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Insights / Strategy

AEO agency vs SEO agency vs DIY

An honest comparison from a company with an obvious interest — so we've kept it factual: what each route covers, costs and misses.

DIY

Free tools and a few weekends. You can genuinely fix entity consistency, claim your profiles, add basic schema, run monthly prompt tests and build a review pipeline yourself.

Best for

Sole traders and small local businesses where local signals (profile, reviews, consistency) dominate the answer.

The catch

Citation building and content authority take sustained effort — the work that compounds is exactly the work that gets dropped when business gets busy.

Traditional SEO agency

Strong on the foundations AI retrieval depends on: technical health, rankings, content production, links. Many now offer "AI SEO" — quality varies enormously.

Best for

Businesses whose enquiries still come mostly from classic search, with a competitive keyword battle to win.

The catch

Most don't measure AI answers at all. You can rank #1 and still be absent from every assistant's recommendation — and never know.

Specialist AEO agency

Optimises the recommendation itself: entity strategy, structured data, citation programs on sources AI trusts, and measurement of what assistants actually say.

Best for

Businesses in considered-purchase categories where being the named answer wins the customer — and competitors haven't moved yet.

The catch

A young discipline with loud claims. Use the three questions below to separate practitioners from opportunists — including on us.

Three questions that sort any provider

1. "What does ChatGPT say about my business today?" A real AEO provider shows you — before you sign. 2. "How will you measure progress?" The answer should include citation share and answer accuracy, not just rankings and traffic. 3. "What's your entity strategy?" If they can't explain how machines will recognise your business unambiguously, they're optimising pages, not presence. (Ours is the Visibility Score — measured before, during and after.)

Start with the free tools — the score calculator and 21-point checklist — and you'll know which route you need before spending a dollar.

Ask us the three questions. We like them.
Book A Strategy Session
Insights / Strategy

AEO agency vs SEO agency vs DIY

An honest comparison from a company with an obvious interest — so we've kept it factual: what each route covers, costs and misses.

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Best for

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The catch

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Three questions that sort any provider

1. "What does ChatGPT say about my business today?" A real AEO provider shows you — before you sign. 2. "How will you measure progress?" The answer should include citation share and answer accuracy, not just rankings and traffic. 3. "What's your entity strategy?" If they can't explain how machines will recognise your business unambiguously, they're optimising pages, not presence. (Ours is the Visibility Score — measured before, during and after.)

Start with the free tools — the score calculator and 21-point checklist — and you'll know which route you need before spending a dollar.

Ask us the three questions. We like them.
Book A Strategy Session