LLMO Agency: Services, Costs and How to Choose One

Dominik Breitbach · Founder & Lead SEO Strategist at taismo

Dominik Breitbach is the founder of taismo, an SEO and GEO agency from Munich, and specializes in ongoing SEO support and visibility in AI answers. He has guided companies through SEO and Google Ads since 2010.

⏱ Reading time: 11 min🔄 Last updated: 20 October 2026

An LLMO agency makes sure that large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity know your company, describe it correctly, and cite it as a source. In the US, the same work is mostly sold as AEO (answer engine optimization), also called generative engine optimization or GEO. Every serious agency works on five building blocks: Entity, structured data, citable content, third-party mentions, and measurement of AI visibility. When you compare agencies, compare those five blocks, because the label on the offer tells you little about the work.

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LLMO, AEO, GEO, and GAIO describe one discipline

LLMO stands for large language model optimization: Optimizing content and entities for large language models. Anyone who looks into the topic runs into at least six labels that mean almost the same thing. The full definition lives in our SEO wiki under LLMO. This guide shows what the labels mean when you are hiring an agency.

All six terms describe the same goal: Being named and cited in AI answers. They differ in focus and in where people use them:

Why there are so many names

Three reasons explain the label overload. First, the discipline emerged in several places at once in 2023. A research team led by Pranjal Aggarwal coined the term generative engine optimization in November 2023 and showed in tests that deliberately revised content can raise its visibility in generated answers by up to 40 percent. At the same time, the German SEO scene adopted the labels LLMO and GAIO.

Second, AEO carries an older tradition. Answer engine optimization dates back to the era when Google showed answers as featured snippets and voice assistants read them aloud. Marketers later carried the term over to AI chat, and in the US it stuck. Third, agencies use names to stand out. A label of their own makes a service look like a separate discipline, even when the work is identical.

For you as a buyer, that leads to one rule: Compare agencies by the building blocks they deliver. An LLMO agency, an AEO agency, and a GEO agency usually sell the same service.

Which term each market uses

In the US, AEO is the term agencies and buyers use. A search for “aeo agency” returns dedicated agency sites, pricing guides, and buyer discussions, and GEO usually appears next to it as a synonym. If you sell into the US, your service pages need to speak AEO.

In Germany, GEO has won. Four general Google searches for an agency offering AI visibility returned 40 results on October 4, 2026. GEO appeared in 24 of them in the title or description, KI-SEO or AI SEO in 8, LLMO in 6, GAIO in one, and AEO in none. Search demand points the same way: In July 2026, people in Germany searched for “generative engine optimization” 880 times a month, for “LLMO” 480 times, and for “answer engine optimization” 210 times. For companies that sell in both markets, the practical rule is simple: Lead with AEO in English and with GEO or KI-Sichtbarkeit in German.

What an LLMO agency does: Five building blocks

The work of an LLMO agency consists of five building blocks that build on each other. The entity tells the models who is speaking. Structured data and citable content give them something to take over. Third-party mentions confirm it from the outside, and measurement shows whether the other four work.

The base is a website that is visible in Google Search. Google states explicitly for AI Overviews and AI Mode that there are no additional requirements beyond SEO best practices. Our own measurement shows the same pattern elsewhere: Between September 24 and October 2, 2026, Gemini built its answers to questions about choosing an agency mostly on pages that also rank near the top of Google Search for the head terms. Serious LLMO work therefore starts with a look at the SEO foundation. Why we treat both as one discipline is explained in GEO vs. SEO.

1. The entity makes your company clearly identifiable

An entity is a clearly identifiable thing, such as a company, a person, or a product. Language models store and connect knowledge about entities. The agency makes sure that your name, address, services, founding year, and people read the same everywhere: On your website, in your Google Business Profile, in industry directories, and in identity registries such as Wikidata or ISNI. Every conflicting detail creates a second, uncertain version of your company. A frequent case is an old company name or positioning in a directory that keeps getting cited years after the change.

