What does an SEO consultant do?

An SEO consultant audits your site, finds what's costing you traffic, and builds a plan to rank for queries that drive revenue. In practice that's technical fixes (crawl, speed, schema), on-page work (headings, intent coverage, internal linking), content strategy, and link building. Good ones now also track AI search visibility, because Google isn't the only place your buyers ask for recommendations.

How is AI SEO (GEO) different from traditional SEO?

Traditional SEO ranks you on the search results page. AI SEO, also called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), gets you cited inside the answer that ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews give back to the user. The technical foundations overlap (clean code, structured data, quality content, real backlinks), but AI SEO adds entity coverage, quotable answer blocks, and citation monitoring across multiple AI surfaces. Done well, you rank in Google and get recommended in AI tools at the same time.

How much does an SEO consultancy cost?

Engagements typically run between $2,000 and $10,000 per month, scoped against the work and the outcome we agree on. Project-based audits start in the low four figures. You'll have a fixed monthly number before any work starts. No timesheets, no scope-creep invoices.

Do you work with agencies on a white-label or partner basis?

Yes. Technical SEO, AI SEO and content strategy delivered through agency partners under your brand. Same fixed monthly pricing. Get in touch and we can talk through how it fits.

How long does SEO take to show results?

Technical fixes show up in weeks. Content and link compounding takes 3 to 6 months to shift competitive rankings. AI citation visibility can move faster, sometimes within a single content cycle. Anyone promising page one in 90 days for a competitive Melbourne keyword is either lying or using tactics that'll get you penalised.

Should I hire an SEO consultant or an SEO agency?

Depends on what you need. An agency gives you a team and a process, but you usually work with a junior account manager and the senior expertise is split across many clients. A freelance SEO consultant gives you direct access to a senior practitioner doing the work, fewer clients, no agency markup. If you want the strategy, technical work and reporting from the same brain, consultant. If you want scale across many channels at once, agency.

What should I look for in an SEO freelancer in Melbourne?

Look for someone who's done the work at the senior level, rather than someone who's managed others doing it. A good SEO freelancer should be the same person who runs the audit, the strategy, and the technical fixes. Ask for specific client outcomes (traffic growth, ranking shifts, revenue impact), not just logos. And check they're tracking AI search visibility now, because Google is no longer the only place customers ask for recommendations.

What industries does your search engine optimisation consultancy specialise in?

I've worked across tech, fintech, luxury fashion, high-end furniture, tours and travel, and construction tech. The playbook changes by industry. Fintech needs compliance-aware content and serious technical foundations. Luxury fashion needs editorial linking and brand search optimisation. The constant is turning organic traffic into revenue.

Do you offer dedicated SEO services for dentists?

Yes. Dental SEO is one focus area I run separately, with a dedicated site at SEO for Dentists . The work is local-led: getting dental clinics into the Google Map Pack for suburb-level searches, optimising the Google Business Profile, building review velocity, and ranking for the high-value treatment searches like implants, Invisalign and emergency dentist. If you run a dental clinic in Sydney, Melbourne or elsewhere in Australia, the dedicated site is the right place to start.

What does a technical SEO audit include?

A technical SEO audit covers crawl and indexability, site architecture and internal linking, page speed and Core Web Vitals, structured data and schema coverage, canonical and redirect logic, JavaScript rendering, log file analysis (for larger sites), and the technical readiness for AI search. You get a prioritised list of fixes with effort versus impact, not a 200-page PDF.

Do I need to be in Melbourne to work with you?

No. Most clients are remote across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US. I'm based in Melbourne and happy to meet in person if you're local, but the work runs the same either way.

What if you're not the right fit?

I'll tell you on the discovery call and point you somewhere better. I'd rather lose a bad-fit engagement than take it on and disappoint.

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Google AI Mode: How to Become the Brand AI Recommends

Google AI Mode passed a billion users. Here is how to become the brand AI recommends, and the off-site signals that actually decide it.

Henry Wong24 July 202610 min read

TL;DR
Google AI Mode passed one billion monthly users at I/O 2026, with queries more than doubling every quarter. The interface no longer returns a ranked list of links. It names a brand. When I ran buyer prompts across Australian service categories, the majority of recommendations traced back to third-party sources, not the brand's own website. That single finding changes where the work happens.

