Can one person really do this alongside running a business?

Yes, at roughly two to four hours a week. Most tasks are under an hour and require following instructions rather than expertise. The two that may need help are fixing a JavaScript-only site and installing schema, though schema is usually a copy-paste into a header field.

What if I only have time for one week of this?

Do days 1 through 7. Unblock the crawlers, confirm your content renders in HTML, and complete your Google Business Profile. That is the majority of the available gain for a small fraction of the effort.

When will I see results?

Gemini and Google AI Overviews typically move first, within three to six weeks of Business Profile work. Perplexity follows as directory presence registers. ChatGPT and Claude are slowest because they depend on entity breadth accumulating.

Do I need to do it in this order?

Yes, and the ordering matters more than it looks. Content and citation work is wasted if crawlers cannot read your site, and directory work is wasted if your canonical name and phone are not settled first.

Guides/Measurement & buyingupdated 2026-08-04 · 5 min

A 30-60-90 Day AEO Plan for a Local Service Business

The short answer

Days 1–30: technical unblocking and Google Business Profile completion — the highest-impact, lowest-effort work. Days 31–60: directory breadth, NAP consistency, and answer-first content. Days 61–90: third-party mentions, review programs, and measurement. Nearly all of it is free.

Ninety days, two to four hours a week, almost entirely free. Here is the whole sequence in order.

The ordering matters. Content is wasted if crawlers cannot read your site. Directory work is wasted if you have not decided what your canonical name and phone number are.

Days 1–30: unblock and complete

The highest ratio of impact to effort in the entire plan.

Week 1 — technical unblocking

Day 1 (15 min). Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt — see why blocking AI crawlers is self-harm. Remove any Disallow for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, or Bingbot. Check your security plugin and Cloudflare bot settings too.

Day 2 (30 min). View Page Source on your homepage and top three service pages. Search for your phone number. If it is missing, your content is JavaScript-only — flag it for your developer and use the stopgaps while it gets fixed.

Day 3 (30 min). Get a baseline. Run your top customer questions across the assistants and record how often you are named. You need this to prove anything later.

Day 4 (30 min). Decide your canonical name, address, phone, hours, and URL format. Write them down. Every subsequent task uses these.

Day 5 (1 hr). Install LocalBusiness schema on your homepage using the most specific type for your trade. Validate with Google's Rich Results Test.

Weeks 2–3 — Google Business Profile

(2 hrs, split however you like.) Every field:

Primary category, as specific as the taxonomy allows
Every applicable secondary category
Every service you offer, individually, each with a description
Service areas as individual named cities
Business description written as facts with numbers
Hours, including holiday hours and emergency availability
All applicable attributes
Ten photos taken this quarter
Ten real questions posted and answered in Q&A

This is the single highest-value task in the plan. Do not rush it.

Week 4 — the quick listings

(1.5 hrs total.) Claim Bing Places (import from Google), claim Apple Business Connect, and verify both. Complete every field with canonical values.

Then respond to every unanswered review across every platform.

Days 31–60: breadth and content

Weeks 5–6 — directory breadth and consistency

(4 hrs total.)

Search your name, phone, old phone, and old address. List every result.
Claim and correct Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, BBB, Facebook, Nextdoor.
Claim every trade association directory you qualify for.
Claim every manufacturer dealer or certified-installer locator you qualify for.
Verify your state license lookup matches your public business name.
Replace any tracking number in a permanent listing with your real line.
Add every profile URL to your schema's sameAs array.

The manufacturer and association listings are the ones your competitors have not claimed. Prioritize them.

Weeks 7–8 — answer-first content

(4–6 hrs.)

Spend one week writing down every question customers ask on the phone, verbatim.
Pick your five most important pages. On each, restructure so every heading is a question and the first forty words underneath are a direct answer.
Add five to eight relevant FAQs per page with FAQPage schema.
Publish real price ranges for your top five jobs, with the variables named.
Add Service schema to each service page, with provider referencing your business @id.

Price transparency is the single most under-used content lever in the trades. It gets cited, and it pre-qualifies callers.

Days 61–90: entity, reviews, and measurement

Weeks 9–10 — third-party mentions

(3–4 hrs.)

Run your top questions in Perplexity and read every citation. Note which local roundups exist and whether you are on them.
Contact the publishers of the two or three roundups you are missing.
Identify one genuinely newsworthy thing about your business and pitch a local outlet.
Join your chamber of commerce if you have not.
Find your city's subreddit and your trade's subreddits. Read the rules. Start answering technical questions honestly, with disclosure and no pitch.

This is the slowest lever and the most durable. Start it now so it compounds.

Week 11 — reviews

(1 hr setup, then ongoing.)

Write a same-day review request text that asks customers to mention the specific job.
Set up sending it to every customer, not selected ones.
Read your last twenty reviews and count how many name a specific service. That is your baseline.
Respond to every review going forward, restating the service in your reply.

Week 12 — measure and decide

(1 hr.)

Re-run your question set. Compare to the day 3 baseline.
Record share of voice — who else is getting named, and how often.
Note which assistant is weakest and diagnose why.
Run branded questions and list every factual error the assistants make about you.
Pull your self-reported AI-sourced lead count.
Pick the single weakest number and make that the focus of the next month.

What to expect, by assistant

The order things move is consistent enough to plan around:

Assistant	Typical first movement	Driven by
Google AI Overviews	3–6 weeks	Business Profile, reviews, on-page answers
Gemini	3–6 weeks	Business Profile, Maps data
Perplexity	4–8 weeks	Directory presence, roundups, rankings
ChatGPT	6–12 weeks	Entity breadth, third-party mentions
Claude	8–16 weeks	Verifiable credentials, corroboration

If nothing moves anywhere after ninety days, the cause is almost always technical — a blocked crawler or a JavaScript-only site that was not actually fixed. Re-check week one.

After day 90

The one-time work is done and stays done. What continues:

Monthly: measure, respond to reviews, publish one piece of content, post to your Business Profile.
Quarterly: audit NAP consistency, refresh service-area pages with recent jobs, re-run the Perplexity citation check.
Ongoing: community participation, review requests on every job, local relationships.

That is a few hours a month against a foundation that compounds.

What to do today

Days 1 through 4. Ninety minutes total, all free, and it includes the two checks that most often explain an entire zero score.

Get your baseline first

Day 3 is the measurement, and doing it by hand is a hundred and twenty-five prompts. Our free scan runs twenty-five real customer questions across all five assistants at once, grades each separately, and shows every verbatim answer plus every competitor named in your place.

About fifteen seconds, free, no account. Run it today, then again on day 90.

Common questions

Can one person really do this alongside running a business?: Yes, at roughly two to four hours a week. Most tasks are under an hour and require following instructions rather than expertise. The two that may need help are fixing a JavaScript-only site and installing schema, though schema is usually a copy-paste into a header field.
What if I only have time for one week of this?: Do days 1 through 7. Unblock the crawlers, confirm your content renders in HTML, and complete your Google Business Profile. That is the majority of the available gain for a small fraction of the effort.
When will I see results?: Gemini and Google AI Overviews typically move first, within three to six weeks of Business Profile work. Perplexity follows as directory presence registers. ChatGPT and Claude are slowest because they depend on entity breadth accumulating.
Do I need to do it in this order?: Yes, and the ordering matters more than it looks. Content and citation work is wasted if crawlers cannot read your site, and directory work is wasted if your canonical name and phone are not settled first.

Stop guessing

See exactly what the five AIs say about your business.

Twenty-five real customer questions across Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Free, about fifteen seconds, no account.

Run the free scan