks. There is no trick that skips them, and there is no way to instruct an AI to recommend you. Content that tries to do that reads as spam to both the engines and your customers.

Step 1: write answer-first pages

Google removed FAQ rich results for most sites in 2023, but FAQ content and schema still matter: they are exactly the format answer engines quote.

• Open each service page with a two-sentence answer: what you do, for whom, where, and the price range
• Use headings that are the questions people ask, then answer each one in the first sentence beneath it
• Add a real FAQ section with 8–10 questions and complete answers; mark it up with FAQPage schema
• Use tables for comparisons and prices; AI engines extract them cleanly
• Show a visible updated date and a named organization or author

Step 2: make your business an unambiguous entity

Publish Organization and LocalBusiness schema with your legal name, brand names, address, phone, and sameAs links to every official profile (Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories). Add Service schema to each service page with a real price range. Keep name, address, and phone identical on your site, your Google Business Profile, and every directory. If you operate under two names, as we do with Mango Consulting LLC and AppDesign360, say so everywhere and connect them in the markup.

Step 3: open the door to AI crawlers and publish llms.txt

AI engines cannot cite what they cannot read. Check your robots.txt allows GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and Google-Extended, and that your firewall or CDN is not blocking them. Then publish an llms.txt file at the root of your site: a plain-text summary of who you are, what you do, where, and which pages answer which questions. It is a proposed standard that a growing number of AI tools read. You can see ours at mangoconsultingllc.com/llms.txt.

Step 4: get corroborated

• Google Business Profile with complete services, photos, posts, and a steady flow of reviews you respond to
• Industry directories relevant to your category (for us: Clutch, DesignRush, GoodFirms; for a practice: Healthgrades, Zocdoc, state bar or association listings)
• Local mentions from chambers of commerce, town business associations, sponsorships, and local press
• Consistent profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and any platform your customers use
• Real reviews only; the FTC bans fake ones and AI engines discount patterns that look manufactured

Step 5: measure it

Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google (with AI Overviews on) the questions your customers ask: best dentist in Teaneck, app development company Bergen County, and so on. Record whether you are named, who is named instead, and which pages the engines cite. Then look at the cited pages and note what they have that yours does not: usually a direct answer, a price, a table, or a review count. That list is next month's work.

What does not work

• Stuffing pages with 'best' and 'top-rated' and the names of every town in the county
• Fake reviews, review swaps, or paying for placements that look editorial
• Hidden text or instructions aimed at AI models
• Marking up reviews of your own business on your own site; Google treats self-serving review markup as ineligible
• Blocking AI crawlers and expecting to be recommended anyway

A local example

A Teaneck dental practice wants to be the answer to 'dentist in Teaneck that takes new patients.' The work is a service page that opens with exactly that answer and the insurance it accepts, an FAQ that covers cost, hours, parking, and emergencies, LocalBusiness and FAQPage schema, a complete Google Business Profile with recent reviews, listings on the relevant health directories, and a robots.txt that lets AI crawlers in. None of it is exotic; all of it has to be done, and kept current.

That is the checklist our search and AI visibility service runs for clients, starting with a written audit. Ask for one through the free quote form.