Here is the short version of the AEO checklist GeoLocally works through with every Florida local service business: fix your homepage opening paragraph, fix your Google Business Profile categories and service area, get three reviews that name the specific job you did, make your business name and phone identical everywhere, and put one page online for each service in each city you actually serve. That order matters. Do the first two before you touch anything else.
The rest of this is the detail behind each item, with the trade differences called out. Plumbers, dentists, lawyers, HVAC and med spas do not get recommended for the same reasons.
Why an AEO checklist beats an AEO strategy
Most local business owners do not need a plan. They need a list of things that are currently wrong. When a customer asks ChatGPT or Google's AI Overview "who should I call for a slab leak in Tampa," the tool assembles an answer from your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and whatever directories carry your listing. If any one of those contradicts the others, you get skipped in favour of a business that reads cleanly.
So the work is not clever. It is dull and it is finite. Most Florida service businesses can clear the whole list in a week of evenings.
If you want the underlying reasoning first, start with what AEO means for local businesses and come back here.
Section 1: Your website
1. The opening paragraph names the service, the cities, and one proof
An AI tool reading your homepage should be able to write one accurate sentence about you without guessing. If the first thing on the page is "Your trusted partner in home comfort," it cannot.
Weak: "Delivering exceptional service to South Florida families for over a decade."
Strong: "Licensed HVAC repair and installation across Orlando, Winter Park, and Kissimmee. Same-day diagnostics. State license CAC1817xxx."
Say the trade. Say the cities. Say one thing that can be checked.
2. One page per service, per city you actually serve
A dentist in Miami who does implants, Invisalign, and emergency extractions needs a page for each, not one "Services" page listing all three in bullet form. AI tools cite the page that most directly answers the question asked.
The trap is the old city-page trick: twenty near-identical pages with the city name swapped. Those now read as thin and get deprioritised. Write a page only for a city where you genuinely take jobs, and make the page specific to that city, drive times, permits, neighbourhoods you work in.
3. Phone number visible on every page, above the fold
An AI assistant summarising your business needs something to hand the customer. If the phone number lives only in a contact form three clicks deep, the summary ends with nothing to do next.
4. Hours, service area, and emergency availability stated in text
Not in an image. Not in a graphic on a hero banner. Plain text on the page. AI tools read text.
5. Real photos of your team, your vehicles, your actual work
Stock photography does not get you penalised directly, but it correlates with everything else that is thin. A med spa with photos of its own treatment rooms and named providers reads as a real business. A med spa with three smiling models from a stock library reads as a template. For why this matters more than most owners expect, see why a video-first storefront beats a generic website.
Section 2: Your Google Business Profile
6. Primary category is exact, secondary categories are complete
"Contractor" is not "Plumber." "Doctor" is not "Cosmetic Dentist." Set the primary category to the closest match, then add every secondary category that genuinely applies. A personal injury firm that also does workers' compensation should have both.
7. Service area matches the cities on your website
If your site says Tampa, Brandon, and Riverview, your Google Business Profile should say the same three. Contradiction between the two is one of the more common reasons a business gets passed over.
8. Hours are current, including holidays and hurricane closures
Florida-specific: storm closures. If your hours are stale during a storm week, you appear as a business that does not know its own schedule. Update them.
9. Twelve or more real photos, refreshed quarterly
Location exterior, interior, team, recent jobs. Quarterly is a reasonable cadence for most trades.
10. Every review answered within 48 hours
Including the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. A calm, specific reply to a one-star review reads better to both humans and AI tools than no reply at all.
Section 3: Your reviews
11. Ask customers to name the service, the city, and the outcome
This is the single highest-return item on the list and almost nobody does it. "Great service, highly recommend" cannot be quoted by anything. "They replaced our AC compressor in Kissimmee on a Sunday, quoted a flat price before starting" can be quoted directly.
Send a short message after the job with three prompts: what we fixed, where you are, how it went. Do not send a generic review link and hope.
12. Ten or more reviews in the last twelve months
Recency counts. Forty reviews from 2019 read as a business that has coasted. We are not aware of a published threshold that AI tools use, so treat this as a working target rather than a rule, but a steady drip beats a burst.
13. Reviews mention the specific problems you want to be called for
If you want emergency plumbing calls, your reviews need to mention emergencies. If your reviews all describe routine drain cleaning, that is what you will be recommended for.
Section 4: Consistency across the internet
14. One version of your business name, everywhere
"Gulf Coast Plumbing" on the site, "Gulf Coast Plumbing LLC" on Yelp, and "Gulf Coast Plumbing Tampa" on the BBB reads as three different companies. Pick one and change the others.
15. One phone number and one address, everywhere
Tracking numbers on directory listings cause real damage here. If you must use them, keep the main number as the canonical one on your site and Google Business Profile.
16. The main directories are claimed and current
Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor, Apple Business Connect, and the directory that matters for your trade, Avvo for lawyers, Healthgrades and Zocdoc for dentists and medical, Angi and Thumbtack for the home trades.
17. Licence numbers and credentials are published
Florida licences are public record. Putting your number on your site lets an AI tool verify a claim instead of taking your word for it. Dentists: list the practising dentists by name. Lawyers: name the bar admissions and the counties. Med spas: name the medical director.
The trade differences that change your priority order
Plumbers and HVAC
Emergency and response time dominate. Prioritise items 1, 8, 11 and 13. If your homepage does not state a response window and your reviews do not mention after-hours work, you will lose emergency queries to a competitor who does both. See how this plays out for Tampa plumbers.
Dentists and medical practices
Trust and admission dominate. Prioritise items 2, 6, 17 and an explicit "accepting new patients" line. Insurance plans accepted, stated in text, is worth more than most owners think, a large share of dental queries include an insurer's name.
Lawyers
Specificity dominates. Prioritise items 2 and 17. Name the practice area and the county. "Full-service law firm" pages get skipped almost every time. Case outcome language, recovered, settled, verdict, gives AI tools something concrete to cite, within whatever your bar advertising rules allow.
Med spas
Visual proof and named providers dominate. Prioritise items 5, 11 and 17. Treatments by name, injector by name, before-and-after work that is genuinely yours.
What is not on this checklist, and why
Keyword density. Meta keywords. Schema markup as a first move, useful later, useless while your homepage is still vague. AI-written blog volume. None of these move the needle, and two of them can hurt you.
The pattern is that AI search rewards businesses that are easy to describe accurately. Everything on the list above makes you easier to describe. Nothing that got cut does. If you want the mechanics behind that, how local businesses show up in AI search covers it.
How to run the checklist
Work top to bottom. Do not jump to the interesting parts. Homepage opening paragraph and Google Business Profile categories are worth more than the other fifteen items combined, because everything downstream is cross-checked against them.
Then hold it. This is not a one-time project. Hours drift, staff change, a new service gets added and never makes it onto the site. Once a quarter, walk the list again and fix what has slipped.
If you would rather not run this yourself, that is what we do. See what GeoLocally costs and we will start with the audit, so you know exactly which of these seventeen items you are currently failing.