Free SEO & AI Visibility Audit for Indianapolis Businesses

See how your website performs in Google AND in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Delivered by Indianapolis’s most experienced AI SEO agency. No cost, no obligation, two business days.

Sharp Guys Web Design · Founded 2011 · 250+ projects · 120+ five-star reviews  · Indianapolis based

What Is AI SEO, and Why Does It Matter for Indianapolis Businesses?

AI SEO (sometimes called AEO, GEO, or generative engine optimization) is the practice of making your website discoverable not just by Google’s traditional search engine, but by the large language models powering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google’s AI Overview, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini.

For Indianapolis businesses, this matters for a specific reason. The traditional SEO playbook from 2020 was built around earning blue-link clicks from Google. In 2026, more and more of your prospective customers are asking AI tools the questions they used to ask Google. They ask ChatGPT “which web design agency in Indianapolis works with manufacturing companies.” They ask Perplexity “who are the best Indianapolis SEO firms for B2B.” They get an answer with three or four cited sources, and they evaluate vendors from those citations.

If your business is not in the citation set, you are not in the conversation. And the brutal truth is that ranking well in Google does not guarantee citation by AI. Recent industry research found only about 25% overlap between top Google rankings and AI citations for the same query.

A Sharp Guys AI SEO audit tells you exactly where your business stands in both ecosystems, and what to do about the gap.

The Search Landscape Is Changing

The fundamentals still matter. The targets have moved. Here is what the data shows.

~90%

Google’s share of traditional search

~25%

Overlap between Google rankings and AI citations

#1

Reddit as a cited AI source

4.4x

Conversion rate of AI-referred visitors vs organic

Sources: StatCounter 2025, iPullRank/Profound 2026, Semrush 2025

How AI Search Actually Works

When you query ChatGPT or Perplexity, the system does not search for your exact words the way Google does. It generates multiple synthetic sub-queries (fan-out queries) to gather comprehensive information from across the web, ranks the candidate sources by authority and freshness, and synthesizes an answer in real time. You have no visibility into what those sub-queries are.

This changes the optimization game in specific ways:

  • Roughly 25% overlap between top Google rankings and AI citations means traditional SEO does not automatically translate.
  • AI crawlers fetch pages live and time out quickly. A slow site gets skipped before it ever gets cited.
  • Meta descriptions matter more here than they do for Google. They function as an advertisement to the LLM.
  • Freshness is weighted heavily. Update the published date when content actually changes.
  • Schema markup and structured data influence whether an LLM can confidently extract and cite your content.

The Consensus Problem

AI platforms prioritize consensus across sources over what any single site says about itself. If outdated information about your business exists across the web (in old Reddit threads, defunct directory listings, abandoned blog posts, third-party review aggregators), the LLM synthesizes from that body of sources rather than reading and trusting your homepage.

This is reputation management as much as it is SEO.

You need your current, accurate message present on YouTube, on Reddit, on industry sites, in news mentions, and in third-party listings. Your website alone is not enough. For Indianapolis businesses specifically, this means showing up in local directories that the LLMs trust (Indy Chamber, Best of Indy, regional business publications) AND in the broader content ecosystem the AI tools pull from.

This is the part most SEO agencies are not yet doing for clients, because the playbook is genuinely new.

What Actually Works for AI Visibility

Structured Content Chunking

One coherent idea per paragraph. Clear, descriptive headings that signal what each section covers. Short sentences. This is how LLMs parse and extract content. Walls of mixed-topic text get summarized poorly or skipped entirely.

Topical Coverage Depth

AI generates sub-queries you cannot see, so the more comprehensively you cover a topic, the more synthetic queries you potentially answer. Each query you could plausibly cite for is a raffle ticket for being included in the response.

Multi-Source Authority

Spread your accurate message across YouTube, Reddit, industry publications, and PR placements. AI synthesizes from consensus, not just your site. For Indianapolis businesses, this includes local directories, regional press, and trade association content.

