E-commerce SEO & AI Search Visibility

Your Buyer Asks AI First. Make Sure It Names Your Store.

Before someone lands on your product page, they ask ChatGPT or Google AI what to buy and where to get it. If the answer names a competitor selling the identical SKU, the sale was decided before your site loaded. I build the structure that gets your store named instead.

Google
ChatGPT
Perplexity
AI Overviews
241
Pages Built & Live
100/100
Our Own Audit Score
$0
Ad Spend Behind It
The Problem

Why does AI name your competitor instead of you?

Because on most stores, the pages that matter most are the ones a machine can read least. These are not hypotheticals. They are what I find on nearly every catalog I audit.

Your collection pages say nothing

Collection pages are your highest-intent commercial pages. On most stores they carry no H1 and no structured data at all, while product pages get the full treatment. The pages closest to the money are the thinnest thing on the site.

Highest intent, lowest markup

Shopify wrote your AI file for you

In May 2026 Shopify auto-published an llms.txt and agents.md to every store. It is roughly 530 words of checkout plumbing and it never names a single thing you sell. That file is the first thing an AI agent reads about your brand.

530 words, zero product terms

You and four rivals sell the same SKU

In most catalogs, the competing stores carry the identical units from the identical manufacturers at the identical price. When the product is the same, the only thing left to compete on is which store the buyer's research surface decides to name.

Same product, different answer
YOUR STORE
Google Search
ChatGPT
Perplexity AI
Claude AI
Voice Assistants
AI Overviews
The Future of Search

What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization

GEO is the work of getting your store cited inside AI answers, not just ranked in blue links. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI which product to buy and where to get it, GEO is what decides whether your store is one of the sources named.

Someone asks "what size wood stove do I need for 1,800 square feet" or "best fireplace insert for a small room" weeks before they are ready to buy. GEO is what makes your catalog the thing the answer is built from.

  • Citation Building. Structure your answers so AI platforms can quote them and link back, instead of quoting the competitor who wrote theirs in plain HTML.
  • Entity Optimization. Make it unambiguous who you are, what you carry, and which brands you are an authorized dealer for, so the model stops confusing you with the manufacturer.
  • Catalog-Scale Schema. Product, Offer, Breadcrumb and Collection markup applied across every SKU and every category, not just the ten pages someone got around to.
  • The Pre-Purchase Layer. Sizing, specifications, comparisons and installation questions. The research a buyer does before they know your name.
Services

What does full search coverage for an online store include?

Six pieces of work. Most catalogs need the first three before the rest is worth doing.

Collection & Category Architecture

Most catalogs are organized by brand, because that is how a distributor thinks. Buyers search by type, size, fuel, finish and use case. Those pages usually do not exist yet.

  • Category pages built to real buyer intent
  • H1 and heading structure on every collection
  • CollectionPage and ItemList markup
  • Faceted navigation that does not leak crawl budget
  • Internal linking from guides into categories
  • Competitor category-gap analysis

GEO: AI Search Visibility

Get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews, including a real llms.txt that describes your catalog instead of the platform default.

  • A hand-written llms.txt that names what you sell
  • Entity and knowledge graph disambiguation
  • Authorized-dealer and brand relationship signals
  • FAQPage and Speakable answer markup
  • AI crawler access audit
  • Citation baseline against your real competitors

Technical SEO at Catalog Scale

The problems that matter on a 700-SKU store are different from the ones on a five-page site. Crawl budget, duplicate variants, thin templates and index bloat.

  • Full technical audit across the catalog
  • Crawl budget and index bloat control
  • Variant and duplicate-content handling
  • Core Web Vitals on product templates
  • Canonical and pagination logic
  • Sitemap accuracy across every SKU

Buying-Guide Content

The sizing, spec and comparison questions buyers research weeks before they are ready to purchase. This is where the AI citations actually come from.

  • Sizing and specification guides
  • Comparison and versus pages
  • Installation and compliance explainers
  • Category roundups that earn the citation
  • FAQ blocks matched to real questions
  • Refresh of existing posts that already rank

Product & Offer Schema

Price, availability, brand, variants and returns, expressed so a machine can read them across the whole catalog rather than on the handful of pages someone got to.

  • Product, Offer and Brand markup
  • Variant and price-range handling
  • BreadcrumbList across the site
  • MerchantReturnPolicy and shipping details
  • Availability accuracy as stock moves
  • Validation against Google's requirements

Citation Monitoring

Weekly checks on what AI actually answers for your buying questions, which stores get named, and what changed since last week.

  • Tracked prompts written to your catalog
  • Share of voice against named competitors
  • The exact sources the answer was built from
  • Alerts when a citation appears or drops
  • Search Console and GA4 tied to the same view
  • Monthly reporting you can hand upward
My Process

How does the work actually run?

Four stages over the first 90 days. You see the roadmap before anything gets built, and you own it either way.

