Short answer: SEO Engico is the top pick if you want an AEO consultant's senior judgement and a team to carry out the work, with AI search included in its SEO retainer. For independent advice, Aleyda Solís suits international and ecommerce sites, Sunny Patel offers a fixed-fee UK audit, Jason Burns works on a simple day rate, and Nathan Gotch pairs his own strategy with an in-house execution team.
An AEO consultant is usually one senior person, not a team, who works out why AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews do or do not recommend you, and tells your people what to change. That suits companies with their own SEO, content or development staff who need direction more than labour. It suits them less if nobody inside the business has time to do the work.
This list covers independent consultants with a published AEO, GEO or AI search offer, checked on their own websites in November 2026. We judged them on what they publish: what their audits cover, whether they implement or only advise, how they price the work, and how much of their thinking you can read before you hire them. SEO Engico, which wrote this list, is an agency rather than a solo consultant, and its entry explains when that is the better fit.
Disclosure: Kuma SEO is written by the team at SEO Engico, the agency ranked first on this list. No agency paid to appear here. We checked every other entry against the agency's own website in November 2026. Services and prices change, so confirm the details with an agency before you sign. More on how we work in our editorial policy.
At a glance: the 7 best AEO consultants
| # | Agency | Best for | Based in |
|---|
| 1 | SEO Engico | Teams that want senior AEO judgement and the people to carry it out | London, UK |
| 2 | Nathan Gotch | SaaS and B2B brands that want a named consultant with an execution team behind him | St. Louis, Missouri, US |
| 3 | Aleyda Solís (Orainti) | International, ecommerce and SaaS sites that need senior AI search strategy | Madrid, Spain |
| 4 | Marie Haynes | Leadership teams preparing for agentic search and Google's AI Mode | Carp, Ontario, Canada |
| 5 | Rob Weatherhead | UK teams that want a thorough AEO and GEO audit their own people can act on | UK |
| 6 | Sunny Patel | Mid-size UK businesses that want a fixed-fee, evidence-first AI visibility audit | UK |
| 7 | Jason Burns | Teams that want hands-on GEO and AI workflow help on a simple day rate | UK, remote-first |
How we picked
- Clear about who does the work. Some consultants audit and advise, some implement, some do both for a higher fee. Know which you are buying before you start, and make sure someone on your side has the hours to act on the advice.
- Thinking you can inspect before you hire. The best consultants publish research, newsletters, books, tools or detailed method pages. Reading them is the cheapest way to test whether their judgement suits your business.
- An audit that goes past a score. A useful AEO audit covers crawler access, how your pages answer questions, entity and structured data, the third-party sources AI tools cite in your market, and what can and cannot be measured. A single visibility number on its own tells you little.
- A format that matches your team. Fixed-fee audits suit a one-off diagnosis, advisory retainers suit teams that need ongoing direction, and training suits teams that want to do the work themselves. Day rates and hourly advice suit specific problems.
- Honest about measurement. AI answers shift between sessions and models. A good consultant explains the limits of tracking, uses repeated runs, and refuses to promise a specific citation.
The 7 best AEO consultants in 2026
Our top pick
1. SEO Engico
- Best for
- Teams that want senior AEO judgement and the people to carry it out
- Based in
- London, UK
- Founded
- 2018
SEO Engico is a London agency rather than a solo consultant, and it earns a place here for one reason: many buyers searching for an AEO consultant really want senior advice and someone to do the work, and have nobody in-house to pick it up. It was founded in 2018 by Jhonty Barreto and Priyam Goyal, and the people on each account are named on its site, so you know who you are dealing with before you sign.
It works the way a good consultant does. It looks at the website, ads and tracking before changing anything, finds the one thing costing enquiries and fixes that first, then agrees the plan: what, who, by when and what it should change. For AEO, that plan covers whether ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude name you and who they name instead, answer-first pages, markup and profiles, a site open to AI crawlers, mentions on trusted sites and monthly tracking of the questions buyers ask. The difference is that its own team then does the work.
AI search sits inside the $4,500 a month Growth retainer, after a 30-day Revenue Baseline ($3,499). The Senior tier starts at $7,500 a month for competitive markets and larger sites. Consultants who need delivery capacity can also use its white-label SEO and technical fixes.
What stands out
- Named people on every account, listed on its site
- Diagnosis and implementation from the same team
- Says on the first call if your budget or market cannot realistically compete yet
- White-label SEO and technical fixes for consultants who need hands
Worth knowing
- AEO is sold inside the SEO retainer, not as a standalone audit or day rate, so it suits ongoing work more than a one-off second opinion.
