Before an AI engine puts your business in an answer, it needs to resolve seven questions about you. Every one it cannot answer confidently makes recommending you riskier, and engines do not take risks. They just name someone clearer. Here are the seven, and where your website should be answering each.
1. What exactly does this business do?
Not the category. The specific thing. "Consulting" is not an answer; "operational turnarounds for family-owned manufacturers" is. This belongs in your homepage headline or the sentence directly under it, stated as fact, not implied through mood. If a stranger cannot repeat what you do after ten seconds on your homepage, neither can a machine.
2. Who is it for?
Engines match businesses to askers. "Who is the best coach for newly promoted executives" gets answered with coaches whose sites say, somewhere findable, that they work with newly promoted executives. If your site is written to exclude no one, it matches no one. Your homepage and about page should name your actual clients: their roles, their industries, their situations.
3. Where does it operate?
The easiest question and the most commonly fumbled. Local businesses bury their service area; national ones never say they are national; remote practices leave it ambiguous. State it plainly on the homepage and in your contact page, and make sure it matches every listing and profile that mentions you. A location conflict between your site and your directory listings is exactly the kind of contradiction that gets you skipped.
4. What does it cost, or how does pricing work?
You do not have to publish exact prices, though we do, and we think it wins business. But an engine asked "how much does X cost" will cite the sources that answer. A pricing page, honest ranges, or even a clear explanation of how you price beats total silence, which reads as either "expensive and hiding it" or "not established enough to say."
5. Why should anyone trust it?
Engines weigh proof they can point to: named clients, specific outcomes, real reviews, credentials, press, work that can be seen. Adjectives are not proof. "Trusted by hundreds" is decoration; "rebuilt the web presence for a federal contracting intelligence platform" is evidence, especially when the work is visible. Your proof should live near your claims, not on a testimonials page nobody reaches.
6. What happens if I want to proceed?
Engines increasingly answer process questions: how do I get started with, what is it like to work with. A site with a clear next step, book a call, get a mockup, request a proposal, and a plain description of what happens after, gives the engine a complete story to tell. A site whose only path is a contact form communicates that even you are not sure what happens next.
7. Is this business current?
Stale sites read as closed businesses. A copyright line from three years ago, services you no longer offer, a team page with departed people. Engines cross-reference dates and recency, and they hedge on businesses that might not exist anymore. Currency is not about blogging weekly. It is about a site that matches the business as it is now.
How to use this list
Sit down with your website and answer each question using only what is written on the page, no insider knowledge allowed. Most established businesses pass two or three and fail the rest, not because the answers do not exist but because they were never written down. The gap between the business you run and the business your website describes is precisely the gap an AI engine cannot cross for you. Close it, and you have done more real AEO than most of your market combined.