Technical Readiness

Fast page loads (AI crawlers time out quickly), semantic URL structure, schema markup beyond what Google requires for rich results, and a robots.txt that does not accidentally block GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot.

Freshness Signals

Update published dates when content changes. AI platforms weight recency heavily, sometimes more than authority. A two-year-old article on a topic that has moved gets ignored even when it ranks fine in Google.

Good SEO is necessary but not sufficient. The mechanics of AI citation are different enough that traditional SEO alone leaves real visibility on the table.

How an Indianapolis AI SEO Engagement With Sharp Guys Works

Every engagement starts with the free audit (the form at the bottom of this page). The audit gives you a documented baseline of where your business currently shows up in both traditional Google search and in major AI tools, what’s working, what’s broken, and what the high-leverage moves are.
If you decide to engage us for the work itself, a typical Indianapolis AI SEO engagement covers six areas:

  • Brand mention audit. We catalog every mention of your business across Reddit, YouTube, industry sites, directories, and review platforms. We fix or get removed the ones that are inaccurate or outdated.
  • Content restructuring for AI extraction. We rebuild your top pages around the chunking principles AI tools actually use. One idea per paragraph, descriptive headings, FAQ schema, internal linking.
  • Schema and technical foundation. Organization schema, FAQ schema, HowTo schema, Article schema, LocalBusiness schema for Indianapolis-specific pages. The structured data layer most agencies skip.
  • Multi-platform content strategy. YouTube content tied to your highest-value queries. Reddit engagement on niche subreddits where your buyers actually are. Industry publication outreach. PR placement strategy.
  • Citation monitoring. Ongoing tracking of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overview answer the queries that matter for your business. Quarterly reports on what’s changing.
  • Traditional SEO as the foundation. Page speed, technical SEO, on-page optimization, internal linking, and content marketing all stay in scope. AI SEO does not replace traditional SEO. It layers on top.

What You Get in Your Free Audit

Traditional SEO Health

How your site performs in Google search results today. Technical issues, content gaps, on-page problems, internal linking weaknesses, and keyword opportunities your competitors are taking.

AI Visibility

Whether your content is structured for AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, and Gemini to understand, cite, and recommend. Live test queries on each platform.

Prioritized Action Plan

Specific, ranked recommendations you can act on immediately. Quick wins first, longer-term plays second. Useful whether you hire us or take the list to your in-house team.

The Key Takeaway

AI search is a brand channel, not a performance channel. Traffic volume is lower than Google’s. Conversion rates are much higher because the user already trusts the recommendation. Focus on controlling your narrative across multiple sources, structuring content for extraction, and building topical authority. The Indianapolis businesses that move now will be the ones cited when the AI traffic share grows.

Quick Wins You Can Implement Today

  • Rewrite your meta descriptions as direct advertisements to the LLM, not search snippets
  • Update published dates whenever you meaningfully refresh content
  • Check your robots.txt for accidental blocks on GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot
  • Restructure your top pages: one idea per paragraph, descriptive H2s and H3s
  • Add FAQ schema to your highest-traffic service pages
  • Create YouTube content tied to your highest-intent search queries
  • Audit brand mentions across Reddit, directories, and review sites for accuracy
  • Run a Lighthouse and PageSpeed test, fix anything over 3 seconds on mobile
  • Test your top three queries live in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview

Why Choose Sharp Guys as Your Indianapolis AI SEO Agency

We are not a generalist SEO shop that added “AI” to a service page last quarter. Our team has been shipping production AI applications for clients since the first GPT API was publicly available. Founder Cody Sharp has built and shipped 20+ AI applications, speaks regularly at the American Marketing Association on AI in marketing, and runs Indianapolis’s most active AI consulting practice alongside our web design and SEO work.

