SEO + AEO + AI visibility

SEO & AI Visibility Audits

Q: How do you check whether my business appears in ChatGPT?

Realistic questions that potential customers might ask about your services, industry or location are tested to examine which businesses are mentioned and how they are represented. The audit also looks for inaccurate, incomplete or missing information about your business and signals that may be influencing the results.

Q: Do you only provide SEO and AI visibility audits in Toronto?

Mike Allan is based in Toronto and primarily works with businesses and organizations in Toronto and Ontario. Because the audit itself is performed digitally, businesses elsewhere in Canada can also be served.

Q: What happens after my audit?

You receive prioritized recommendations explaining what was found, why it matters and what should be addressed first. Recommendations can be implemented internally, by your developer or agency, or with ongoing support from Mike Allan.

Find out how visible your business really is across Google search and AI platforms such as ChatGPT.

An SEO & AI Visibility Audit evaluates how effectively your business can be found, understood and represented by search engines and AI systems.

I provide SEO and AI visibility audits for businesses and organizations in Toronto, Ontario and across Canada, with practical recommendations focused on what deserves your attention first.

Request an Audit See What's Included

The Audit

What Is an SEO & AI Visibility Audit?

An SEO and AI visibility audit evaluates how effectively your website and wider online presence can be discovered, understood and represented by both traditional search engines and AI-powered search tools.

Traditional SEO audits tend to focus primarily on Google rankings, technical website issues and organic search performance.

Those things still matter. A lot.

But search behaviour is changing. People can now ask an AI assistant questions such as:

Who provides this service in Toronto?
Which companies specialize in this problem?
What should I look for when choosing a provider?
Which solution would be best for my situation?
How do these companies compare?

An AI visibility audit adds another question: Does the information available about your business give AI systems enough context and confidence to understand when your business may be relevant?

What I Examine

What Does an SEO & AI Visibility Audit Include?

Every website is different. The goal is not to produce the longest possible list of errors. It is to identify the issues and opportunities most likely to affect your visibility.

Technical SEO

I examine whether search engines can efficiently access, crawl, interpret and index your website.

Crawlability and indexability
Website architecture
Internal linking
Redirects and broken links
Canonicalization
Titles, descriptions and headings
XML sitemaps and robots directives
Mobile usability and performance
Structured data

Organic Search Visibility

I look at where your website currently appears in search and where meaningful opportunities may exist.

Current search visibility
Queries and rankings
Search intent
Important landing pages
Content gaps
Competitor visibility
Internal linking opportunities
Relevant content opportunities

AI Visibility

I examine whether your online presence gives AI systems clear, consistent information about your business.

Who your business is
What you offer
Who you serve
Where you operate
Your areas of expertise
Important products or services
Relevant topics and industries
Consistency across authoritative sources

Structured Data & Entity Signals

I review how clearly your site communicates relationships between your business, services, people, locations and content.

Business and organization schema
People and expertise
Services and products
Articles and supporting content
Locations
Breadcrumbs
Relevant FAQ content
Entity consistency

Automated SEO tools can identify hundreds or even thousands of potential issues. Not every warning deserves the same attention. The audit separates meaningful problems from background noise and prioritizes the issues worth fixing.

My Approach

How I Conduct an SEO & AI Visibility Audit

The audit combines technical analysis, search performance, content evaluation and hands-on AI visibility testing.

Discover

Understand your business, audience, services, priorities and search landscape.

Analyze

Examine technical SEO, organic performance, content, structured data and entity signals.

Test

Run relevant AI searches and evaluate how your business and competitors are represented.

Prioritize

Separate meaningful visibility problems from automated warnings and low-value noise.

Recommend

Deliver a practical roadmap showing what should be addressed first and why.

AI Search Testing

Does Your Business Appear in AI Search?

One part of an AI visibility audit can involve testing how AI systems respond to realistic questions potential customers might ask.

The purpose isn't simply to check whether your company name appears.

I look at which businesses are mentioned, how competitors are represented and whether information about your own business is accurate, incomplete or missing.

Example searches

“Who provides [service] in Toronto?”

“What companies specialize in [service]?”

“Who can help me with [problem]?”

“What are some alternatives to [competitor]?”

AI responses can vary by platform, prompt, location, available sources and changes to the underlying systems. These tests provide a snapshot that can reveal patterns and opportunities, not a permanent AI ranking.

SEO + AI Search

How Is an AI Visibility Audit Different From a Traditional SEO Audit?

Traditional SEO asks

Can search engines crawl, understand and rank your website for relevant searches?

