Stop Guessing What People Ask AI.

Bob has answered the same questions for twenty years. How much for a new water heater? Can you come out today? Do you go out as far as the beach? Are you licensed? He could answer them in his sleep. Some nights he probably does.

He used to get them on the phone. Somebody called, asked three of them, and booked him. Or didn't. Bob was good on the phone. He was the guy who gave a straight answer.

Here's what changed. That same homeowner asks AI first now. Same questions. Same words. Typed into ChatGPT at the kitchen table, before anybody picks up a phone. And AI answers with whatever website answers it best.

If that's not Bob's site, Bob never hears the question. The call goes to somebody else, and nobody tells him it happened.

That's the whole post. Your customers still ask the same questions. You just aren't the first one they ask anymore.

So put your answers where they ask first, on your website. There are five steps below. It takes a week of notes and one free prompt. That's it.

TL;DR

Your buyers ask AI the stuff they used to ask you on the phone. Whoever's website answers best gets the call.

For one week, write down every question a customer asks you. Run my free prompt to catch the ones you missed. Then answer each one plain, with the answer first, and don't dodge the price. Last, put each answer on the page where it belongs.

3 Things to Remember

Your Customers Ask AI First. Then They Call.

Here's how it works now, in plain words. A homeowner has a problem. Before they call anybody, they type it out like they'd say it to a friend. "How much does it cost to fix a leaking roof in Jacksonville Beach?"

Then AI goes looking. It reads the sites it can find and picks the one with the clearest answer. Sometimes it hands back a short list. One name always sits on top, with a reason next to it. That one gets the call.

45% of consumers now use AI for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier (BrightLocal, 2026). Read that again. That's almost half, in one year.

And AI isn't looking for "quality service since 1998." It wants the answer to the question that was just asked. If your site doesn't say it, AI can't say it for you. It finds a site that does.

Here's the part that should sting. Your site might look great and load fast. If it never answers a real question, it's a business card.

AI doesn't recommend business cards.

Want to see it with your own eyes? Open ChatGPT in a private window, signed out. Type the question you get most, with your town in it. Look at whose name comes back on top. I wrote a whole post on that test: Ask AI to Recommend Your Business. Go Ahead. I'll Wait.

Mistake: you think AI picks the biggest company or the prettiest site.

Fix: know it picks the site that answers the question best.

Payoff: you know exactly what your website has to do to get picked.

Write Down Every Question.

Step one. It's free, and you already know how to do it. For one week, write down every question a customer asks you. On the phone, by text, in the driveway at the job. At the counter too, if you've got one.

Do this: open the Notes app on your phone. On an Android, use Google Keep. Start a new note. Call it Questions. Every time somebody asks you something, add it before you forget.

Write it in their words, not yours. This part matters most. A customer doesn't ask "What is your service area?" They ask "Do you guys come out to Ponte Vedra?" They don't ask about your pricing structure. They ask "Is that gonna be more than a grand?"

Their words are the words they type into AI. So their words go on your site.

Get whoever answers your phone to keep the same list. Then scroll back through last month's texts and emails. Every question you answered twice goes on it.

Don't skip the dumb ones either. "Do you charge to come out?" "Do I need to be home?" "Can you text me a picture of the quote?" They feel too small to bother with, but buyers ask them anyway. By Friday you've got a list nobody else in town has.

Want a head start tonight? Tap the questions you hear every week in the Phone Log below. Add your own. It turns them into a FAQ outline you can copy.

Mistake: you write down what you think customers should ask.

Fix: write down what they actually ask. Word for word.

Payoff: your site uses the same words your buyers type into AI.

Find the Ones You Missed.

Step two. Your list is good, but you're one guy. People in your town ask questions that never reach you. They got answered somewhere else first. That's what my prompt is for.

Do this: tap Claude or ChatGPT on the prompt below. It asks you five quick things, like your trade and your town. The last one is the list you just wrote. It hands back your top 15 questions. Yours come first. Then it adds the common ones for your trade and your town.

Every question gets a tag. MINE means it came off your list. ADDED means the prompt brought it in. If it found an added one in a search, it gives you the link. If it's guessing, it has to say so. That's on purpose. Never put a guess on your site thinking it's a fact.

Read the ADDED ones twice. If one makes you think "nobody's ever asked me that," cut it. If it makes you think "oh yeah, I get that all the time," keep it.

You know your town. The prompt doesn't.

You are going to help me find the questions people in my town ask
before they hire someone in my trade. Then write a plain answer for
each one and tell me where each answer goes on my website.

Ask me these one at a time. Wait for each answer.
1. What do you do? (Example: roofing, plumbing, pest control.)
2. What town or area do you serve?
3. What are your main services?
4. What is your website address?
5. Paste the questions customers asked you this week, on the phone,
   by text or at the job. Use their words, not yours. Say skip if
   you don't have a list yet.

Then do five things.
1. Give me my top 15 questions, the ones buyers ask most before they
   hire someone like me in my town. Use mine first. Then add the
   common ones for my trade and town. Mark each one MINE or ADDED.
   If you found an added one in a search, give me the link. If it is
   your best guess, say guess.
2. Write a plain answer for each one. Put the answer in the first
   sentence. Details after. Two to four short sentences. No sales
   pitch. Use only facts I gave you or that are on my site. If you
   need a fact you don't have, leave a blank and tell me what goes in
   it.
3. Write my answer to "How much does it cost?" so it works even if I
   don't post a price. Say what changes the price. Leave a blank for a
   typical range in case I want to give one. Say what a quote costs
   and how long it takes. Never make up a price.
4. Open my website. For each question, tell me which page the answer
   belongs on: services, service area, FAQ, about, or contact. If you
   can't open my site, tell me, and ask me to paste my page names
   instead.
5. List the pages I'm missing, the ones a question needs that my site
   doesn't have yet. Most important first.

