MPNobody publishes prices in this industry, which is how "it depends" became a business model. It does depend, but on knowable things. Here's the anatomy of the cost, so whoever you hire, including us, has to earn it in daylight.
What You're Actually Buying
AEO work is four jobs wearing one name. The audit: finding out what every major AI platform currently says about you and your competitors. Entity work: making your business identically legible across your site, profiles, and directories, with schema markup doing the machine translation. Content: answer pages for the questions that precede a purchase. And measurement: tracking who the machines name, month over month, so the work provably moves the number.
The Do-It-Yourself Line
An owner with patience can do more of this than the industry admits. The 20-minute audit is free. Profile and directory cleanup costs evenings, not dollars. A review habit costs discipline. Where DIY usually stalls is volume and consistency: producing genuinely good answer pages every week, and checking four platforms' output like it's a job. It is a job. That's the honest boundary line.
What an Agency Adds
Speed, mostly, and the compounding that comes from doing this across many businesses at once: knowing which signals move first, which content formats get quoted, what normal looks like on each platform. Expect an engagement shaped like serious SEO: a setup phase for audit and entity work, then a monthly rhythm of content, proof-building, and reporting. Anyone quoting a one-time fee to "get you into ChatGPT" is selling weather, not climate.
Honest Timelines
Entity fixes register in weeks. Review momentum shows in a month or two. Recommendation status on competitive queries typically builds over a quarter of consistent work, faster in neglected local categories, slower where rivals are already optimizing. Anyone promising day-one results found a way to charge for the calendar. The week-by-week picture of what moves first is in the ChatGPT playbook.
The Only Question That Matters
Whatever you spend, tie it to the scoreboard: which money queries, which platforms, who gets named, and how that number moved since last month. If a proposal can't name its scoreboard, it's a brochure. Ours is a strategy call away, and it starts by showing you the number before we ask for a dime.
Questions People Ask
Can you give an actual dollar figure?
Scope drives it: how many services, locations, platforms, and how much content production. What we can promise is a scoped number after the audit, tied to a measurable scoreboard.
Is AEO more expensive than SEO?
They overlap heavily, and most businesses shouldn't buy them separately. A modern engagement covers both surfaces for a budget comparable to serious SEO alone.
What's the minimum worth doing?
The free audit, profile and directory cleanup, and a review habit. That floor costs time, not money, and moves the number for most local businesses.
How fast will I see results?
Entity fixes register within weeks. Durable recommendation status on competitive queries typically takes about a quarter of consistent work.
What should I ask any agency before hiring?
Which queries and platforms they'll measure, what the number is today, and how they'll report its movement monthly. Refuse fog.