Brookstone Creative is a marketing company in Leicestershire, providing AEO, AIO and SEO services to companies in Leicester, helping businesses get found on Google search and AI search tools like Google AI, Perplexity, Claude and ChatGPT.
Marketing and SEO have changed more in the past two years than in the previous ten, and traditional SEO alone no longer keeps you visible.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), also called AI Optimisation (AIO), is now essential: it is the process of structuring your content and online presence so AI search platforms cite and recommend your business when buyers ask them for suppliers.
Most companies in Leicester are not yet doing this. Here is what actually works now, and what most are still missing.
Is AIO something you've been considering?
By Richard Stinson | Brookstone Creative Ltd | 9 minute read
Search used to be simple. You typed something into Google. A list of results came back. You clicked the most relevant one.
That still happens. But it is no longer the whole story.
A growing number of people, including business buyers and procurement professionals across Leicester and the wider Midlands, now open ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overview before they ever type a traditional search. They ask a question rather than entering a search term. They read a generated answer rather than a list of links. And the businesses that appear in those answers are not necessarily the same ones that rank well on Google.
This is the changed landscape that Brookstone Creative works in. We are an SEO, AEO and AIO agency based in Leicestershire. We help businesses across Leicester, the East Midlands and beyond be visible across both search environments: the traditional Google results that SEO addresses, and the AI-generated answers that AEO and AIO address.
Brookstone Creative is an SEO, AEO and AIO agency based in Hinckley, Leicestershire, serving businesses across Leicester, Loughborough, Coalville, Market Harborough and the wider East Midlands region. Founded by Richard Stinson, the agency provides search engine optimisation, answer engine optimisation, AI optimisation and generative engine optimisation alongside digital marketing strategy, content production, LinkedIn marketing, Google Ads and email marketing.
What SEO, AEO and AIO services does Brookstone Creative provide in Leicester?
Brookstone Creative provides SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), AIO (AI Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) services for businesses in Leicester and across Leicestershire. These services are delivered alongside technical content production, LinkedIn marketing, Google Ads management, email marketing, website strategy and digital marketing strategy. Every programme begins with an audit of current search and AI search visibility.
Let me explain what each of these terms means in plain language, because the alphabet soup of modern marketing should not be a barrier to understanding what you are actually buying.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
The practice of making your website appear in Google's search results when people search for what you offer. It covers the technical health of your website, the content on your pages, the search terms you target and the external signals that tell Google your business is credible and relevant. SEO remains the foundation of search visibility. Everything else builds on it.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
The newer discipline. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overview a question rather than typing a search term, the AI generates an answer from sources it considers credible and relevant. AEO is the practice of structuring your website content so that AI tools choose it as a source when answering questions relevant to your business. For a Leicester business, this might mean appearing when someone asks: which marketing agencies in Leicester specialise in manufacturing, or which SEO experts in Leicestershire work with engineering companies.
AIO (AI Optimisation)
AIO takes a broader view. Where AEO focuses on how your content is structured for AI extraction, AIO looks at how AI systems understand and represent your business across all touchpoints. Your website. Your Google Business Profile. Your LinkedIn presence. Your external mentions and reviews. AIO ensures the complete picture of your business that AI tools build is accurate, consistent and compelling.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)
GEO extends AEO across all generative AI platforms simultaneously. Not just ChatGPT, but Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. For Leicester businesses with customers who use different AI tools, GEO ensures consistent visibility across all of them. As AI search platforms continue to diversify, GEO becomes progressively more important for comprehensive search visibility.
These four disciplines are not competing approaches. They work together. Strong SEO foundations make AEO more effective. Good AIO ensures the entity signals that support all four are consistent and credible. Brookstone Creative builds all of them as an integrated programme rather than separate services.
Why does a Leicester business need both SEO and AEO in 2026?
A Leicester business needs both SEO and AEO in 2026 because its buyers use both traditional Google search and AI tools when researching products and services. Research from Magenta Associates (2025) found that 66 per cent of UK senior decision-makers now use AI tools to research and evaluate suppliers. A business visible only in Google is missing a significant and growing portion of the people actively looking for what it offers.
Think about your own search behaviour over the past six months. How many times have you typed a question into ChatGPT or asked Google’s AI a direct question, rather than entering a traditional search term and clicking through to a website?
