Knowledge Base
Clear answers about AI visibility, AEO, SEO strategy, and working with Retrevia Advisory for founder-led professional services firms.
Retrevia Advisory helps founder-led professional services firms get found, evaluated, and chosen in both traditional search and AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. We build the infrastructure that makes a firm visible and credible across every channel where their ideal clients are searching.
We work with founders of professional services firms, including consulting practices, agencies, and niche B2B service providers, typically with small teams of one to three people. Our clients have the expertise to win business but need the systems to be consistently found and chosen at scale. They're ready to invest in growth infrastructure, not looking for a quick fix.
Retrevia is an advisory and implementation firm. We don't manage ongoing ad campaigns or social media accounts. We build the underlying infrastructure, including AI discoverability, SEO foundation, content architecture, and positioning, that makes a firm findable over the long term. Everything we build becomes the client's permanent asset.
AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It means optimizing your content and website so that AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews surface your firm when potential clients ask questions relevant to your services. Traditional SEO helps you rank in Google's blue-link results. AEO helps you appear as the answer itself. As more B2B buyers begin their research in AI tools, showing up in those results is becoming as important as showing up in Google.
GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It refers to the broader practice of optimizing content so it's cited, referenced, and recommended by AI-powered search tools and large language models. AEO is often used interchangeably with GEO, though GEO tends to refer specifically to the AI generation layer. Retrevia's work addresses both.
Almost certainly, yes. Buyers of professional services routinely use ChatGPT and Perplexity to research categories, compare firm types, and generate shortlists before they ever visit a website. If your firm doesn't have structured content, schema markup, and entity signals in place, you're not showing up in those results, even if you have a strong Google presence.
Traditional SEO focuses on ranking for keywords in Google's search results. AI visibility focuses on whether your firm gets cited, mentioned, or recommended when AI tools generate answers. The underlying signals are different: AI tools weight structured Q&A content, entity recognition, schema markup, and authoritative mentions more heavily than keyword density or backlink volume alone. A firm can rank well on Google and still be invisible in AI search.
Yes, though the metrics are different from traditional SEO. Key indicators include AI citations and brand mentions in AI-generated responses, share of voice in AI search results for target queries, entity recognition in knowledge graphs, and structured data coverage on your site. Retrevia builds measurement frameworks into every engagement so you can track progress against these newer benchmarks alongside traditional SEO metrics.
Retrevia offers three primary service paths. The AI Visibility Diagnostic is a one-time audit that assesses your current presence in AI search, identifies gaps in your positioning and site architecture, and delivers a 90-day priority roadmap. The Growth OS Implementation is a six-to-eight-week project that builds your complete AI-first growth infrastructure, including positioning, schema, structured content, SEO foundation, and editorial system. The Accelerate retainer provides ongoing AI visibility monitoring, content production, and optimization so your presence compounds over time.
Schema markup, also called structured data, is code added to your website that tells search engines and AI tools exactly what your content means, not just what it says. For professional services firms, schema helps AI tools correctly identify your firm as an organization, understand your service categories, and surface your content when relevant questions are asked. Without it, AI tools have to guess. With it, they know. Schema is one of the most direct levers for improving AI visibility, and most professional services firms don't have it properly implemented.
It depends. For some clients, results come quickly. For others, it takes longer. The timeline is shaped by the current state of your brand (how much foundational visibility, content, and structured data already exists) and the competitive dynamics of your industry. A firm entering a less-saturated niche with a clear position can see meaningful movement in weeks. A firm in a crowded category rebuilding from the ground up should expect a longer runway. We set expectations based on what we find in the diagnostic, not generic benchmarks. What we can promise is that every piece of infrastructure we build compounds over time and becomes a permanent asset, regardless of pace.
Our focus is building the AI visibility, SEO, and AEO infrastructure that makes founder-led professional services firms discoverable and credible. If a project requires additional services beyond our core scope, we have a trusted partner network to ensure all of our clients' needs are covered and the right SEO and AEO strategy is implemented end-to-end.
Our process is designed for founders who have three to five hours available, not thirty. We handle the research, architecture, implementation, and reporting. You'll need to be available for a strategy session at the start of an engagement and periodic reviews. We minimize meetings intentionally.
Yes. Every deliverable, including playbooks, content templates, editorial calendars, schema markup, and analytics dashboards, is yours permanently. There's no proprietary system you lose access to if you stop working with us.
The first step is a discovery call. We'll ask about your firm, your current visibility challenges, and your goals. If there's a fit, we'll recommend the right starting point, usually the AI Visibility Diagnostic for firms that aren't sure where they stand.
Still have a question?