We’re all still trying to get a grip on local SEO for AI chatbots (Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.). Everything’s subject to change in about 5 minutes. For all I know, maybe my advice here will have the shelf life of gas station sushi. But one thing I’ve noticed so far is that what seems to work in the AI results is basically what’s worked for the last 78 “internet years” in Google and beyond: a your-website-first strategy. Most of my clients are in the catbird seat in the “local” AI results because of it. Your business can ride high in the AI results, too. Don’t start overthinking everything. Simple, practical stuff still works. Start with that and build on it.
Of course, as the AI tools themselves are quick to tell you, there are many other factors besides your site. Your online reviews (on all kinds of sites) are critical. So is your location and your service area. Your backlinks profile and social media presence probably also factor in, too. But your website is the biggie. It’s also your best starting point – the best way you can gain a foothold in the local AI results on the sooner side. As Mike Blumenthal showed in his “web equity” graphic many years ago, your website isn’t the only part of your house, but it’s the foundation that everything else rests on.
Your first task should be to help the AI tools draw conclusions easily. Feed them the info they seem to care about. There’s no way to guarantee any of them will deem your business the “best” choice, or even a choice at all. But give them the info they’re looking for on a silver platter and you’ll have the best chances.
How? If you do nothing else today, put together a mean “Why Choose Us?” page. It is exactly what it sounds like: all the specific reasons someone might pick your business over your competitors’. It can be a standalone page on your site, one that you blast with internal links, or it can be a detailed (and prominent) section of your homepage or even of a “location” page.
What should go on your “Why Choose Us” page? Cover at least some of the following points on your business (or on this location if you’re a multi-location outfit), in no particular order:
- What you offer: services, products, treatments, practice areas, etc.
- Degree of focus (i.e. do you offer just about everything, or are you a specialist?).
- Reviews, preferably with links to the sites where someone can read your online reviews.
- Your uniqueness or your main strengths in in your customers’ words (quote their reviews directly).
- Availability or turnaround time (e.g. same-day service, open 24/7, walk-ins welcome, etc.).
- Years of experience.
- Prices or rates.
- Policy on estimates or quotes (e.g. free, on-site, etc.).
- Service area or places where you have a bricks-and-mortar location.
- Languages spoken.
- Ownership (e.g. family-owned, minority-owned, 4th-generation, etc.).
- Awards won.
- Publications cited in.
- Licensure & certifications.
- Discounts offered.
- And so on.
When in doubt, type a couple of search terms you care about into an AI chatbot or two and check out what’s under the “Key considerations” sections (as in Grok and Gemini) or similar sections that explain the results that the AI chatbot coughed up.
They’ll tell you what matters to them, generally. Those justifications tend to be more prominent in (and let’s assume more important to) “best [thing] in [city]” search terms than in the AI search results for broader terms.
By the way, you’re probably better off trying to rank for “best roofer in East Tree Stump” than for “roofers in East Tree Stump,” even though you can and must try to scoop up both. When in doubt, focus on the superlatives. That’s for a few reasons, but I’ll leave it at one very simple reason for now: most people who use an AI chatbot want the results curated for them – for the giant AI brain to do most of the thinking for them. If they want a whole pile of local results to pick through, they’ll just stick to Google.
How do you put meat on the bones, though? How do you explain what makes your business special? Once you have at least a rough idea of which points are strengths of your business (rather than weak spots that you’d rather gloss over or avoid), start with what your customers say in their reviews of you. While you’re at it, see what your competitors’ customers complain about in their reviews of your competitors. Mine your reviews and your competitors’ reviews. Either or both will tell you specifically why people already chose you. The consensus from my clients, for instance, is that I offer practical suggestions, help execute them, and produce noticeable before-and-after results. Meanwhile, in the words of my older son, I “fix Google clogs” for a living. Somewhere in there is a pithy description of what makes you different, special, or the best.
Here are a few examples of great “Why Choose Us?” pages:
houstonfaces.com/why-choose-dr-siegel/
creativeconcreteinc.com/why-choose-us/
gmrodriguezlaw.com/why-giselle/
icedamremovalguys.com/best-ice-dam-removal/
waltsautoservice.com/why-choose-us
A detailed “Why Choose Us” is a great first step, but no single tactic is likely to help you in all of the AI chatbots, at least at once. Even if your local SEO is rippin’ along on all cylinders, you’ll probably be in bad shape in at least one of the AI tools. There’s always one that got away. Only time will tell how much that matters. Time will also tell which AI chatbot(s) local customers actually use. Keep in mind that if the results are total garbage or very hit-or-miss, either people won’t use that chatbot for local searches (exclusively or at all), or it will need to change its modeling to produce better results. Even if the AI results on (let’s say) ChatGPT or Grok seem more thorough and helpful, if people get burned by bad businesses, they won’t trust the AI results as much next time. The end results need to be better than what they could have found the old-fashioned way.