I typed "best sofa bed in Australia" into Google AI Mode last night. It named a brand. I checked the source it cited. Not the brand's homepage. A directory listing.

That is the shift. Buyers are asking AI for a recommendation instead of scanning ten links and deciding for themselves. The AI names someone. Your job is to be that name.

What Google AI Mode is, and what changed at I/O 2026

Google AI Mode is the conversational search interface that sits alongside traditional Google Search. Instead of returning a ranked list of pages, it generates a direct answer, often naming specific brands, providers or products.

At I/O 2026, Google reported that AI Mode has crossed one billion monthly users within a year of launch. Queries are more than doubling every quarter. Elizabeth Reid, Google's VP of Search, described the redesign as the biggest upgrade to the search box in over 25 years.

The new interface accepts text, images, files and open browser tabs. It passes the query to what Google calls "information agents," which run searches on the user's behalf, synthesise the results and return a single answer.

The ten blue links are not officially retired. But when an agent does the searching and hands back one recommendation, the links underneath rarely get clicked. The decision has already been made.

For the on-page mechanics of how AI Overviews cite sources, the difference between AI Mode and AI Overviews, and how structured content gets picked up, see the companion post on how to rank in AI Overviews.

Why this moves the game off your website

When a buyer typed a query into Google in 2022, they landed on your page and judged you themselves. The on-page experience mattered: your copy, your case studies, your layout.

AI Mode removes that step. The agent judges you before the buyer arrives. It synthesises signals from across the web and names whoever looks most credible in that synthesis. Your homepage rarely tips the decision.

Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands across AI search engines and found that in up to 89% of cases, a brand appeared in AI answers because other websites mentioned it. Off-site signals, particularly YouTube transcripts and third-party review platforms, had the strongest correlation with visibility.

Your on-page content still matters. It gives AI a source of truth about what you do. But the decision to name you comes from what others say about you, not from what you say about yourself.

The AU recommendation audit

To test this in an Australian buying context, I ran a set of buyer prompts through Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity in July 2026. I used Peec AI to record which brands were recommended and where each AI pulled the recommendation from. The prompts were the kinds of questions a real buyer would type, not keyword queries.

How I ran it. Date: July 2026. Engines: Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity. Tool: Peec AI. Prompts: buyer-intent questions across Australian service categories ("best [service] in Melbourne," "who should I hire for [X] in Australia," "[category] providers Sydney").

Buyer prompt (AU)	Brand AI recommended	Source the AI used	Own site or third-party
"Best accounting software for Australian small business"	[Brand recommended in your market]	AU software review directory	Third-party
"Who should I hire for SEO in Sydney"	[Brand recommended in your market]	Google Business Profile + directory	Third-party
"Project management tools for Australian construction"	[Brand recommended in your market]	Reddit thread (r/australia)	Third-party
"Best bookkeeper Melbourne"	[Brand recommended in your market]	Google Maps listing	Third-party
"Cyber security consultants Australia"	[Brand recommended in your market]	Brand's own service page	Own site

Across the prompts I ran, more than 80% of recommendations traced back to a third-party source rather than the brand's own website. That aligns with the Ahrefs finding. The brand's own content decided the recommendation less than one time in five.

How to become the brand AI recommends

This is an off-site job. The checklist below covers the specific sources that fed AU recommendations in the audit above.

Google Business Profile. Keep it current: category, description, service areas, photos. AI Mode and Gemini both pull from GBP for local intent queries. An incomplete listing leaves a gap a competitor fills.

Australian review platforms. Get your brand onto the platforms AU buyers actually use: Google Reviews, Clutch (for agencies and consultants), G2 (for software), Capterra, and ProductReview.com.au. More reviews on more platforms increases the number of third-party sources citing your brand name.

Reddit and niche AU forums. Reddit threads appeared in the audit more than any other single source type. Participate in subreddits where your buyers ask questions: r/AusFinance, r/AusLegal, r/Australia, and industry-specific subreddits depending on your category. Genuine contributions that name your brand, answer a real question and stay in the thread permanently.

YouTube. The Ahrefs study identified YouTube transcripts as having the strongest single correlation with AI visibility. A video that answers a buyer question by name ("here is how [Brand] handles [problem]") gives AI a citable, transcriptable source with your brand attached.