This matters for AI SEO specifically because the optimization problems are not just about content. They are about understanding how the models actually work, where they get their training data, how they fan out queries, what schema they prioritize, and which platforms feed which models. Most SEO agencies are guessing at this. We are building with it.

Trusted by Indianapolis organizations including Horner Industrial, Piper Logistics, Tandem Nutrition, 500 Festival, Indiana Real Estate Institute, and many others.

AI SEO Frequently Asked Questions

Traditional SEO optimizes your website to rank in Google’s blue-link search results. AI SEO (sometimes called AEO or generative engine optimization) optimizes your business presence to be cited and recommended by large language models including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini. The two practices share a foundation (page speed, schema, content quality, authority signals) but diverge on tactics. AI SEO weights freshness, multi-source consensus, and content structure differently than Google does. There is only about 25% overlap between top Google rankings and AI citations for the same query, which means a strong traditional SEO program is not enough on its own.

If your customers ever research vendors, products, or services before buying, then yes. We are at the point where a meaningful share of B2B buyers in particular are asking ChatGPT and Perplexity for vendor recommendations before they ever open a Google tab. For Indianapolis service businesses, manufacturers, and professional firms, being absent from those AI conversations is a real revenue risk that compounds over time. The smart move is to start now while most of your competitors are not paying attention.

Quick wins (schema, robots.txt fixes, meta description rewrites, page speed improvements) can move the needle on AI visibility within 4 to 6 weeks. Deeper work (content restructuring, multi-platform content distribution, brand mention cleanup, YouTube and Reddit strategy) typically shows compounding results across 3 to 6 months. The honest answer is that AI SEO is younger than Google SEO and the timelines are still being established. We will set expectations based on your specific starting point in the audit.

Sharp Guys SEO retainers (which include AI SEO work in addition to traditional SEO) start at $2,100 per month. Project-based AI SEO work (one-time content restructuring, schema implementation, brand mention cleanup) is quoted based on scope. The free audit on this page gives you a documented baseline before any money changes hands, so you can decide whether the engagement makes sense for your specific situation.

Yes. The foundational practices (content structure, schema, page speed, multi-source authority, freshness) work across all major LLMs because they are trained on overlapping data and use similar retrieval mechanisms. Where the platforms diverge (which sources each prioritizes, how each handles freshness, which schema each reads) we tune content and technical setup to maximize coverage across the major tools. Our audit tests live queries on each platform so you see exactly where you stand on each one separately.

Not yet, and probably not soon. Google still drives roughly 90% of traditional search volume, and most B2B research still happens at least partly on the open web. What is true is that AI tools are taking a growing share of high-intent informational searches, and the share of traffic coming from AI referrals is climbing fast. Treat traditional SEO and AI SEO as complementary, not competitive. Stop doing traditional SEO and your organic traffic collapses. Ignore AI SEO and you slowly become invisible to a fast-growing slice of the market.

Three things. First, we have spent thousands of hours working and shipping AI products which gives us a working understanding of how the models actually behave, not just what the SEO blogs say about them. Second, we are an in-house Indianapolis team (no offshore handoffs, no account manager layer between you and the people doing the work). Third, we are willing to be specific and opinionated about what works and what does not, including when the answer is “you do not need to hire us, here is what to do yourself.” The free audit reflects that. We send the full action plan whether you engage us or not.

Request Your Free Indianapolis SEO & AI Visibility Audit

Fill out the form. We will hand-audit your website’s performance in both Google and the major AI tools, run live test queries on the platforms that matter for your business, and send you a prioritized action plan. Delivered in two business days. Recorded by a human, not generated by an AI report tool.

  • No cost, no obligation
  • Delivered within 2 business days
  • Live test queries on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overview
  • Specific, prioritized recommendations you can act on this week
  • Same audit whether you hire us or not

Get a Free SEO & AI Visibility Assessment

Please fill out the form and we'll take a look at your website presence.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Name(Required)
Please add a URL
Please detail any specific questions you have.