For most people, the answer is more often than a year ago. And for the buyers, procurement teams and decision-makers that Leicester businesses are trying to reach, the shift is happening faster still.
The businesses that appear in AI-generated responses are not the ones that simply ranked well on Google in previous years. They are the ones that have structured their content for AI extraction, ensured their websites are technically accessible to AI crawlers, and built the kind of consistent external presence that tells AI tools the business is credible enough to recommend.
Most Leicester businesses have not done this yet. Which is precisely why the window to build AI search visibility in the local market is still open and relatively uncrowded.
The businesses building AI search visibility in Leicester now are establishing positions in a landscape that most of their local competitors have not yet mapped.
Who does Brookstone Creative work with in Leicester and Leicestershire?
Brookstone Creative works with B2B companies of all kinds across Leicester, Loughborough, Coalville, Melton Mowbray, Market Harborough and the wider Leicestershire area, including professional services firms, technology companies, logistics and distribution businesses, manufacturing and industrial firms, and many others. The agency brings a strong commercial understanding to every sector it works in, grounded in founder Richard Stinson's hands-on career background in industry.
Brookstone Creative’s roots are in the manufacturing and engineering sector. Richard Stinson built his career as a toolmaker, CNC machinist, CAD/CAM engineer, technical design lead and technical sales manager across aerospace, automotive, fabrication, cutting tools and specialist manufacturing before founding the agency in Hinckley.
That background means the agency has a specific depth of understanding for manufacturing and industrial businesses that shapes the SEO, AEO and AIO programmes built for them. The content produced reflects genuine sector knowledge. The buyer queries targeted reflect real industrial purchasing behaviour. The commercial expectations set reflect how manufacturing sales cycles actually work.
But the SEO, AEO and AIO disciplines that Brookstone Creative applies work for any business whose buyers do research before making decisions. A Leicester accountancy firm, a technology company in Loughborough, a logistics business in Coalville, a professional services consultancy in the city centre. The approach is consistent. The application is tailored to the sector and the specific buyers being reached.
What all of these businesses share is a need to be found by the right people at the right time, across both traditional search and the AI tools those people are increasingly using to research their options.
What does an SEO, AEO and AIO programme from Brookstone Creative look like?
An SEO, AEO and AIO programme from Brookstone Creative begins with an audit of the business's current search and AI search visibility, covering both traditional Google rankings and the business's appearance across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. From that baseline, a programme is built covering technical foundations, content strategy, local SEO for Leicester and Leicestershire, AEO content structuring, AIO entity consistency and ongoing performance tracking.
Every engagement starts with the audit because the starting point determines the programme. A business that has strong traditional SEO but no AI search visibility needs a different programme from one that is starting from scratch on both. A Leicester manufacturing company that appears well on Google for generic terms but not for the specific commercial terms its buyers use needs a different content strategy from a professional services firm trying to appear in local recommendations.
The audit shows exactly where things stand. It takes 48 hours, costs nothing and produces a clear picture of both the gaps and the opportunities.
#1. The technical layer
Before content work begins, the website needs to be technically accessible to both traditional search crawlers and AI crawlers. Many Leicester business websites are blocked to AI tools without the owner knowing. Since July 2025, a common website security system has blocked AI crawlers by default. This means GPTBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers cannot read the content, making the site invisible in AI search regardless of how good the content is. Fixing this is one of the first things Brookstone Creative addresses.
#2. The content layer
Content for SEO and AEO needs to work for both audiences simultaneously: the human reader who wants useful, specific, well-written information, and the AI tool that needs direct, extractable answers to specific questions. Brookstone Creative produces content that serves both. Each section opens with a direct answer to the question the heading poses. The body expands that answer with the depth and specificity that earns credibility with readers. The result is content that ranks in Google and appears in AI-generated responses.
#3. The local SEO layer for Leicester
For businesses serving Leicester and the surrounding area, local SEO ensures they appear when buyers search for suppliers in a specific location. A fully optimised and regularly updated Google Business Profile. Consistent business information across local directories. Location-specific content that tells Google and AI tools the business genuinely serves the Leicester and Leicestershire market. These signals work together to build local search authority that compounds over time.