2. Structured data describes your company in machine-readable form

Structured data in JSON-LD describes your organization, people, services, and content so that machines can read them without interpretation. The connections matter most. Every page points to the same organization and the same author via “@id”, and “sameAs” properties link the website to profiles in registries and networks. The result is a graph that search engines and AI systems read as one coherent description. Isolated schema blocks on single pages only deliver fragments.

Two technical steps belong here. The agency checks your robots.txt so that AI crawlers are allowed to read your content; OpenAI, for example, documents GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot as separate crawlers with separate permissions. It also creates an llms.txt, a short Markdown briefing that points AI systems to your most important pages. The file is an open proposal Jeremy Howard published in September 2024; no binding standard exists for it yet.

3. Citable content gives models answers they can take over

Language models take over passages that answer a question completely and on their own. A citable paragraph gives the answer in its first sentence, uses terms consistently, and backs numbers with a source and a date. Five sentence patterns get picked up most often: Definitions (“X is …”), comparisons, numbered lists, step sequences, and quantities. The agency focuses on the pages that carry buying decisions: Service pages, pricing information, and FAQs.

4. Third-party mentions confirm your company from the outside

AI systems cross-check what other sources say about a company: Trade media, comparison lists, directories, review platforms, and videos. How strongly they do this varies a lot by system. Between September 24 and October 2, 2026, we analyzed 1,426 AI answers to questions about choosing an agency, with 10,510 cited sources in total. A third-party source was any page that does not belong to the website of a brand named in the answer.

• Perplexity: 85 percent third-party sources
• Google AI Overviews: 54 percent
• Google AI Mode: 52 percent
• ChatGPT: 51 percent
• Gemini: 49 percent

The takeaway: Perplexity builds its answers almost entirely from what others write about a company. In Google, ChatGPT, and Gemini, about half of the sources come from the websites of the brands they name. An LLMO strategy therefore needs both halves: A website of your own that is citable, and mentions in the places the models read. In Google AI Mode, YouTube was the most cited domain in the same measurement, which makes video a source of its own there. The questions come from our own set on choosing an agency, so shares in other industries may differ.

5. Measurement shows whether the work pays off

AI answers shift with wording, model, and day. A single spot check proves little. An LLMO agency measures with a fixed set of prompts, runs it against several systems on a regular schedule, and tracks the trend over weeks. Three questions sit at the center: Is the company named? How is it described? Which sources does the model cite? From that you get your share of voice in AI answers, the share of all mentions that go to your company.

The best prompts come from Google Search Console. Its performance report contains queries written as full sentences, the way people also talk to a chatbot. On taismo.de, there were 2,396 of these conversational queries between June 30 and September 29, 2026. Real people wrote them, which makes them evidence. Which tools and metrics work for this is covered in our guide to AI search visibility.

7 checks: How to spot a good LLMO agency

You can vet an LLMO agency before the first call. It sells visibility to machines, so its own website should show the building blocks. Work through these seven checks with a browser and one conversation:

1. Structured data in the source code. Open the agency’s homepage, view the page source (Ctrl+U), and search for “application/ld+json”. A good sign is a connected graph of organization, people, and services, recognizable by recurring “@id” values. The Schema Markup Validator from schema.org shows the connections clearly.
2. A maintained llms.txt. Add “/llms.txt” to the domain. A maintained file lists services and key pages in a clear structure and carries a recent date.
3. A consistent identity. The company name and address match across the website, the business profile, and directories, and the schema links to these profiles via “sameAs”.
4. A named measurement method. Ask which prompts, which AI systems, and which time period go into the measurement. A number such as “AI visibility 87 percent” without these three details cannot be verified.
5. Concrete tasks in the proposal. The proposal lists work on the five building blocks. A proposal that only promises “optimization for AI” describes a label.
6. Honest expectations. Serious providers give ranges and dependencies. Guaranteed placements in ChatGPT are a deal breaker, because no provider controls what a model answers.
7. A look at your SEO foundation. A good agency first checks how your website performs in Google Search and builds the LLMO work on top of it.

