Luke McLaughlin
Technical SEO & Growth Specialist in Digital Marketing & LLM (AI)-based applications
I help brands get found in AI search. As an AI growth consultant I combine answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO) with classic technical SEO, so your pages earn citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, not just rankings in the ten blue links.
Remote-first, working with clients across the English-speaking world — the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.
The new prize in search is being the source an answer engine quotes and names when it composes a reply. I optimise sites to become that source: clean, extractable passages, connected entities, and citable facts that AI answers can lift cleanly.
Most consulting stops at recommendations. Because I also code in JavaScript, Python, and C#, I can ship the structured data, Core Web Vitals fixes, and content changes myself, removing the hand-off friction between strategy and dev.
The shift
For two decades the goal of SEO was a blue link in position one. That goal is now necessary but no longer sufficient: more and more answers are composed by AI, and the brands that win are the ones those engines cite.
AEO is about structuring content so an engine can extract a clean, direct answer from it. That means leading each section with the answer in the first sentence, putting numbers and named entities inline, and using question-shaped headings so the right passage aligns to the right query.
GEO is broader. A generative answer is not retrieved from a ranking, it is composed: the engine rewrites the prompt, retrieves candidate documents, grounds a draft against passages, and attributes sentences back to URLs. Each stage is a place to win, and GEO works all of them.
I go deeper on the mechanics in my guide to getting cited by AI across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, which walks through retrieval, query fan-out, the claim-and-evidence writing pattern, and entity SEO in detail.
My approach
I treat AI growth as a funnel. Classic SEO gets you into the consideration set; AEO / GEO decide whether you're the source quoted from it. Skipping either half is the common failure mode, so I work both together.
AI answers are grounded against a conventional index, so crawlability, indexation, internal linking, and Core Web Vitals come first. If the bots can't fetch and rank you, no amount of extractable prose helps. This is the same revenue-led technical SEO I run everywhere, and the focus of my work as a technical SEO consultant.
Generative engines reason over entities, not just keywords. I ship complete Organization or
Person markup with a real sameAs graph and keep your facts identical across the web,
using my structured-data playbook.
I rewrite priority pages into a claim-and-evidence structure and consolidate thin fragments into comprehensive pages that satisfy query fan-out. Strong topic clusters and internal linking turn each pillar page into a unit engines can ground against.
Because the click often never comes, I instrument AI visibility directly: GA4 AI-referrer segments, citation tracking, and server-log confirmation that retrieval bots get a clean fetch, building on durable server-side measurement.
Beyond search
AI search visibility is most valuable when it sits inside a system. I bring the same hands-on approach to performance marketing, analytics, and practical AI built into the way a team works.
I treat SEO and paid media as one system: fast, conversion-focused landing pages, clean GA4 and server-side tracking, and reporting that ties activity to the bottom line. See performance marketing on a technical-SEO foundation.
As the builder of the MultiAgentAI software studio, I help teams put practical, private AI into their actual workflows, drawing on the same thinking in my local-first AI sales playbook.
FAQ
An AI growth consultant helps your brand get found and cited in AI search — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews — through answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO). I combine that with classic technical SEO, performance marketing, and analytics so the same work compounds across both traditional search and AI answers.
Both aim to get your content into AI-generated answers. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) focuses on structuring content so engines can extract a clean, direct answer from it. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is broader, covering how a generative engine retrieves, grounds, and attributes sources when it composes a reply. In practice I work both together: rank for the underlying query, then make individual passages clean enough to be quoted.
Yes. AI answers are grounded against a conventional search index, so if your pages aren't crawlable, fast, and ranking for the underlying sub-queries, they usually aren't in the retrieval pool at all. Classic technical SEO and topical authority are the entry ticket; AEO / GEO decide whether you're the source quoted from it.
I instrument three layers: GA4 segments for AI referrers such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, citation tracking that checks whether your domain is quoted across the major engines for your priority queries, and server-log analysis to confirm the retrieval and user-action bots are actually fetching your pages. Branded-search lift in Search Console acts as a useful proxy too.
Both. I deliver prioritised audits and, because I code in JavaScript, Python, and C#, I can ship the technical and structured-data fixes directly. Engagements are project-based, quoted after a short conversation about scope, with a clear fixed price before any work begins.
Get started
Whether you need AEO / GEO, technical SEO, or full-funnel growth, you get senior, hands-on work from start to finish, on a clear project-based quote.