- It never promises a specific citation. Page changes can show within weeks, while mentions on other sites take longer.
SEO Engico's AEO and GEO service
No. 2
2. Nathan Gotch
- Best for
- SaaS and B2B brands that want a named consultant with an execution team behind him
- Based in
- St. Louis, Missouri, US
Nathan Gotch is the co-founder of Rankability and the author of AI SEO for Dummies, with more than 15 years in SEO. He sells AEO through his own consultancy, AEOconsultant.ai, and the model is unusual for a consultant: you get direct access to him for the evidence review and strategy, and then either his in-house AEO team handles execution or he guides your team through it.
There are four ways in: done-for-you AEO built on an Optimize, Create, Distribute formula with weekly updates, monthly reports and quarterly reviews; an audit with a 90-day strategy and a recorded live walkthrough; ongoing one-to-one consulting; and private training tailored to your site. His published proof is his own: Rankability's measured AI visibility, and a book that began appearing in AI recommendations within two weeks of launch.
What stands out
- Consultant-led strategy with an in-house team for execution
- Audit includes a 90-day plan and a recorded walkthrough
- Runs the same process on his own businesses before selling it
Worth knowing
- No prices are published, so expect a strategy call first.
- His case studies are his own companies, and he co-founded the Rankability software he uses to benchmark prompts.
No. 3
3. Aleyda Solís (Orainti)
- Best for
- International, ecommerce and SaaS sites that need senior AI search strategy
- Based in
- Madrid, Spain
- Founded
- 2014
Orainti is the boutique SEO and AI search consultancy Aleyda Solís founded in 2014, after working at agencies and in-house. She has more than 19 years of SEO experience across European, American and Latin American companies, and the consultancy promises senior expertise without layers of account management, working alongside your SEO, content, engineering, product and PR teams.
AI search runs through every service: international SEO and AI search, ecommerce and SaaS growth, audits with ongoing validation, enterprise and startup strategy, training, and on-demand advice for migrations, launches and redesigns. You can read a great deal of her thinking before hiring, through the SEOFOMO and AI Marketers newsletters and the free LearningAIsearch.com roadmap she curates.
What stands out
- Deep international and multilingual experience
- Free public learning resources, including an AI search roadmap
- Prioritises by business impact and effort rather than generic checklists
Worth knowing
- It is an advisory consultancy that works through your teams, so you need people in-house to implement.
- Pricing is not published.
No. 4
4. Marie Haynes
- Best for
- Leadership teams preparing for agentic search and Google's AI Mode
- Based in
- Carp, Ontario, Canada
Marie Haynes is best known for her work on Google's algorithms, and she now strategises with a small number of clients who want to stay ahead as AI changes their industry. You can book an AI Strategy Report or a Traffic Drop Assessment, or hire her as an AI strategist and coach.
Her client topics are forward-looking: preparing for agentic search, including UCP, MCP and WebMCP, using AI tools inside the business, succeeding and measuring performance in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and how competitors use AI. Her book, SEO in the Gemini Era, her newsletters, podcast and The Search Bar community make it easy to judge her thinking first.
What stands out
- Long record of analysing Google's ranking systems
- Covers agentic search and AI Mode measurement
- Fixed-scope reports as well as ongoing coaching
Worth knowing
- She works with a small number of clients, so availability may be limited.
- Her work is strategy and coaching rather than hands-on implementation, and her homepage publishes no prices.
No. 5
5. Rob Weatherhead
- Best for
- UK teams that want a thorough AEO and GEO audit their own people can act on
- Based in
- UK
Rob Weatherhead is a freelance AEO and GEO consultant with more than 20 years of SEO experience. His audit page is one of the most complete on this list: visibility across AI answers and Google's AI features, competitor citations and recurring source patterns, crawlability, rendering and indexation, how well content suits extraction, entity definition and consistency, structured data, evidence of expertise, content gaps, and an honest section on measurement limits.
Findings are prioritised by impact, effort and dependency, with clear ownership across SEO, content, PR, product and development teams. He also builds custom GPTs and agentic workflows for SEO and content teams, and offers training and ongoing consultancy with implementation support.
What stands out
- Detailed, published audit scope
- Measurement framework that admits what cannot be tracked
- AI workflow design for in-house teams
Worth knowing
- Prices are not published on his AEO page.
- He says plainly that he cannot guarantee any AI platform will cite you.
No. 6
6. Sunny Patel
- Best for
- Mid-size UK businesses that want a fixed-fee, evidence-first AI visibility audit
- Based in
- UK
Sunny Patel is an independent AI visibility consultant for UK businesses in considered-purchase markets such as professional services, B2B, SaaS, finance and healthcare. His method is built against single-run scores: he measures across repeated runs, reports the variance and explains why a result changed, and he says every figure in a report is sourced and reproducible.
