AEO for agencies means offering clients a way to measure and improve how AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI describe them. The service has five parts: a pitch that shows the gap, a baseline, daily monitoring, regular reports and a short list of fixes. It fits alongside SEO as an extension of work clients already pay for, and it is easiest to sell when you can show a prospect their own AI results.
This guide covers what to offer, how to scope it, how to run it across clients and what to promise.
Why are clients asking agencies about AEO?
Buyers now ask AI engines for recommendations, and clients notice when a rival is named and they are not. Many will ask their agency before they ask anyone else. Agencies that can answer with data, not opinion, have a clear advantage. If you need a plain explanation to share with a client first, point them to What is AEO? and the AI search glossary.
What does an AEO service include?
A practical service has five parts:
- A pitch or audit. Show the prospect where they stand next to their competitors. See How to pitch AEO to a prospect.
- A baseline. Record visibility, share of voice and sources before any work starts, so later gains are provable.
- Daily monitoring. Check the same prompts on every engine every day and keep the history. See How to track your brand in AI answers.
- Regular reports. Give clients a clear account of what changed and why. See What to put in a client AI visibility report.
- Fixes and recommendations. Turn findings into actions: page changes, crawler access, third-party coverage and citation gaps. See AI citation gaps.
How is AEO different from the SEO work you already sell?
SEO remains the base: Google says its AI features need nothing beyond being indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet (Google Search Central). AEO adds measurement of the AI answer itself, which classic SEO reporting does not show. That makes it a natural add-on rather than a replacement. The full comparison is in AEO vs SEO.
How should you scope and price it?
Pricing is yours to set, so treat these as questions to settle, not a formula:
- Add-on or standalone? Most agencies start by adding AEO monitoring to an existing SEO retainer.
- What is the unit? Clients, prompts or subcategories. Decide what you will cover per client so scope stays clear.
- What is the cadence? Daily checks with a weekly or monthly report is a common pattern.
- What are you accountable for? Define deliverables (reports, recommendations, fixes you implement) and avoid guaranteeing outcomes.
What should you promise, and what should you not?
Avoid guaranteeing mentions or positions. Engines make their own choices, and the output varies from one run to the next. OpenAI notes that model output is non-deterministic (OpenAI), and a January 2026 study from SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, not peer reviewed, found that repeated runs of the same prompt rarely returned identical brand lists (SparkToro). Promise what you control:
- Measurement that is consistent and transparent
- A clear baseline and regular reporting
- Specific, prioritized recommendations
- Work you will do on the client's pages and sources
Explain the metrics up front, especially why visibility across many checks is steadier than any single answer. AI visibility metrics is a good primer for clients.
How do you run AEO across many clients?
The challenge is repetition. Each client needs prompts, daily checks, reports and follow-up. A workable process:
- Onboard fast. Collect the client's name and site, confirm their competitors and approve the subcategories to track.
- Write prompts in the client's buyers' words. See How to choose the prompts to track.
- Set the baseline. Do it before any changes.
- Review on a schedule. Look at the movement by engine and subcategory, and flag clients that need attention.
- Report in your brand. Send clear reports that look like yours.
How does Verte help agencies?
Verte is built for this workflow:
- Track every client in one portfolio. It researches the client from its name and site and proposes subcategories for your approval, then writes prompts you can edit. Prompts come from a shared pool that you distribute across clients.
- Pitch prospects with a test. Pitches run a fixed test on a prospect and their competitors from just a name and website, producing a dashboard, a short PDF and a share link.
- Send white-label reports with your name, logo and colours, plus weekly digests to client contacts. See white-label reports.
- Ask the Verte Engine across clients, for example which client dropped most this week. It proposes changes and nothing changes until you confirm. See the Engine.
The For agencies page covers the full workflow, and the agency FAQs answer common questions.
Start as an agency. See current plans.