Guides for businesses ready to be the one AI recommends.
Marketing playbooks for local businesses navigating the shift from traditional SEO to AI search. Each guide tied to what actually moves revenue.
Cornerstone reads, not blog posts.
Most marketing content tells you what to do without explaining why it matters or how to actually do it. These guides are different. Each one is built to be your reference on its topic. Long enough to be useful. Specific enough to act on. Updated as the landscape evolves.
The library is organized around the work we do every day with local businesses. The shift from blue links to AI answers. The structures that make your business citable. The frameworks that turn visibility into revenue. If you’re a business owner, marketing director, or fractional partner trying to make sense of what’s changing in search right now, you’ll find the answers here.
Three things every guide does. And one thing none of them do.
Strategy first
Every guide opens with the business question before the tactical answer. The work doesn’t begin with schema or content or paid ads. It begins with understanding your differentiation, your market, and your revenue model. Tactics come second.
Plain English
Marketing has a jargon problem. We use the technical terms (AEO, entity, retrieval, citation) but always explain them. If you’re a business owner who just wants to know what to do next, you’ll be able to follow every guide without a glossary.
Tied to revenue
Each guide is built around a real business outcome. Not vanity metrics. Not impressions. Not “thought leadership.” What changes when you implement this. Where the leads come from. Why it works.
What they don’t do: regurgitate generic SEO advice you can find anywhere. If you’ve read fifteen articles on AI search and still don’t know what to actually do, start here.
Start here.
The library is growing. New guides published as the landscape evolves and as our work surfaces new lessons worth documenting.
Why Search is Broken (and What to Do Now)
The definitive read on what’s actually changed in search and what to do about it. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Gemini are the new first stop. If your marketing isn’t generating the leads it used to, this is where to start. Reasons your SEO isn’t working. Moves that actually do. Real examples across home services, real estate, dental, and wellness.
Read the guideGuides in the works.
The next guides in the queue, with rough timing. Subscribe to Cited if you want to know when each one publishes.
From SEO to AEO
Why answer engine optimization replaces what traditional SEO used to do, and how to move your existing site over without losing what’s working.
The AI Visibility Playbook for Home Services Businesses
A vertical-specific guide for HVAC, roofing, landscape, remodelers, and specialty trades. What AI surfaces actually answer when a homeowner is researching. What it takes to be the cited business.
Schema Markup for Local Businesses
A non-developer’s guide to structured data. What schema is. Why AI systems need it. How to implement the four most important types without hiring a developer.
Want to know when these publish? Subscribe to Cited and you’ll get each one delivered as it goes live.
Some questions need a conversation.
The guides answer the most common questions we hear. They won’t answer the specific ones about your business, your market, your competitors, or your revenue model. For that, we built three ways in.
AI Visibility Audit
See exactly where your business stands in AI search right now. Six scored sections, documented across the platforms that matter. Delivered in 10 business days.
Launch and Learn
A 90 day paid advertising test that proves what works before you commit to anything bigger.
Fractional CMO
A senior strategist embedded inside your business. Strategy, content, paid, and CRM all moving in one direction.
Want every new guide delivered as it publishes?
Subscribe to Cited. One observation, one gap, and one move to make. Every Thursday. Plus the free AI Visibility Self Audit the moment you subscribe.
Subscribe to CitedOr book a call if you want to talk it through.