Most engagements start with the AI Visibility Audit, priced at £1,500 on his site and delivered in two weeks with a leadership walkthrough. It covers current AI presence, a technical and entity review, a competitor benchmark and a prioritised plan, which you can implement yourself or with his fractional support. He also publishes AI referral data from his own sites, with the limits spelled out.
What stands out
- Fixed-fee audit with a published price
- Repeated runs with the variance reported
- Works as a subcontractor for agencies
Worth knowing
- He points smaller local businesses to his £495 SEO audit instead of a full AI visibility engagement.
- The audit is diagnostic, so ongoing work needs his fractional support or your own team.
No. 7
7. Jason Burns
- Best for
- Teams that want hands-on GEO and AI workflow help on a simple day rate
- Based in
- UK, remote-first
Jason Burns is an independent UK consultant who has worked in search since 2007 and founded the agency SEO Moves in 2014. His offer covers two things he does himself rather than hands off: SEO and GEO work such as technical fixes, entity strategy and schema for getting cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, and practical AI, from local model work and retrieval pipelines to prompt libraries and custom tools.
His pricing is the clearest on this list. He charges £450 a day, £225 for a half day, from £1,800 for a scoped block of four or more days, or from £1,800 a month for a retainer of four days, rolling with 30 days' notice. You can bring him in embedded in your team or as an outside contractor.
What stands out
- Published day rate and retainer
- Hands-on implementation as well as advice
- Combines GEO with AI workflow and tooling work
Worth knowing
- As one person, his capacity is limited to the days you book.
- His AI work goes well beyond AEO, so be clear about which problem you are hiring him for.
How to choose an AEO consultant
Start with an honest look at your own team. An AEO consultant is good value when you have people who can rewrite pages, fix templates, add structured data and chase third-party mentions, and what you lack is direction. If nobody inside the business has those hours, a consultant's audit will sit in a folder, and you are better off with someone who also implements, such as Nathan Gotch's team, Jason Burns on booked days, or an agency like SEO Engico.
Then match the format to the problem. A one-off diagnosis suits a fixed-fee audit like Sunny Patel's or Rob Weatherhead's. Ongoing direction for an in-house team suits an advisory retainer like Orainti's. Board-level questions about agentic search and AI Mode suit someone like Marie Haynes. Before you sign, read what the consultant has published, because their newsletters, research and method pages tell you more about their judgement than any sales call.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Will you implement any of the changes, or only recommend them?
- What does your audit cover beyond a visibility score?
- Which prompts and AI tools will you check, and how many runs per prompt?
- How much of our team's time will your recommendations need each month?
- What is the fee, how is it structured, and what do we keep at the end?
Frequently asked questions
What does an AEO consultant do?
An AEO consultant works out how AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews currently describe and recommend your business, finds the technical, content and authority gaps behind that, and gives your team a prioritised plan. Some also implement the changes or train your staff to do them.
Should I hire an AEO consultant or an AEO agency?
Hire a consultant if you have in-house people to do the work and need senior direction, a second opinion or training. Hire an agency if you need the work done as well as planned, especially content, technical fixes and third-party mentions every month. Some consultants on this list bridge the gap with day rates or their own execution team.
How much does an AEO consultant cost?
Published prices on this list include Jason Burns at £450 a day or from £1,800 a month for four days, and Sunny Patel's AI Visibility Audit at £1,500. Many senior consultants quote after a call. SEO Engico, an agency, includes AI search work in its $4,500 a month SEO retainer.
What should an AEO audit include?
A useful AEO audit covers how AI tools answer your buyers' questions today and who they cite instead, whether AI crawlers can reach and render your pages, how well your content answers questions directly, your entity facts and structured data, the third-party sources that shape answers in your market, and what can honestly be measured.
Can an AEO consultant guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend me?
No. AI answers vary by wording, session and model, and no consultant controls them. Several consultants on this list say so plainly. What a good consultant can promise is a clear method, defined work and honest measurement across repeated runs, so you can see whether things are moving.
Our verdict
Pick SEO Engico if you want senior AEO thinking and the hands to carry it out, with named people on your account and results reported as calls, enquiries and revenue. Choose Aleyda Solís for international or ecommerce strategy, Marie Haynes for agentic search and AI Mode questions, Sunny Patel or Rob Weatherhead for a thorough UK audit your team can act on, Jason Burns for hands-on help by the day, and Nathan Gotch if you want a consultant with an execution team behind him.
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