What seems to have helped your business in the local AI results so far? What’s a great example of a “Why Choose Us?” page (yours or someone else’s)? Leave a comment!
Thanks again for the great information.
Thanks, Greg. Any time!
Thanks, Phil. Love your blogs and emails!
Thanks, Kristi. I hope you’re having a great summer!
This is a great article Phil. I was planning on writing my own, but I’ll just send people to this instead.
Beyond your page tip I will add that having an optimized Bing Places listing does have a positive correlation with ChatGPT results likely due to the OpenAI and Microsoft deal.
Thanks, Jesse! Excellent tip. Have you seen that changes to your Bing Places listing show up quickly on ChatGPT? How about Yelp reviews (which populate Bing Places, as you know)?
Good article Phil as always.
I’m just wondering Schema markup might help more these days as it would give anything crawling the page a better understanding of the content/intent.
I’m in the process of adding it to a few test sites to see if it improves things.
Also, the various AIs make it pretty easy to implement and they can also be queried about Schema best practices etc.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this Phil?
Great call, James. I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah, 100%: AI might have made Schema markup somewhat useful again. And given your other great point – that AI can help you create the markup – it’s not the same time-taker it used to be. If we don’t need to spend hours futzing around with the nesting, then I think laziness (guilty as charged) and the rest of one’s to-do list are the only barriers. Plus maybe deciding what to mark up. Marking up reviews and product specs is wise. Maybe FAQs, too.
I can second Schema being useful for AI. I ran an experiment using my name in my town and AI thought I was 3 different people. I created a dedicated page about me, added person schema including references to the different websites/jobs AI picked up about me.
Within a week the Google AI Overviews referenced me as a single individual and picked me over other people in my area with the same name. Still a lot of work to do with strengthening the persona.
But I also used Gemini to help write the schema. Before I never bothered with schema and stuck with what Rank Math produced – so much easier than manually writing it. Next step is to implement this for key people in client businesses.
Great thinking and great experiment, Nate. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, in cases where there’s some entity-confusion, I can see how Schema would help separate the chewing gum from the hair.
When I’ve run searches for “best” this or that in Gemini, obviously your Google reviews play a huge role. For Perplexity (and its new Comet browser), it’s your Yelp reviews and ratings that seem to matter. For ChatGPT, it seems like a mixed bag (pulls citation sources and mainly Yelp reviews). Regardless, the foundations of local SEO seem to be the same for AI right now – reviews (from a variety of sources), well optimized website, citations, and schema. Like you said in the opening of this article, this is all subject to change in 5 minutes:)
Right on, Travis. Google reviews and Yelp reviews have gotten way more important. Even those on rinky-dink review sites seem to have gotten a second wind. Same with “best-of” lists, whether they’re well-curated or shady pay-to-play lists.
Totally agree Phil, I ask every client to provide content about ‘why choose us’ /‘ what separates us from our competitors’ for their homepage 🙂
Your clients have a wise SEO sensei, Andy 🙂 On the homepage makes a ton of sense: pretty much everyone will see it, in some cases it’ll be the only one people see, and it’s more likely to factor into the 3-pack rankings.
As always, great stuff, Phil!
Thanks, Justin!
Phil, excellent advice as always. There is a lot of noise out there and if you listen to it all, you can easily get overwhelmed. In fact, so overwhelmed that you freeze and do nothing. Thank God for your knowledge and ability to turn down the noise volume and keep us focused on the important stuff. You have helped us succeed for many years. The revenue on the website that you mange has grown 500% in five years.
Thanks, Joe. You’re a prince of a guy to work with, and you go the extra mile(s) for your customers. Without that my work wouldn’t count for much.
Yeah, I’ve found that nailing the simple stuff matters above all. Getting fancy = getting confused and sidetracked.
Excellent insights Phil!
As AI Overviews, GEO, and AEO continue gaining prominence in search, we’re seeing our clients increasingly embrace and benefit from AI-powered search results with clean NAP and local citations.
The Web Equity infographic provides a fantastic framework for building solid SEO foundations. We’ve found that maintaining pristine website content and local citations – especially NAP consistency – is more critical than ever in the evolving search landscape.
Thanks for consistently delivering actionable content!
Thanks, Andrew!
That’s good SOP. The website is still the center of gravity, for sure.
The AI engines do seem to have breathed new life into some review sites / citation sources, too. Or at least helped prop them up for a while longer.
Another great post Phil! I totally agree, while AI is changing fast, the basics of local SEO are still foundational.
So thanks for reminding us to master those basics with great tips on how to do Why Choose Us correctly. I’m certainly guilty of the lazy trap: “this is what everyone else does, so it’s good enough.”
I’m off to create some epic Why Choose Us pages 🙂
Thanks, Tony. I’d love to see what you put together.
Yeah, the more I dig into AI results (typically for my clients) the less surprising they are. Just being first, only, or “extra” (as the kids might say) goes a long way.