Found in search and in AI answers
SEO, AEO & GEO Services: Search, answer and AI-citation optimisation for Dubai businesses — ranked in Google, quoted in featured answers, and cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews.
Most SEO problems in a small business are not mysterious. The site is slow, the pages do not say what people search for, there is no Google Business Profile, and nothing outside the company website mentions the company at all.
Listonics works through that list in order. We start with what is technically wrong, then what the pages say, then the signals that live off your own domain — because a site with no external corroboration will sit below established competitors regardless of how well it is written. Google publishes what it expects, and most of the work is doing it rather than discovering it.
A growing share of buying research now happens inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, where the result is an answer rather than ten links. Google sets out how its AI features choose what to surface, and the short version is that the same things matter plus two more: content a machine can extract cleanly, and corroboration from somewhere other than your own website.
That is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO. SEO is being ranked. AEO is being the answer: the paragraph lifted into a featured result, which depends on answering the question directly in the first forty words and on structure a machine can read, such as FAQPage markup. Google withdrew its separate FAQ rich result in 2026, so the markup is for clarity, not for a dropdown. GEO is being the source an AI assistant cites, which depends on structure, on files like llms.txt, and on being mentioned somewhere you do not control.
Reporting is through Search Console on your own account. You see the same numbers we do, and you keep them if you stop working with us. For AI visibility there is no console, so we check the assistants directly against a fixed list of questions and show you what changed.
What we get called in to fix
- Pages that Google has crawled and chosen not to index, which no amount of additional writing fixes.
- Several pages targeting the same search term, so the site competes with itself and the search engine picks one.
- No Google Business Profile, which decides the map results for anyone searching nearby.
- Nothing outside the company's own website mentioning the company, so there is nothing corroborating that it exists.
- A previous provider who bought links, which is the one spend that reliably makes the position worse.
Who needs this
Dubai offices of 5–200 people that depend on IT every hour but do not have an in-house IT department — professional firms, trading companies, clinics, agencies and start-ups.
What the work covers:
- A technical audit: indexing, speed, structure, and what is stopping pages being crawled.
- Keyword and intent mapping, so each page has one job rather than competing with its neighbours.
- On-page work: titles, descriptions, headings, internal linking and structured data.
- Answer optimisation: a direct answer in the opening lines, FAQ schema, and headings written the way people phrase questions.
- AI citation work: machine-readable structure, llms.txt, open crawler access, and the off-domain mentions assistants draw on.
- Google Business Profile and local signals, which decide the map results.
- A content plan, with what gets published and when.
What we will not do
We do not buy links, we do not publish invented statistics or fabricated case studies, and we do not promise a position on a date. Bought links are the one spend that reliably makes things worse, and every provider who guarantees a ranking is describing something they cannot control.
What is in scope, and what is not
In scope: a technical audit with a prioritised list, indexing and crawl fixes, page structure and internal linking, titles and descriptions, structured data, Google Business Profile setup, keyword and intent mapping, a content plan, and monthly reporting from your own Search Console account.
Deliberately not in scope: buying links, private blog networks, guaranteed positions, and paid advertising, which is a separate discipline with a separate budget. Directory listings and genuine outreach are in scope; paying for placement is not.
How pricing works
Quoted as a fixed scope after a free site survey, itemised line by line — equipment, cabling, licences and labour — so the total is known before work starts. Ongoing support is a separate, predictable monthly fee per user or device.
How implementation works
- Consult — a free site survey and a conversation about headcount, floor plan and what is already in place.
- Design & source — a fixed-scope proposal with equipment listed item by item.
- Install — delivered, tested and documented on site, usually outside working hours.
- Manage — monitoring, helpdesk and monthly management under a support plan, or on-call support if you prefer.
What to compare when choosing a provider
- Are response and on-site targets written down by priority?
- Is the quote a fixed scope, itemised, or hourly?
- Who attends site — employed engineers or subcontractors?
- Which business-grade brands are proposed, and why those?
- Will you receive documentation you own — diagrams, accounts, port maps?
- What exactly is excluded, and what does it cost when it happens?
Planning this for your office? Read our in-depth guide: RAG-Friendly Content: Writing Pages a Retrieval System Can Find, Chunk and Quote (13 min read). Also: llms.txt and AI Crawlers: A robots.txt Guide for UAE Businesses · Generative Engine Optimisation: How ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews Pick Citations.
SEO, AEO & GEO: guides and resources
- SEO for a Small Dubai Business: What Actually Moves in Year OneA new domain earns crawl attention slowly. The order of work that moves it, the shortcuts that backfire, and why nobody honest can promise a date.
- Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): How to Be the Answer Rather Than a LinkBeing the answer means saying it in the first few lines, under a heading that matches the question, in a structure Google can lift cleanly.
- Generative Engine Optimisation: How ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews Pick CitationsAI answers cite sources differently from ranked links. Structure, dates, sourcing and mentions on sites you do not own decide whether you appear.
- llms.txt and AI Crawlers: A robots.txt Guide for UAE BusinessesAllow AI or block AI is the wrong question. Here is which crawlers do what, and a sensible default for a company that wants to be found.
- RAG-Friendly Content: Writing Pages a Retrieval System Can Find, Chunk and QuoteAn assistant fetches passages, then writes from them. Here is how to write pages whose passages survive being pulled out of context.
Frequently asked questions
Technical fixes and a Google Business Profile can show movement in weeks. Competitive search terms take months, and a new domain takes longer still because there is nothing yet corroborating that the business exists. Anyone giving you a date is guessing.
No, and neither can anyone else. What we commit to is the work: the audit, the fixes, the content schedule and the reporting, with the numbers visible to you in your own Search Console.
AEO is answer engine optimisation: being the paragraph a search engine lifts into a featured answer. GEO is generative engine optimisation: being a source an AI assistant quotes. Both are mostly the same work as good SEO done properly — clean structure, a direct answer near the top, structured data — plus the thing that is hardest, which is being mentioned on sites you do not own. If your buyers research in ChatGPT or Perplexity, it matters already.
It depends on whether your customers search for what you sell. For services people look up when they need them, yes. For businesses that run entirely on referral, the same budget usually does more elsewhere, and we will say so.
Between AED 2,500 and AED 30,000 depending on whether it is a one-off audit and fix, a build-out of pages, or ongoing monthly work. An audit is the usual starting point, because it tells you whether the rest is worth spending on.
Almost always domain age and external links rather than page count. A thirty-page site with years of history and real citations will outrank a larger, newer one, because the ranking signal that is hardest to fake is other people pointing at you. Adding pages does not close that gap; it divides the authority you have across more of them.
Yes, and most of the work is on sites we did not build. What we need is access to the hosting or the content management system, Search Console, and whoever can approve changes to the pages.
A report from your Search Console showing clicks, impressions, positions and which pages moved, the work done that month, and what is planned next. If a month produced nothing worth reporting, the report says that.
Written by Srinivasan Ramachandran, Founder, Listonics · Last reviewed October 13, 2026