Who are the best AEO consultants right now? Funny enough, the “best” ones are those with a strong SEO background. Here’s who you should trust:
| Consultant | Best for | Key Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Nathan Gotch (Rankability) | Businesses that want strategy and execution | Proven SEO and AEO systems backed by modern software |
| Mike King (iPullRank) | Enterprise companies with complex technical challenges | Relevance Engineering and published AI search case studies |
| Aleyda Solís (Orainti) | International, ecommerce, and multilingual businesses | AI visibility frameworks and original AI search research |
| Lily Ray (Algorythmic) | Brands with trust, content quality, or recovery issues | E-E-A-T and brand authority across Google and AI search |
| Dan Petrovic (DEJAN) | Companies that want to know why AI does or doesn’t recommend them | Proprietary AI search tooling and Selection Rate Optimization |
| Kevin Indig (Growth Memo) | Growth-stage SaaS and B2B companies | Connecting AI visibility to actual business growth |
1. Nathan Gotch (Rankability)
Nathan Gotch is the co-founder and CEO of Rankability.
Before Rankability, Nathan led one of the top SEO training and coaching programs, Gotch SEO Academy.
His systems have helped thousands of SEO professionals achieve predictable results in Google and AI.
But Nathan isn’t just a teacher. He’s led thousands of successful SEO campaigns since 2011 in some of the most competitive industries, including SaaS, legal, and health.
Nathan’s unique experience building modern SEO and AEO software puts him in a distinct position to help businesses gain an advantage in AI search.
We’re extremely biased and recommend Nathan as the top AEO consultant. But there are some situations where he won’t be the best fit.
For example, if you’re a brand-new business or you’re in a controversial niche, he probably won’t take the campaign.
Also, if you’re just looking for a plan but won’t execute it, then it won’t be the best fit.
Nathan will throw the kitchen sink at businesses with his 90-day SEO and AI search action plans. So, if you’re not prepared for that, consider someone else.
Go here to book a free AEO and SEO strategy call.
Now, moving on to the next-best AEO consultant for 2026, which is:
2. Mike King (iPullRank)
Mike King is the founder and CEO of iPullRank and one of the most technically advanced consultants working in SEO and AI search.
His background is different from most AEO consultants. Mike started programming at a young age, completed an internship with Microsoft in high school, studied computer science at Howard University, and spent part of his early career touring as an independent hip-hop artist.
That combination of technical and creative experience is now at the center of how iPullRank approaches AI search.
Mike created a framework called Relevance Engineering. It combines information retrieval, artificial intelligence, content strategy, technical SEO, digital PR, and user experience to improve how brands are understood and retrieved by modern search systems.
Mike and the iPullRank team have also published the AI Search Manual. It breaks down everything from query fan-out and passage optimization to AI search measurement, retrieval simulations, and content strategy for LLM-driven discovery.
Mike has consulted for companies like SAP, American Express, HSBC, Nordstrom, SanDisk, and General Mills. He’s also a two-time Search Engine Land Search Marketer of the Year, winning the award in both 2020 and 2025.
Most importantly, iPullRank has actual AI search case studies.
For example, the agency helped a large telecommunications company increase its AI Overview inclusions by 253%, growing from 712 to 3,235 inclusions and producing more than 1.41 million impressions through AI Overviews.
Mike is probably one of the best choices for enterprise companies with large websites, complex technical challenges, and internal teams that can support implementation.
But he won’t be the best fit for everyone.
iPullRank’s AI Search Strategy program currently starts at $15,000 per month. So if you’re a small business or you’re looking for an inexpensive one-time AEO plan, you’ll probably need to consider someone else.
Also, remember that you’re hiring an established agency. Make sure you understand how involved Mike will be in your campaign and who will manage the day-to-day work before signing an agreement.
Go here to learn more about Mike King and iPullRank.
3. Aleyda Solís (Orainti)
Aleyda Solís is the founder of Orainti and one of the best AEO consultants for international, ecommerce, and multilingual businesses.
She has more than 15 years of SEO experience and specializes in international SEO, ecommerce, marketplaces, SaaS, and AI search optimization. Aleyda has also spoken at more than 200 conferences across over 30 countries in English and Spanish.
Aleyda has become one of the most active researchers in AI search.
She’s created frameworks for measuring AI visibility, identifying the prompts that actually matter to buyers, diagnosing citation gaps, optimizing content for retrieval, improving third-party authority, and connecting AI search visibility with business outcomes.
