How we work, and what we hold ourselves to
We do not refuse tactics. We refuse to lie about ourselves or about anyone else, and we do not do work that has no value to the person reading it, because that is the only real mistake in this business.
Written by Michael Landry, Founder and Head of AEO.
The standard
Our job is to put a client in the best position to win through whatever we can find, as long as we are not lying about ourselves and not lying about anyone else. There is white hat, black hat and grey hat in AEO as there was in SEO; the honest, genuine work is where the time goes, because shortcuts do not win in the long run.
Is an llms.txt file valuable? Debatable, but if it helps the crawlers find the most relevant information, there is nothing wrong with it. Good structured data that tells the agent what you do, what you offer, where you offer it and who it is for: nothing wrong with that. City pages for the communities you serve and your competitors have forgotten about: fine, if they are useful to the people in those communities. You should not do anything that is not a net positive for the user. Do that and the result is sometimes big and sometimes small, but it is never a big mistake. Efficient, never lazy.
Written by people
Everything we publish for a client reads at least 80% human by Grammarly’s measure, and we hold to it because anything an agent reads that looks AI-generated carries no new value; it could have written that itself. Staff writers add what a prompt cannot.
Month one, not an audit
Month one on every plan is setup. It includes the research, persona identification, technical analysis and recommendations, phrase research for those personas, and opportunity finding, and it ends in a twelve-month plan everyone has agreed to, so every monthly and quarterly review is measured against the plan we aligned on. We do not call it an audit. The word is adversarial, and the marketing manager who hired us does not want to be filleted; they want the low-hanging fruit found and a course plotted. There are no setup fees.
Two instruments
Our own tool is the instrument of record because we know how it is built. Semrush is reported beside it as the second opinion. When the two diverge, we investigate and tell you why, rather than showing you the flattering one.
Notice and term
Ninety days’ notice, because links, PR and branded content are bought and built in advance. No lock-in beyond that. To see the fruits of AEO and SEO the mindset should be twelve months, and as long as you are seeing the work and we are following the plan, you will.
Nobody has this figured out
How people use AI and how it delivers answers will keep changing. All anyone can do is take a baseline and do evergreen work against it. We will not sell you placements, rankings or guaranteed mentions, because nobody controls what an engine says. We will show you the work, the plan and the numbers, every month.