AI search optimisation and AEO agency for Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers

What the service includes

• Baseline test. Questions written for your service and the towns you genuinely serve, covering both visitor questions (“best wedding photographer Byron Bay”) and local ones (“physio near me Ballina”), run across six engines with repeated runs.
• Competitor and source map. Which businesses are named instead of you, and which tourism sites, directories and lists the engines cite.
• Fix plan and implementation. Clear service and area pages, answers to the questions customers ask, LocalBusiness and Service structured data that matches the page, and checks that search crawlers can read your site.
• Profiles and listings. Recommendations for your Google Business Profile, Bing Places and the local and industry directories that matter in your category. Full profile and entity setup is a one-off add-on.
• Monthly reporting. The same prompts every month: mentions, position in the shortlist, citations of your own pages and accuracy, by engine and town.

Content updates and authority-building outreach are included on the Growth plan. The full national service is described on AI visibility services.

How an engagement works

1. Audit. Run the baseline, record who is named and why, and agree the prompts we will track.
2. Structure. Fix the pages, profile details and structured data that make you hard to identify or match to a local question.
3. Authority. Work on the third-party sources engines read: reviews, directories, tourism and industry listings, local publications.
4. Monitor. Re-run the same prompts monthly, log every change, and separate real movement from normal answer variation.

What we need from you

• Website access (or your developer’s contact) and manager access to your Google Business Profile.
• The services you want to be known for and the towns you genuinely serve.
• Licences, accreditations and memberships, stated accurately.
• A way to ask real customers for reviews. We set up the process; we never write or buy reviews.
• Optional: Search Console and analytics access, so we can connect AI visibility with enquiries.

Evidence from the Northern Rivers

Our first published case study is local. In September 2026 we rebuilt how a Northern Rivers pet business describes itself to search engines and AI: business and service schema, an expanded FAQ, a completed Google Business Profile and consistent listings. In a first measurement on 7 October 2026 (six local questions, once each on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity), it was named in 7 of 18 answers and its own website was cited 6 times. The business is co-owned by a member of our team, there was no formal before test, and it is one business in a low-competition category. All of that is disclosed in the full case study.

Our study of 138 AI answers about hiring an AI search agency included the question “Who can help my business show up in ChatGPT in the Northern Rivers NSW?”. Across the study no agency appeared in more than 11% of answers, and engines most often read dedicated service pages and “best of” lists.

How AI chooses Northern Rivers businesses

Engines that search the web read a handful of sources and summarise what they agree on. The businesses that get named are usually the ones whose information is easiest to find, understand and verify:

• Clear identity. The same name, category and town everywhere online.
• A matching page. A page that answers the exact question, including the service and the town.
• Profiles and reviews. A complete Google Business Profile and recent, specific reviews. Google says its own local results weigh relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help).
• Third-party corroboration. Tourism sites, directories, associations, local media and “best of” lists.

A practice with a beautiful website but a thin profile and conflicting directory details gives the engine less to check, and less to check tends to mean it names someone else.

Northern Rivers specifics we plan for

• Visitors and locals ask differently. Visitors ask “best in Byron”; residents ask “near me in Lismore”. We test both where both matter to you.
• Spread-out towns. A Byron Bay business may not surface for a Ballina or Lennox Head question unless its service area is stated plainly.
• Seasonality. Tourism peaks make current information and recent reviews more important; stale listings get repeated.
• Small-operator listings. Many excellent local businesses have thin or inconsistent profiles, which is often the first thing to fix.
• The Tweed and the border. Businesses serving Kingscliff, Tweed Heads or the southern Gold Coast need both regions stated clearly. See the Tweed guide and Gold Coast services.

Do-it-yourself steps you can take this month

1. Complete every field of your Google Business Profile: category, services, the towns you cover, hours and photos.
2. Make your name, address and phone number identical everywhere online.
3. Give each main service its own page that says what it is, who it’s for and which towns you serve.
4. Ask recent customers for reviews that mention the service they used.
5. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot for the “best [your service] Byron Bay” (or your town), note who is named, and repeat next month.

More detail in our guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT.

Why Northern Rivers businesses work with Cited AI

Pricing

Full details on our pricing section and in our AEO pricing guide. Industry guides: builders, mortgage brokers, buyer’s agents, dentists and health clinics.

Frequently asked questions