Welcome to The AEO Show Bay Area. Our city today is Novato, northern Marin's largest city, and we'll look at how a Novato business can use A-E-O to reach customers across that whole end of the county.

A-E-O, or answer engine optimization, is the work of getting your business named when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation. For a Novato business, a lot of that work comes down to telling the assistant clearly where you are and how far you go.

Many Novato businesses serve customers from Petaluma down to San Rafael. The assistant only knows that if you say it. When someone in Ignacio or Bel Marin Keys asks for a roofer, or someone in south Petaluma asks for a dentist nearby, the assistant looks at the service area each business states on its website and listings. A Novato company that names the towns and neighborhoods it covers can come up in those answers. One that only lists a street address in Novato tends to be matched to Novato alone.

Inside the city, the neighborhoods matter too. Novato runs from downtown along Grant Avenue to Hamilton, Indian Valley, San Marin and the Vintage Oaks area. Hamilton is the former Hamilton Air Force Base, now a residential and business community, and families there ask AI for nearby services using the name Hamilton. A business that serves Hamilton and says so in those terms has a better chance of matching the question.

Fire safety comes up again and again in home service questions here. Novato's hillside neighborhoods and surrounding open space make defensible space, home hardening and fire-resistant landscaping common requests. Roofers get asked about fire-resistant roofs, and when an assistant handles that question it looks for a few specific things. It wants a page that explains fire-resistant roofing and what it costs, a listing on manufacturer installer locators, a license it can verify with the C-S-L-B, and content about fixing a leak before the rainy season. Businesses that explain Marin's fire-safety requirements clearly, instead of listing fire-safe as a single phrase, give the assistant something it can cite.

Downtown on Grant Avenue, the questions are smaller and faster. Someone wants a coffee shop with outdoor seating, or a restaurant for tonight. For a cafe, the assistant checks listing attributes like Wi-Fi, seating and outdoor space, and it checks opening hours. Early opening times are the most common error we find on cafe listings, and fixing them everywhere means the assistant never sends someone to a closed door.

Novato is also home to the Buck Institute and several life-science companies. Their employees ask AI where to get lunch, find childcare or work out near the office. If you're close by, say how close, and say that you serve people who work there.

This week, start by writing down every town and neighborhood you serve, from Petaluma to San Rafael, and putting that list on your website and in your Google profile. If you do fire-safety work, write a page that explains it in plain terms for Novato homeowners. And if you run a cafe or restaurant on Grant Avenue, check your opening hours and your outdoor seating attribute on Google, Yelp and Apple Maps.

If you want to see where your business stands, Bay Area A-E-O will do a free AI visibility check. Call five one oh, two nine eight, three five four three, or visit bay area A-E-O dot com.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to The AEO Show Bay Area. Today we're in Suisun City, looking at how its restaurants and small businesses can get discovered when people ask ChatGPT where to go.

Suisun City is small, and that works in your favor. With fewer local businesses competing for each kind of question, a clear listing and a few specific pages can be enough to make you the default answer when someone asks AI for help in Suisun City.

Start with the waterfront. Suisun City has a historic Old Town and a marina along Suisun Slough, and visitors ask AI for places to eat, somewhere to launch a kayak, or a way to spend an afternoon by the water. A restaurant question might be as simple as restaurant on the Suisun City waterfront. The assistant wants to confirm that the place is on the waterfront or in Old Town, that it's open when the person wants to go, and whether it has outdoor seating by the marina. It also reads what reviewers say about the food.

Each of those answers comes from a different source. Location and hours come from your Google, Yelp and Apple Maps listings, and they need to match your website. The menu comes from your own site, and it works best as plain text with dish names and prices, because a photo of a menu is hard for an assistant to read. The review language comes from your customers, and AI repeats the phrases it sees there, so a review that mentions the patio by the marina and a specific dish is worth more than one that says great food.

The Amtrak Capitol Corridor station brings commuters and travelers through Old Town, and they ask AI for coffee, food and errands nearby. If you're a short walk from the Suisun-Fairfield station, put that on your listing and your website.

Then there are the residents. Many Suisun City families are connected to Travis Air Force Base, and newcomers need to find a family dentist, a plumber and everything else quickly. They often ask AI, since they don't have local recommendations yet. A dental practice that states whether it's taking new patients, which insurance it accepts and where it's located gives the assistant what it needs. A plumber who lists Suisun City as a service area, with hours and a license number, does the same.

Suisun City and Fairfield also share a lot of customers. If you serve both, say so on your site and your listings, so the assistant doesn't pass you over for a business with a Fairfield address. That goes both ways for Fairfield businesses who work in Suisun City.

This week, if you run a restaurant in Old Town or on the waterfront, rewrite your Google business description to say where you are and what you're known for, using the words people would use to ask for you. Check that your hours match on every listing. And if you're a service business, add a line to your website that names both Suisun City and Fairfield as places you work.

The AEO Show Bay Area comes from Bay Area A-E-O. Ask us for a free AI visibility check and we'll show you who the assistants recommend in Suisun City right now. Call five one oh, two nine eight, three five four three, or visit bay area A-E-O dot com.

Thanks for listening.