AI SEO course for local businesses: get found, read and cited by AI search
A free 8-lesson course for owners and the SEOs who serve them. It shows you how to make ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews understand your business well enough to name it in an answer. No signup. No paywall. Built from 200+ real local site builds.
No signup. No paywall. 8 lessons, ~80 minutes.
The assistant names one or two businesses, then cites the sources it leaned on. Those sources are your profile, your pages and what other sites say about you. This course is about all three.
What you will be able to do after these eight lessons
Explain, in plain language, how an AI assistant assembles a local recommendation and where your business fits into it.
Complete a Google Business Profile that AI engines can read without hedging, and keep every listing consistent with it.
Write service pages that get quoted at passage level instead of skimmed and skipped.
Publish and validate LocalBusiness JSON-LD, with a copy-paste block you can adapt in an afternoon.
Set crawler permissions for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and OAI-SearchBot on purpose rather than by accident.
Run a monthly prompt test and read the result without fooling yourself about what it proves.
AI search terms covered in plain language
Every one of these is defined in the glossary, with a link to the fuller entry on aiseocourse.wiki.
Four AI search problems local business owners keep hitting
These are the patterns that came up again and again across LocusPilot's local builds. Each one maps to a lesson.
The assistant names a competitor
You ask ChatGPT or Perplexity who to call in your town and somebody else gets named. Lesson 1 explains how that choice is made, and the diagnostic guide walks you through the three usual causes.
You do not know what AI is reading
Your site, your Google Business Profile, a directory listing from 2019: something is feeding those answers. Lessons 2 and 3 show which assets get pulled and what to do with each one.
AI repeats facts that are out of date
Old hours, a disconnected number, an address you moved out of. One stale record spreads through the aggregators, and Lesson 2 covers how to find and fix it.
You cannot tell whether any of it worked
Most advice stops at "publish more content". Lesson 7 is honest about what can and cannot be measured today, and gives you a 15-minute monthly test instead of a dashboard subscription.
Who this AI SEO course is written for
It is aimed at one reader and points the other one somewhere better. Checking the fit now saves you 80 minutes if it is the wrong course for your situation.
Start here if
- You run or market a single-location or small multi-location service business: trades, clinics, salons, restaurants, professional services.
- You already have a website or a Google Business Profile and want ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews to name you.
- You have no coding background. Every technical step has a copy-paste block and a way to check it worked.
Go straight to AI SEO Rainmakers if
- You do this for clients at scale, or you run affiliate or operator sites.
- You want weekly testing data and a live call with Charles Floate.
- You already know what GEO means and want the advanced material, not a primer.
AI SEO Rainmakers is a paid AI SEO training community run by Charles Floate, founded August 2026. On 17 September 2026 the public Skool listing showed $289 a month and a 5.0 rating from 34 reviews. There is a 3.5-hour live call every Wednesday, recorded.
AI SEO Rainmakers on Skool seo.stream
That Skool link is a referral link. We say so here and in Lesson 8.
The 8 lessons in the local AI SEO curriculum
Read them in order the first time. Each lesson assumes the one before it, and Lesson 1 is the one that makes the rest make sense.
Lesson 1 Start here How AI search picks local businesses
The retrieval-and-citation mechanics behind every AI recommendation of a local business, with a 5-minute self-test.
Lesson 2 Google Business Profile for AI search
Making your Google Business Profile the clean, consistent fact source AI engines prefer, one field at a time.
Lesson 3 Write local pages AI can quote
What on-page content AI assistants are willing to quote, and how to write it: answer-first structure, one service per page, facts instead of adjectives.
Lesson 4 Schema for local AI SEO
LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage and sameAs markup so AI engines can resolve your business as one entity, plus how to validate it and what not to mark up.
Lesson 5 Build a local site AI can find
The method (structure, pages, the profile link, llms.txt, crawler permissions), then a walkthrough building the plumber site with LocusPilot. Disclosure included.
Lesson 6 Reviews, mentions and citations AI trusts
How off-site signals feed the facts and sentiment AI assistants repeat: review velocity and replies, the directories that matter, local mentions, and NAP consistency.
Lesson 7 Measure your AI search visibility
A manual prompt set, a weekly log template, the Search Console signals that mean something, free trackers, and what a realistic 90-day curve looks like.
Lesson 8 Where to go next
The 90-day checklist, and three honest paths after it: keep going alone, get the site built, or step up to AI SEO Rainmakers, with dated facts and the referral disclosed.
Why this AI SEO course is worth 80 minutes
Free, with nothing gated
No paywall, no email capture, no account. Every lesson, the schema templates, the 90-day checklist and the glossary are open to read and to link to.
Built from 200+ real builds
LocusPilot has built more than 200 local business sites since December 2025. The lessons come from what those builds and their Search Console data actually show, not from theory.
Honest about its ceiling
This is foundation level and says so. Lesson 8 tells you when you have outgrown it and points to AI SEO Rainmakers, a paid AI SEO training community run by Charles Floate, through a disclosed Skool referral link.
Every number sourced and dated
Claims carry a date and a source, and the curriculum is reviewed at least monthly. The editorial policy page sets out exactly how that works and how to send a correction.