One of her most useful frameworks separates AI search performance into three layers: presence, readiness, and business impact. This matters because someone can discover and evaluate your brand inside ChatGPT without clicking directly to your website.
Aleyda has also performed extensive AI search research across SaaS, ecommerce, finance, travel, and real estate.
In one study of 15 major SaaS brands, she found that third-party websites produced between 84% and 93% of the measured AI citation weight. This means publishing content on your website isn’t enough. You also need to influence the review sites, communities, publishers, videos, directories, and other sources AI platforms use to validate recommendations.
Her international experience is a major advantage.
AI search doesn’t work exactly the same way in every country or language. Different markets have different competitors, sources, buying behaviors, and levels of AI adoption. Aleyda is uniquely equipped to help businesses build an AI search strategy that accounts for these differences instead of applying one generic strategy worldwide.
She’s also the creator of LearningAIsearch.com, a free roadmap that covers AEO, GEO, LLMO, prompt research, technical optimization, content, citations, measurement, ecommerce, and AI search tools.
Aleyda is probably one of the best choices if you’re an established ecommerce, SaaS, marketplace, or international business with an internal team that can execute her recommendations.
But she won’t be the best fit for everyone.
Orainti is a boutique consultancy that works with a small number of clients. So if you need a large agency to produce content, build links, run digital PR campaigns, and handle every implementation task, make sure you understand exactly what’s included before moving forward.
Also, Orainti doesn’t publish its pricing or many quantified AEO client case studies. You’ll need to speak with Aleyda directly to understand the investment, level of execution, and expected deliverables.
Go here to learn more about Aleyda Solís and Orainti.
4. Lily Ray (Algorythmic)
Lily Ray is the founder of Algorythmic and the Vice President of SEO and AI Search at Amsive.
She has more than 15 years of experience and specializes in AEO, E-E-A-T, content quality, Google Discover, technical SEO, and algorithm update recovery. Lily also oversees more than 35 SEO professionals working across dozens of clients at Amsive.
Lily’s biggest strength is understanding how trust and brand authority affect visibility in both Google and AI search.
Her approach is built around E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Instead of relying on short-term GEO tricks, Lily helps companies showcase real experts, publish original research, improve content quality, earn third-party validation, and build a consistent brand presence across the internet.
This matters because AI platforms don’t just look at your website.
They can retrieve information from publications, videos, podcasts, social media, Reddit, reviews, forums, and other sources. Your entire digital reputation can influence whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google trusts and recommends your brand.
Lily has also done substantial research into how AI search systems retrieve and cite information.
In one experiment, she published fictional claims and found that Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, and ChatGPT began incorporating some of them within 24 hours. Perplexity and Claude were more cautious about repeating the claims.
In another study, Lily analyzed 11 websites affected by a Google algorithm update. Every website experienced a decline in both organic visibility and total AI search citations. Average organic traffic dropped 26.7%, while total AI citations dropped 22.5%.
This reinforces one of the most important points about AEO: SEO and AI visibility aren’t separate strategies.
Lily is also one of the best consultants to consider if your website has been damaged by low-quality AI content or aggressive GEO tactics.
She helps companies recover from scaled content, self-promotional listicles, mass-produced comparison pages, programmatic content, prompt injection, and other tactics that may work temporarily but eventually create risk.
Lily is probably one of the best choices if you’re an established publisher, ecommerce company, healthcare business, financial brand, or enterprise with complex content quality and trust issues.
But she won’t be the best fit for everyone.
Lily’s approach is designed for sustainable growth, not quick AI search hacks. If you’re looking to publish thousands of AI-generated pages or manipulate LLMs for temporary citations, you’ll need to consider someone else.
Algorythmic also appears to focus primarily on audits, strategy, recovery, and training. If you need a large team to create content, run digital PR, and implement every recommendation, make sure you understand whether Lily, Amsive, or your internal team will handle the execution.
Algorythmic doesn’t publish its pricing or many quantified AEO client case studies yet. You’ll need to contact Lily directly to understand the investment, availability, and exact scope of the engagement.
Go here to learn more about Lily Ray and Algorythmic.
5. Dan Petrovic (DEJAN)
Dan Petrovic is the managing director of DEJAN and one of the most technically advanced AEO consultants in the industry.
He has more than 20 years of SEO experience and specializes in search algorithms, machine learning, natural language processing, and AI search.
Dan’s biggest strength is understanding how AI models perceive brands.
