Answer engine optimization
Ranking is table stakes. We build to get quoted.
Some of your customers still type into Google and scan results. The rest ask an assistant and take the answer it reads back. Those are different jobs, and almost nobody building small-business sites is doing the second one yet.
SEO & AEO
Included in every build
By the numbers
A full SEO buildCounted from our largest live build. A 5-page site gets the same machinery at a smaller scale.
For answer engines
AEO
- A written brief for the crawlers. A plain-text account of the business at the root of your site, in the order an assistant needs it, written on purpose.
- Speakable markup. Tells an assistant which sentences to read aloud, so the answer it gives back is the one you wrote.
- Real questions, answered first. A quick-answer block at the top of every page that poses one, marked up so an assistant can lift it.
- Facts an engine can verify. Hours, radius, credentials and payment methods published as structured data an assistant can read directly.
For search engines
SEO
- Location pages that aren't filler. One template, one set of facts per place, 34 pages.
- IndexNow on every change. 4 engines notified the moment content actually changes.
- A sitemap that stays accurate. Regenerated from source, with missing pages added automatically.
- Freshness that isn't faked. Modified dates come from the file, so they move when the words move and not before.
One thing we don't publish
On purposeEvery site we build ships a hand-written, machine-readable account of the business at its root. It's what an assistant reads before it answers a question about you, and it's a big part of why our clients get quoted.
We used to print ours here in full. We stopped.
It takes about an hour to write, and publishing it as a fill-in-the-blank template helps nobody who's paying us for it. Yours gets written for your business, from your intake, and it goes on your domain. It doesn't go on our marketing page for a competitor to copy in an afternoon.
Questions we get asked
Answered first, detail afterWhat does a website cost?
It depends on how many pages the business needs and what shape your current site is in, so every project is scoped and quoted before anything starts. Send us the business and the town and a number comes back in writing, usually the same day. Once you have it, it's fixed unless you change what you asked for.
How long does a build take?
About a week for a small site, once we have your content. The schedule risk is almost always waiting on photographs and copy approval, which is why we ask for everything up front.
Do I own the site when it's finished?
Yes, all of it. The domain, hosting, analytics, and the site are created in your name and we're added as a collaborator. If you stop working with us, nothing breaks and nothing has to move.
What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization is the work that gets your business quoted by AI assistants. It means giving an assistant a clean, machine-readable account of what you do, marking up your real questions and answers so it can lift them, and being explicit about which sentences it should read back.
Do I have to buy an SEO retainer?
No. The build is a one-time job and the site is fully optimized when it ships. Ongoing work is optional, scoped separately, and decided after launch.
Why not use Squarespace or an AI site builder?
Both work, and for some businesses they're the right call. What you give up is a site that looks like yours instead of everyone else's, ownership of what you're paying for, and the structured data that gets you cited by an assistant.