How does ai help with local seo?

Ask Me Anything Q&A AI Growth Nemanja
1

How do we get people to find our business when they ask for something like “coffee suppliers nearby?” “Is there any food truck near me this Saturday?“ Two questions to be specific,

  1. how do we get found when local buyers chat with AI, eg Gemini?
  2. what and how do ai tools help our business to be found when local customer search or ask their ai app on their mobile device?
2

Hey @Cafn8me ,

thanks for your question!

Here’s what you can do:

  1. Make sure your business is on Google Maps / Business Profile.
    AI assistants pull info from trusted sources like Google Maps. Claim your profile, fill out all details (categories, hours, photos, contact info), and keep it up to date.

  2. List your business on other local directories.
    Besides Google, consider Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, and in Germany, directories like Gelbeseiten.de .

  3. Encourage reviews.
    Good reviews and ratings help AI know your business is trustworthy and relevant.

  4. Keep your info consistent everywhere.
    Make sure your business name, address, and phone number match across all listings.

  5. Check if your Shopify store has proper structured data (schema).

    • Most Shopify themes include basic product and store schema automatically.

    • To check: open your store in a browser, then go to Google’s Rich Results Test and enter your URL. It will show if structured data is present and valid.

    If your schema is missing or incomplete, use a Shopify app.
    Some good options:

    • Smart SEO – automatically adds JSON-LD for products, collections, and your store info.

    • Schema Plus for SEO – adds rich snippets for products, reviews, and local business details.

    • JSON-LD for SEO – lightweight and focused on structured data.

This way, AI assistants like Gemini can find your business and give accurate answers to local customers.

Cheers,

Nemanja J.

3

Oh boy, this is a whole topic.. and one I nerd out about. I’ll try and keep it simple but I have a few videos on this I can send over if needed.

  1. Two ways. The first is obvious, SEO - i.e ranking for keywords, structured data and web crawlers. The second is actual activity on the LLM/AI providers. If a large cluster of users talk about, click on or reference your business, an AI model like Gemini will index that and be more likely to promote that to future users.

    For example, if 100 users ask what is the best X supplement store in Y area, and most of those users narrow the conversation to your business and click on your link – it is ranked higher. This is called PSI (Prompt Signal Indexing). Do this over several months and your score will increase drastically.

  2. How do AI tools help? See above. A good AI tool will help you optimize indexing, LLM outreach, and SEO metadata.

    Which tools? It depends, there are many on the marketplace. Some tools will help write blog posts and rank for keywords or do competitor analysis like TinySEO. As I know of, there is only one that does indexing and LLM outreach which is LinkGPT. It also generates a JSON-LD and llms.txt for you which is crucial as Nemanja mentioned.

    I would definitely keep an open mind and look into/implement them into your business and then track results via GA4 (Google Analytics) to see how much more users come in from AI chat.

Hope this helps.

-Ryan

4

Yes — AI local discovery is growing quickly. Treat each location/service area as a clear entity: consistent NAP data, location pages, local schema, and weekly ‘near me’ prompt tests in Gemini/ChatGPT to confirm if you’re actually cited.