AI visibility adds

Can AI systems understand your business well enough to accurately represent it when answering relevant questions?

The two disciplines overlap considerably. Strong technical SEO, useful content, clear site architecture, credible external references and well-defined business information can help both traditional search visibility and AI discoverability.

That's why I evaluate them together rather than treating SEO and AI visibility as unrelated services.

No Magic Buttons

Can You Guarantee That ChatGPT Will Recommend My Business?

No.

And you should be cautious of anyone who says they can.

No consultant or agency controls which businesses an AI system will mention or recommend.

What we can do is improve the information and signals available to search engines and AI systems. That means making your business easier to discover, your services easier to understand, your expertise easier to establish and your information easier to verify.

The goal is to improve your eligibility to be found and understood, rather than promise placement in an answer nobody controls.

Is It Time for an Audit?

Who Is an SEO & AI Visibility Audit For?

An audit can provide a useful baseline whether you're troubleshooting an existing problem or trying to understand how search itself is changing.

Your organic search traffic or rankings have declined
You aren't sure whether your SEO strategy is working
Your website has recently been redesigned or migrated
You're planning a new website
Competitors consistently outrank you

You want to understand your visibility in AI search
AI platforms provide incomplete information about you
You're investing in content without seeing results
Your business depends on online discovery
You want an independent assessment before a larger engagement

The Deliverable

What Will You Receive?

You won't receive a giant automated report and be left to figure out what it means.

The purpose of the audit is to turn findings into decisions.

Technical SEO findings
Organic search visibility analysis
AI visibility observations
Content and information architecture recommendations
Structured data recommendations
Competitor observations
Identified visibility opportunities
Prioritized recommendations

Most importantly: recommendations are organized around what should be addressed first, what can wait and why it matters.

After the Audit

What Happens Next?

An SEO & AI Visibility Audit can be a standalone engagement.

You can take the findings to your internal marketing team, web developer or existing agency and use them as a roadmap.

If you need help implementing the recommendations, I can also work with your team or provide ongoing SEO and AI visibility consulting.

There's no requirement to sign up for a long-term SEO contract simply to find out what's happening with your visibility.

Your Consultant

About Mike Allan

I'm Mike Allan, a Toronto-based SEO & AI Visibility Consultant with more than 20 years of experience helping businesses and nonprofit organizations make sense of search.

I work directly with businesses, organizations, agencies and development teams to identify search visibility problems and turn them into practical recommendations.

My approach to AI visibility builds on the same principle that has always mattered in SEO: make it easy for people and machines to understand who you are, what you know and when you're relevant.

More about my approach

FAQ

SEO & AI Visibility Audit Questions

What is an AI visibility audit?

An AI visibility audit examines how well AI-powered search and answer platforms can find, understand and accurately represent your business. It looks at your website, content, structured data and other online signals, along with how your business appears in relevant AI-generated answers.

How do you check whether my business appears in ChatGPT?

I test realistic questions that potential customers might ask about your services, industry or location and examine which businesses are mentioned and how they are represented. I also look for inaccurate, incomplete or missing information about your business and signals that may be influencing the results.

AI responses can change and vary between users, so this testing provides a snapshot of visibility rather than a permanent ranking.

Is AI visibility optimization the same as SEO?

No, but there is significant overlap. SEO focuses on helping search engines discover, understand and rank your website. AI visibility optimization also considers whether AI systems can understand your business, expertise and relevance well enough to accurately include your information in generated answers.

Strong technical SEO, useful content, clear business information and authoritative external signals can support both.

Can you guarantee that my business will appear in ChatGPT?

No. Nobody outside the platform controls which businesses ChatGPT or another AI system chooses to mention or recommend.

An AI visibility audit identifies opportunities to make your business easier for search engines and AI systems to discover, understand and verify.

Do you only provide SEO and AI visibility audits in Toronto?

I'm based in Toronto and primarily work with businesses and organizations in Toronto and Ontario. Because the audit itself is performed digitally, I can also work with businesses elsewhere in Canada.

What happens after my audit?

You'll receive prioritized recommendations explaining what I found, why it matters and what should be addressed first. You can implement the recommendations internally, give them to your developer or agency, or work with me on implementation and ongoing SEO and AI visibility consulting.

SEO & AI Visibility Audit

Find Out Where You Stand

If you're wondering how your business performs in Google search, what AI systems understand about your company, or where your biggest visibility opportunities may be, an SEO & AI Visibility Audit is a practical place to start.

Let's find out what's working, what's missing and what deserves your attention first.

Request an Audit

Based in Toronto. Working with businesses across Canada.