What an LLMO agency costs and how long it takes

There is no market price for LLMO yet. Agencies sell the work in the same three models as SEO: As an ongoing retainer, as a project, or as consulting. Our reference values, derived in detail in our guide to generative engine optimization cost, are in euros because taismo quotes in euros:

The ongoing retainer fits most companies, because models, sources, and answers change all the time. A schema built once ages as soon as new services, people, or pages arrive, and measurement only gives a clear picture over months. The reference values are for orientation; the real effort depends on where your website starts.

How long LLMO takes

LLMO works over months. A serious range is two to six months until changes show up in AI answers. Three factors set the pace:

1. Recrawling your website: AI systems with live web search, such as Perplexity or Google AI Mode, read revised pages once they are crawled again. Changes show up here first.
2. Third-party sources: Mentions in trade media, lists, and directories take weeks to months, because other people write them.
3. Model training cycles: The base knowledge of a language model only grows with a new training cycle. What a model knows about a company without web search changes most slowly.

Doing LLMO yourself: What your team can handle

Many foundations can be built without an agency. A marketing team with some time can handle five steps on its own:

1. Step 1: Sharpen your key pages. Rewrite your most important service pages so that the first paragraph answers the main question and numbers carry a source.
2. Step 2: Align your company data. Check name, address, phone number, and short description on your website, your Google Business Profile, and the five most important directories in your industry.
3. Step 3: Use basic schema. WordPress SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO generate organization, website, and breadcrumb markup automatically. Fill in your logo, profiles, and company data completely.
4. Step 4: Allow the crawlers. Check in your robots.txt that AI crawlers such as GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot may read your pages.
5. Step 5: Take monthly samples. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode ten questions your customers ask, once a month. Note whether and how your company is named and which sources appear.

An agency pays off once scope and pace grow. A connected graph across hundreds of pages, measurement across five systems with trends, and work on third-party sources take experience, tools, and time. For a local business with a few pages, the five steps often go a long way. For a company in a competitive market with a service that needs explanation, the depth of execution decides. What you can do without an agency in SEO overall is covered in our guide on how to do SEO yourself.

How we work at taismo

taismo is an SEO and GEO agency from Munich. LLMO is part of our SEO services, and in German we usually call it GEO. We work on all five building blocks and price the share openly at around 10 percent on top of the SEO retainer, cancelable monthly. Our own website serves as the test field: A global graph of 20 connected nodes describes organization, people, and services, taismo GmbH and founder Dominik Breitbach are registered in the ISNI registry, and the llms.txt is available in German and English. Our AI visibility measurement runs daily across five AI systems. The details of the service are on our page about AEO and GEO services.

FAQ about LLMO agencies

What does LLMO stand for?

LLMO stands for large language model optimization. It describes all measures that help language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity know a company, describe it correctly, and cite it as a source.

What is an AEO agency?

An AEO agency optimizes a company’s entity, structured data, and content so that answer engines and AI assistants name it in their answers. AEO agency, GEO agency, and LLMO agency usually describe the same service.

Is AEO worth it?

AEO is worth it when your customers research providers by asking AI systems, which is common for services that need explanation and for local searches. It pays off fastest when the SEO foundation already exists, because AEO builds on the same pages.

How much does an LLMO agency cost?

As part of an ongoing SEO retainer, LLMO typically adds around 10 percent, which is about 50 to 350 euros per month at retainers of 500 to 3,500 euros. One-time foundation projects run at about 1,000 to 5,000 euros.

How long does LLMO take to show results?

First changes in AI answers usually appear after about two to six months. AI systems with live web search react faster than the base knowledge of a language model, which only grows with a new training cycle.

Sources

• Pranjal Aggarwal et al.: “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, arXiv, November 16, 2023.
• Google Search Central: “AI features and your website”, Google, accessed October 4, 2026.
• Jeremy Howard: “The /llms.txt file”, llmstxt.org, September 3, 2024.
• OpenAI: “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers”, OpenAI Platform, accessed October 4, 2026.
• schema.org: “sameAs”, schema.org, accessed October 4, 2026.