Written for owners, not agencies
Beginner-friendly language, no coding prerequisites, and no enterprise tactics you cannot act on from a single location with limited hours.
Relationships disclosed on the page
LocusPilot publishes this course and appears as an example in Lesson 5. That is stated wherever it comes up, so you can weigh the advice yourself.
How the course builds your AI search visibility, step by step
- 1
Understand what gets read
Lessons 1 to 3 cover retrieval mechanics, your Google Business Profile as a fact source, and the page shapes an assistant is willing to quote.
- 2
Make your facts machine-readable
Lessons 4 and 5 add LocalBusiness schema and the technical floor that lets AI crawlers reach the page in the first place.
- 3
Strengthen the off-site signals
Lesson 6 covers reviews, structured citations and brand mentions, which is often what other sites say about you rather than what you say about yourself.
- 4
Measure, then decide what is next
Lesson 7 gives you a repeatable prompt test and a monthly scorecard. Lesson 8 draws the line around what foundation-level work does and does not cover.
Not sure where to start?
Lesson 1 explains the mechanics. The checklist turns all eight lessons into a dated plan.
What local business owners say after the lessons
Feedback from owners and SEOs working through the lessons. These are reader comments, not Google Business Profile reviews.
"I'd read a dozen posts about AI search and still had no idea what to actually change. Lesson 2 took me an afternoon and my profile finally matches every directory we're listed in."
"The schema lesson gave me a block I could paste and validate the same day. No upsell, no gated PDF, which is more than I can say for most of what's out there."
"Lesson 7 was the one I needed. It told me plainly what can't be measured yet instead of selling me a dashboard. I run the prompt test monthly now."
"Worked through the 90-day checklist with a client over one quarter. Perplexity started naming them in answers around week seven. Foundation-level, exactly as advertised."
The 200+ figure is LocusPilot's local business build count since December 2025. Every number on this site is sourced and dated, as set out in the editorial policy.
Written by Adam Yong, published by LocusPilot
Adam Yong is the founder of LocusPilot, an AI website builder for local businesses, and the author of this course. He has spent 20+ years in software, founded Agility Writer, and leads GEO strategy at ADE Marketing. The lessons here come from what LocusPilot's 200+ local business builds since December 2025, and their Search Console data, actually show about AI search.
This course is one of three sites. aiseocourse.wiki is the reference wiki for AI SEO courses and the terms they use. aiseocourse.directory scores AI SEO courses, paid and free, on one rubric, this one included. Go there to compare courses; come here to do the work.
AI SEO questions, answered before you start
What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for a local business?
GEO is the work of structuring your business's entity data, citation consistency and schema markup so large language models, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, understand your business well enough to name it in a conversational answer rather than just listing your link. For a local business it mostly means getting the same facts stated consistently everywhere an engine can read them.
Is this course really free, with no email capture?
Yes. There is no paywall, no gated download and no account registration. All 8 lessons, the schema templates, the 90-day checklist and the glossary are openly accessible.
Who is this course for?
Owners and managers of single-location or small multi-location service businesses, including trades, clinics, salons, restaurants and professional services, who already have a website or Google Business Profile, plus the freelance and small-agency SEOs who serve them. It assumes no coding background.
What if I run an enterprise brand or a large multi-location agency?
This curriculum is tuned for single-location through small regional operations. For national franchises, programmatic directory architectures or multi-market hubs, the course points you to AI SEO Rainmakers, a paid community run by Charles Floate. That link is a Skool referral link, disclosed here and on the about page.
How do LocusPilot and Adam Yong verify these recommendations?
Every tactic is tested on live client and test domains, checked against Google Search Console AI Overview impressions, Perplexity citation behaviour and crawler logs for GPTBot and PerplexityBot. The course accepts no sponsorship from SEO software vendors. The editorial policy page documents how each number is sourced, dated and reviewed.
How long does the course take?
Eight lessons, roughly 80 minutes of reading in total, self-paced. Actually implementing the work is the longer part, and the 90-day checklist sequences it into a quarter.
Do I need a website, or is a Google Business Profile enough?
A Google Business Profile alone will get you into some AI answers, because engines read it directly. But without a site there is nothing for an assistant to cite when a reader asks a question your profile doesn't answer. Lesson 5 covers the minimum technical baseline if you're starting from nothing.
Who publishes this course?
LocusPilot, an AI website builder for local businesses, publishes it. Adam Yong, LocusPilot's founder, with 20+ years in software, founder of Agility Writer and GEO strategy lead at ADE Marketing, wrote it. LocusPilot is used as an example in Lesson 5, and that relationship is disclosed there and on the about page.
Reading is the short part. The checklist is the plan.
The lessons take about 80 minutes. Doing the work takes a quarter, which is why the course ends with a 90-day checklist that sequences every task, tags it with the lesson it came from, and tells you what "done" means for each one.
- Month one: fix the facts AI already reads about you
- Month two: make your pages quotable and machine-readable
- Month three: strengthen off-site signals and start measuring
Start with lesson 1
It explains how an AI assistant picks a local business to name. Everything else in the course follows from that.
No signup. No paywall. 8 lessons, ~80 minutes.