Customers in Eastbourne find businesses in more places than they used to. Google still carries the majority of it, but a share of that research now happens inside ChatGPT, Gemini and voice assistants, and Google itself answers plenty of questions before anyone reaches a website.

That sounds like it demands a whole new discipline. It does not. The work that gets you found across all of those surfaces is largely the same work, done thoroughly. Here is what actually moves the needle for a local business in 2026.

Start with the foundations, because everything else reads from them

AI assistants do not have a private view of the web. ChatGPT leans on Bing's index, Gemini and AI Overviews on Google's, Claude on Brave's. Ranking in those indexes remains the strongest predictor of being cited in an AI answer.

That makes solid SEO the foundation for all of it:

• A fast, mobile-first website that passes Core Web Vitals (check yours with Google PageSpeed Insights)
• A separate page for every service you want to be found for
• Local terms used naturally, so "roof repairs in Eastbourne" reads like a sentence rather than a keyword
• Internal links connecting your service pages, articles and contact page
• Clean crawling and indexing, which is where technical SEO earns its keep

Write pages that answer the whole question

AI systems break a search into sub-questions and gather a source for each one. Pages that cover a topic completely get pulled into more of those slots than pages that touch it lightly.

In practice that means using the question as the heading, answering it in the first two sentences, then expanding. A café in Eastbourne with pages answering "do you have gluten-free cakes" and "where can I park nearby" gives both Google and an assistant something clean to lift.

A structure that travels well

• A short summary near the top covering the key points
• Clear H2 and H3 headings phrased the way customers speak
• Short paragraphs, with lists and tables where they genuinely help
• An FAQ section covering the questions you get asked on the phone

Give Google structured facts about your business

Schema markup tells search engines what your pages contain: services, prices, opening hours, reviews, locations, FAQs. It helps with AI Overviews and rich results, and it costs nothing but attention during the build.

Alongside that, keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere online. Inconsistency there quietly undermines everything else.

Your Google Business Profile does the local heavy lifting

For anyone serving a defined area, the map pack matters more than the organic results below it, and voice assistants lean on the same data.

• Complete every section, including services, description, hours and photos
• Collect reviews steadily and reply to all of them
• Post updates and offers so the profile looks active
• Keep holiday hours current

There are ten specific fixes in this guide to optimising your Google Business Profile, and the wider approach sits on my local SEO page.

Build brand mentions across the web

How often your business is mentioned elsewhere turns out to be one of the strongest signals for appearing in AI answers. Local press, chamber listings, supplier sites, sponsorships, community events and review platforms all count.

This is old-fashioned local relationship building, and it happens to be the piece most competitors skip.

A note on AEO, GEO and VEO

You will see these sold as separate services. Look closely at the playbooks and they are SEO principles with new labels attached. Strong foundations produce AI visibility. Weak foundations with GEO tactics bolted on produce very little.

I wrote up the evidence for that after BrightonSEO 2026, including why the AI citation tracking dashboards on sale right now are further from reliable than they appear.

Five things worth doing this month

1. Complete your Google Business Profile and add three recent photos
2. Run your top three pages through PageSpeed Insights and fix the mobile scores
3. Add an FAQ section answering the five questions you get asked most
4. Ask your last five happy customers for a review
5. Link your service pages to each other and to your contact page

Getting a plan for it

If you want to know where your business currently stands, start with a free SEO audit. If you want the whole picture, including email, tracking and paid search, the Marketing Audit is a two hour session with a written action plan back within 48 hours.

You can also email me at martial@marswebsites.co.uk or call 07307 687790.