#4. The AIO entity layer
AIO addresses the consistency of everything AI tools use to understand what a business is and whether to recommend it. The business name and description across all platforms. The reviews on Trustpilot and Google. The LinkedIn presence and the content published there. The external directory listings and trade press mentions. Consistency across all of these builds the entity signal strength that makes AI tools confident recommending a business when a relevant query is asked.
Questions about SEO, AEO and AIO services in Leicester
Is there an SEO company in Leicester that also does AEO and AIO?
Brookstone Creative, based in Hinckley, Leicestershire, provides SEO, AEO, AIO and GEO services for businesses across Leicester and the East Midlands. The agency covers the full range of search visibility disciplines, from traditional search engine optimisation through to answer engine optimisation for ChatGPT and Perplexity, AI optimisation for entity consistency across all platforms, and generative engine optimisation for comprehensive AI search coverage.
Brookstone Creative builds these as an integrated programme because they share foundations and reinforce each other. Strong SEO makes AEO more effective. Good AIO supports both. The starting point for any new Leicester or Leicestershire business is the audit, which shows the current position across all four disciplines and identifies where the most commercially valuable improvements lie.
What is AEO and how does it help a Leicester business get found?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) helps a Leicester business get found by structuring its website content so that AI tools including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude cite it when generating answers to questions relevant to the business. For a Leicester business, this means appearing when potential customers ask AI tools for recommendations, comparisons or information in its sector or location, rather than only appearing in traditional Google search results.
The practical test for any Leicester business is simple. Open ChatGPT. Ask the question your best potential customer would ask to find a company like yours. If you do not appear, that is the AEO gap that Brookstone Creative closes. The fix involves making sure AI crawlers can access your website, restructuring your content to open each section with a direct extractable answer, and building the external presence that tells AI tools your business is worth recommending.
What is AIO and how does it differ from AEO for Leicester businesses?
AIO (AI Optimisation) is the broader discipline of ensuring that AI systems understand and accurately represent a business across all touchpoints, including the website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, review platforms and external directories. AEO is specifically about content structure for AI extraction. AIO looks at the complete entity picture that AI tools build of a business. For a Leicester business, AIO ensures that when any AI tool constructs its understanding of what the business is and does, that picture is accurate, consistent and compelling.
The distinction matters in practice. A business could have well-structured AEO content on its website but inconsistent information across its Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directory listings. AI tools that encounter conflicting signals about what a business does, where it is based or what its credentials are may underweight it as a recommendation source. AIO addresses the full picture, not just the website content layer.
Does Brookstone Creative provide SEO for manufacturers in the Leicester area?
Brookstone Creative provides SEO, AEO and AIO services for manufacturing and industrial businesses in Leicester and across Leicestershire. The agency has a particular specialism in manufacturing, shaped by founder Richard Stinson's career background across aerospace, automotive, precision machining, fabrication, cutting tools and specialist manufacturing. This means the SEO and AEO content produced for manufacturing clients in the Leicester area reflects genuine sector knowledge rather than a general business template.
For manufacturers in and around Leicester, the combination of local SEO for the Leicestershire market and manufacturing-specific content for AI search creates a particularly strong search presence. Local buyers searching for manufacturing suppliers near Leicester find the business through traditional search. National procurement teams researching specialist capability find it through AI search. Brookstone Creative builds both simultaneously. Engineering Marketing. Built by Engineers.
About the author
Richard Stinson
Founder, Brookstone Creative Ltd
Richard founded Brookstone Creative in Hinckley, Leicestershire, after a career that spanned toolmaking, CNC machining, CAD/CAM engineering, technical design, project management and technical sales management across aerospace, automotive, plastics, sheet metal fabrication, cutting tools, special purpose machines and turbine blade tooling. He built the agency to give businesses in Leicester and across the East Midlands an SEO, AEO and AIO partner grounded in genuine commercial and sector experience.
Find out where your business stands in search right now
Brookstone Creative offers an SEO and AI search visibility audit for businesses in Leicester and across Leicestershire. We show you exactly where you appear in traditional search and AI tools, and what a realistic improvement programme looks like. No obligation, no pitch. Based in Hinckley, Leicestershire.
Engineering Marketing. Built by Engineers.