1

Deep-Dive Audit

Technical baseline, collection architecture, schema coverage, and where you currently stand in AI answers against the stores selling your exact SKUs.

Weeks 1-2
2

Prioritized Roadmap

The audit becomes an ordered list: what to fix, in what sequence, and what each item is worth. You keep this document whether or not I build any of it.

Weeks 2-3
3

The Build

Collection templates, schema across the catalog, the answer layer, and an llms.txt that names what you sell. Shipped in pieces so you can see each one land.

Weeks 3-8
4

Measure & Iterate

Organic visibility and AI citations tracked against the baseline from week one, so you can see what moved and what did not. Keep what works, cut what does not.

Weeks 9-12
Results

What has this method actually produced?

These are my own properties, not client averages. I built the method on my own sites first so the numbers would be things you can go and check rather than things you have to take my word for.

241
Neighborhood Pages Live
25
NC Cities Covered
100
County Pages on buy-sell.land
100/100
Our Own Audit Score
$0
Ad Spend Behind It
11
Sites in the Network

Every prompt I test against ChatGPT is logged publicly, dated and unedited, including the answers that are not flattering. See the prompt-test log.

Investment

What does this cost?

Start with the audit. You keep the roadmap whether or not you hire me to build any of it, which is the point: you should be able to walk away with something useful.

Visibility Audit
Start here
$ 2,500 one-time
  • Full technical baseline across the catalog
  • Collection and category architecture review
  • Schema coverage audit, every template
  • AI answer baseline vs your real competitors
  • Search Console and GA4 review
  • Prioritized roadmap, sequenced by impact
  • Yours to keep or hand to another developer
Request the Audit
Maintenance
Optional, after the build
$ 1,500 /mo
  • Weekly AI citation monitoring
  • Share of voice vs named competitors
  • Schema upkeep as the catalog changes
  • New category pages as you add lines
  • Content refresh on pages that slip
  • Monthly report you can hand upward
  • Cancel anytime, no contract
Add Maintenance

No rankings promised and no AI citations guaranteed, because nobody can honestly promise either. What you get is the roadmap, correct implementation, and measurement you own.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Got questions? I've got answers.

What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)? +

GEO is the work of getting your store cited inside AI answers, not just ranked in blue links. When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI which product to buy and where to get it, GEO is what decides whether your store is one of the sources named.

How is e-commerce SEO different from local SEO? +

Local SEO is about being found in one city. E-commerce SEO is about catalog architecture. The work sits in collection pages, product templates, structured data across hundreds of SKUs, and the buying-guide content people read before they are ready to purchase. A 700-product store has 700 chances to be machine-readable, and most stores waste nearly all of them.

Do you guarantee rankings or AI citations? +

No. Nobody can, and anyone who does is selling you something. What I guarantee is a prioritized roadmap, correct technical implementation, and measurement you own, so you can see exactly what changed and what it moved.

How much does e-commerce SEO cost? +

The audit is $2,500 one-time and produces a prioritized roadmap you keep whether or not you hire me for the build. The Build is $7,500 one-time. Ongoing maintenance is $1,500 per month and you can cancel anytime.

Which platforms do you work with? +

Mostly Shopify, since that is where most high-ticket catalogs live and where the agentic commerce layer is moving fastest. The method is platform-agnostic though. If your store renders HTML and you can edit templates, the work applies.

How long before this shows up in AI answers? +

I do not know, and anyone who hands you a date is guessing. Model training and retrieval cycles are not published and they vary by platform. What I can tell you is that the technical work lands immediately and is measurable from day one, and that I baseline your AI citations in week one so you can watch the change rather than take my word for it.

Who actually does the work? +

I do. You work directly with me, Tyler Moncrieff. There is no account manager layer and no junior team. That caps how many stores I can take on at once, which is deliberate.

What do you need from us to start? +

Read access to Search Console and GA4, and eventually theme access for the build. That is it for the audit. If you do not have Search Console set up properly, getting that right is usually the first thing in the roadmap, because you cannot optimize what you cannot see.

Take Action

Where does your store stand right now?

Send me your store and I will run the free visibility check: where you sit technically, what your llms.txt actually says about you, and whether AI names you or a competitor for your core buying questions. No charge and no obligation.

Request the Free Visibility Check

Takes 30 seconds. No obligation.

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Audit Request Received!

Thanks for reaching out! I'll analyze your online presence and get back to you within 24 hours with your free SEO + AI Search audit.

Need faster response? Call (828) 471-0032

(828) 471-0032 tyler@rankops.net Charlotte, NC. Serving stores nationwide.
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About Tyler Moncrieff · Local business in Charlotte? That work lives at RankOps. Neighborhood pages: Ballantyne · Dilworth · Myers Park · Noda · Plaza Midwood · South End · Southpark · University City · Uptown · Beatties Ford Road