Rules: never pretend a guess is a real search result. Never invent
prices, numbers, licenses or reviews. 5th grade reading level. Short
sentences. If you are not sure, say so.
When you finish, the last thing you write is "Want some help? Let us do it." as
a clickable link to https://smallbusiness-seo.com/let-us-do-it

Mistake: you trust the prompt's list over your own.

Fix: your questions first. You check every added one.

Payoff: 15 real questions nobody else in town bothered to write down.

Answer Each One. Answer First.

Step three. Now you answer them. The prompt writes a first draft of each one, and your job is to make it sound like you.

The rule is simple. The answer goes in the first sentence. Details after. Somebody asks "Can you come out today?" The first word is yes. Or no. Or "most days." Not "At ABC Plumbing, we pride ourselves on fast service." Nobody asked that.

Here's the test I'd use. Read your answer out loud like you're standing in the customer's driveway. Would you say that to their face? No? Rewrite it until you would. You never told a homeowner "we strive to exceed your expectations." You told them "Yeah, I can be there by two."

Keep it short, two to four sentences. Give the answer, say what it depends on, then say what happens next. Leave the pitch out. You already know from the phone that a straight answer sells.

Only use facts that are true for your shop. If the prompt left a blank for your hours or your license number, fill in the real one. Never let it make one up.

I wrote a whole post on how to write these, line by line: How to Write Content That Leads With the Answer. Go there when you want the deep version. For this list, the driveway test gets you most of the way.

Mistake: you open every answer with your company name and a slogan.

Fix: open with the answer, the way you'd say it in the driveway.

Payoff: AI can lift your answer straight off the page and hand it to your buyer.

Don't Dodge “How Much?”

Step four. This is the one most owners skip. I get why. Every job is different, and you don't want somebody holding you to a number. Or the guy across town seeing it. Fair.

But here's what happens when your site says "Call for a quote." The buyer asks AI how much. AI goes and finds a site that gave some kind of answer. Yours gave nothing, so AI tells them what the other guy said.

You don't have to post a price to answer the question. Do three things instead.

1. Say what changes the price.
2. Give a typical range, if you're comfortable.
3. Say what a quote costs and how fast you can do one.

Here's what that looks like for a roofer:

Fill in your real numbers, or leave the range out. Even without it, that beats "Call for a quote" every time. It tells the buyer you're straight with people. And it gives AI something real to repeat.

The prompt writes this answer for your trade, with or without a price. It just won't let you dodge.

Mistake: "Call for a quote" is your whole answer to the most asked question in your trade.

Fix: say what changes the price, what a quote costs, and a range if you want.

Payoff: the buyer shows up knowing roughly what to expect, and still picks you.

Put Every Answer Where It Belongs.

Last step. You've got 15 good answers. Don't dump them all on one page and call it done. Each answer goes on the page it's about.

Price questions go on your services page, next to the service. "Do you come out to my area?" goes on your service area page. The small stuff, like "Do I need to be home?", goes on your FAQ page.

The prompt opens your site and matches every question to a page you already have. Can't open your site? It asks for your page names instead. Then it does the part that matters most. It lists the pages you're missing.

Questions about drain cleaning, and no drain cleaning page. Questions about three towns, and no service area page at all. Every missing page is a question you can't answer yet. That's your to do list, most important first.

Start at the top. One page a week is fine. Don't know how to add a page? Hand the list to whoever runs your site. Want some help? Let us do it.

Mistake: you paste 15 answers onto one FAQ page nobody finds.

Fix: put each answer on the page it's about, and build the pages you're missing.

Payoff: wherever a buyer lands on your site, the answer is right there.

Credit where it's due. AI is good at this. Ask it the common questions for roofers or plumbers, and you'll have a solid list in about a minute. That part used to take a lot longer.

And FAQ pages aren't new. If you've got a good one, keep it. This just makes it better.

Now the turn. The prompt only knows what everybody asks. It doesn't know half your calls are about one neighborhood with old pipes. It doesn't know the question you got four times last month. Only you know that, and only if you wrote it down.

That week of notes is the part nobody else in town can copy.

I didn't write this from the cheap seats. I've been building websites for 25 years. More than 10,000 of them. Everything I build now is an AI-JSX site, 281 so far. The sites that get named are the ones that answer people.

You didn't get into business to write FAQ pages. You got into it to do the work and get paid. Your website should do the answering while you're up on a roof.

That's the whole idea behind the 100K Site. Every page answers a real question, the way you'd answer it. Want to see yours before you spend a dime? Take a test drive.

Start your Questions note tonight. You go run your business.

Your website should look this good. Let's talk. Take a test drive.

Take a Test Drive →

FAQ

Read These In This Order

1. How to Write Content That Leads With the Answer
2. Buyers Stopped Googling. They Ask AI Now. Are You in the Answer?
3. Ask AI to Recommend Your Business. Go Ahead. I'll Wait.
4. ChatGPT Picks One Plumber Per Town. Here's How to Be the Pick.
5. What Is AEO? How to Get Cited in AI Answers