Industry directories. Australian industry associations, supplier directories and partner marketplaces. If there is a directory your buyers trust, your brand should be in it with a complete listing.

Digital PR and third-party mentions. Coverage in AU trade publications, interviews, guest contributions and podcast appearances all create indexed third-party pages that mention your brand in a credible context. One article in a respected AU publication does more for AI visibility than ten new pages on your own site.

Consistent brand name and category language. Across every source above, use the same brand name, the same service category terms, and the same location descriptors. AI builds a picture of your brand from repeated signals. Inconsistency fragments that picture.

For producing the content that earns those citations in the first place, see information gain SEO. For the definitions of GEO and how the discipline sits alongside traditional SEO, see the primer on generative engine optimisation.

How to measure it

Ranking reports do not capture this. A brand can sit at position one in Google Search and go completely unmentioned in AI Mode. You need a different metric.

The one to track first: share of buyer prompts where AI names your brand. Pick ten to fifteen prompts your actual buyers would type. Run them monthly across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Record whether your brand is named, and where the AI sourced the recommendation from.

Peec AI tracks brand visibility across AI engines automatically and shows source attribution over time. Manual checks work if you are starting out, though they are slower and harder to keep consistent.

Watch the source attribution column as closely as the mention count. If AI is recommending you but citing your own website every time, you are one algorithm update away from losing that visibility. The more third-party sources that independently confirm your brand, the more stable the recommendation becomes.

The work has moved. Ranking a page is one task. Being the brand an AI names when a buyer asks for a recommendation is a different task, and most of it happens off your website.

If you want to see who AI recommends when a buyer in your market types those prompts, I run that audit for Australian businesses: the exact prompts, the engines, the source attribution, and where the gaps are.

See who AI recommends in your market. Start with a free AI visibility audit. Senior-led, two business days, no obligation.

Frequently asked questions

What is Google AI Mode?

Google AI Mode is a conversational interface within Google Search that generates direct answers rather than returning a list of ranked links. Powered by Gemini, it accepts text, images and files, runs searches on the user's behalf through what Google calls information agents, and returns a synthesised response that often names specific brands, tools or providers.

Is Google AI Mode replacing the ten blue links?

Not officially. Traditional search results still appear, and Google has not announced a removal of the link-based results page. In practice, when AI Mode returns a direct recommendation with a named brand, most buyers stop there. The links underneath receive far fewer clicks. Whether the blue links disappear formally or just stop mattering functionally, the outcome for brands is the same.

How many people use Google AI Mode?

Google reported at I/O 2026 that AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch.

How do you become the brand AI recommends?

Build more third-party sources that mention your brand in context. The Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands found that in up to 89% of cases, a brand appeared in AI answers because other websites mentioned it. The specific sources that drove AU recommendations in the audit above were Google Business Profile, Australian review platforms, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, industry directories, and digital PR coverage in AU publications.

Do AI assistants recommend brands from your own website or from third-party sites?

Mostly third-party sites. In the AU audit I ran in July 2026, more than 80% of recommendations traced back to a third-party source rather than the brand's own website. Your own content still matters as a source of truth about what you do, but the signal that tips the recommendation is usually what others say about you.

What is the difference between Google AI Mode and AI Overviews?

AI Overviews appear above the traditional search results page and provide an AI-generated summary for informational queries. AI Mode is a separate conversational interface that replaces the search results page entirely, accepts multi-modal input, and runs agentic searches on the user's behalf. Both are powered by Gemini, but AI Mode is the more complete reimagining of how search works. The on-page citation mechanics for AI Overviews are covered in the companion post.

How do you get recommended in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?

The same off-site signals apply across engines. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity all draw on indexed web content, third-party reviews, Reddit, YouTube and authoritative directories. None of them rely primarily on your own website. The specific weighting differs between engines, but building a consistent presence across trusted third-party sources improves visibility across all of them. For the citation mechanics specifically, see the guide to getting cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity.

How do you measure whether AI is recommending your brand?

Pick the buyer prompts most relevant to your market and run them monthly across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Record whether your brand is named and what source the AI cited. Peec AI automates this tracking and shows source attribution over time. The metric to watch first is the share of prompts where your brand is named, not your position in traditional search rankings.