Most AEO consultants can tell you whether your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI Mode.
Dan goes deeper.
He studies how strongly AI associates your brand with specific topics, where those associations are weak, which sources are retrieved, which sources are ultimately cited, and why a model may recommend one company instead of another.
Dan and the DEJAN team have also built a large collection of proprietary AI search tools.
These tools analyze brand relevance, citation patterns, model confidence, query fan-out, search grounding, answer volatility, sentiment, content structure, internal links, and how AI systems interpret individual sections of a page.
Dan uses these insights to improve what DEJAN calls Selection Rate Optimization.
An AI system might retrieve your website but still decide not to cite it. Selection Rate Optimization focuses on making your content more likely to be chosen after it has already entered the model’s consideration set.
Most importantly, DEJAN has published a detailed AI search case study.
The agency worked with custom sportswear company OWAYO to improve its visibility in US-based AI answers.
Between March and July 2026, OWAYO’s share of all brands mentioned increased from 1.5% to 8%. The percentage of tracked answers mentioning OWAYO increased from 21% to 52%, while the brand’s average position inside those answers improved from 5.6 to 2.9.
DEJAN achieved this through entity mapping, citation mining, content optimization, traditional SEO, external brand alignment, and outreach.
Dan is probably one of the best choices if you’re an established company with a complex product and want to understand exactly why AI systems are or aren’t recommending your brand.
But he won’t be the best fit for everyone.
Dan’s approach is highly technical and experimental. If you’re a small business that just needs a basic AEO audit or a straightforward content plan, his methodology may be more advanced than you need.
Some of the methods Dan is developing, including model probing, model steering, and token probability analysis, are also still emerging. DEJAN has produced promising visibility results, but the industry doesn’t yet have a standardized way to connect every AI visibility improvement directly to leads and revenue.
Also, remember that you’re hiring DEJAN and its senior consulting team. Make sure you understand how involved Dan will be, who will manage the campaign, and which recommendations the agency will implement.
Go here to learn more about Dan Petrovic and DEJAN.
6. Kevin Indig (Growth Memo)
Kevin Indig is an independent organic growth advisor and the author of Growth Memo.
Before becoming an advisor, Kevin led SEO and growth at Shopify, G2, and Atlassian. He has also developed organic growth strategies for companies like Ramp, Reddit, Dropbox, Hims, Nextdoor, and Snapchat.
Kevin’s biggest strength is connecting SEO and AI visibility with actual business growth.
Many AEO consultants focus heavily on tracking mentions and citations.
Kevin goes a step further.
He studies how buyers use ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, review platforms, YouTube, Reddit, and traditional search throughout the decision-making process.
His research shows that someone can discover and evaluate your brand inside an AI answer without ever clicking your website. That means traditional traffic and last-click attribution won’t always show the full value of AEO.
For example, Kevin collaborated on a Google AI Mode study involving approximately 250 user tasks. The study found that 77.6% of sessions produced no external website visit and that the median number of external clicks was zero. Users were still reading answers, evaluating companies, and forming brand opinions inside AI Mode.
Kevin has also performed extensive research into what causes AI platforms to cite content.
In one study with AirOps, the team analyzed 16,851 queries and more than 353,000 pages retrieved by ChatGPT.
They found that retrieval position was the strongest predictor of citations. Pages appearing first in ChatGPT’s retrieval results received citations approximately 58% of the time, compared with about 14% for pages in the tenth position.
Kevin also coined the term ghost citation.
A ghost citation happens when an AI platform uses your website as a source but doesn’t mention your company in the answer.
Research Kevin conducted with Semrush found that approximately 62% of AI citations were ghost citations. This means tracking citations alone can make a company’s AI visibility look stronger than it actually is.
Kevin’s AEO strategy focuses on making companies visible and trusted.
He helps companies improve their technical foundations, content systems, original research, authority, AI visibility measurement, and broader organic growth strategy.
Kevin is probably one of the best choices if you’re a growth-stage SaaS or B2B company with an internal team that can execute his recommendations.
But he won’t be the best fit for everyone.
Kevin works primarily as a strategic advisor. If you need an agency to produce hundreds of pages, run digital PR campaigns, and handle every technical implementation, you’ll probably need additional execution resources.
He also doesn’t publish his pricing or many complete AEO case studies connecting improved AI visibility directly to revenue.
Make sure you understand the engagement length, deliverables, level of direct access, and what your team will be responsible for implementing before moving forward.