7 Things to Consider When Hiring an AI SEO Agency (And How You Know You Need One)

AI SEO has become one of the most prominent marketing strategies businesses are investing it, but it requires a lot of time and effort. And if you’ve acknowledged that, it’s probably why you’re here — you’re debating if you should hire an AI SEO agency.

Hiring an AI SEO agency can be a great option for busy business owners, marketing managers short on time, and anyone in-between.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• How Do I Know if I Need to Hire an AI SEO Agency?
• Things to Consider when Hiring an AI SEO Agency
• AI SEO Agency Onboarding: What You’ll Need to Provide

How do I know if I need to hire an AI SEO agency?

First, let’s talk about how to know if you need to hire an AI SEO agency. If you’re experiencing any of these situations, you’ll want to consider hiring outside help:

• You don’t have time to dedicate to managing your AI SEO
• You haven’t started with AI SEO and don’t know where to begin
• You aren’t sure how to do AI SEO or have limited knowledge on it
• You’re lacking resources to support your AI SEO strategy
• You need additional support with your search strategy
• You want to see results faster
• You struggle to get clear attribution and understand how your AI SEO strategy impacts your business

Things to consider when hiring an AI SEO agency

Finding the right AI SEO agency is key to success — working with a bad SEO agency can severely hurt your search performance and leave you scrambling to fix it.

Here’s what you need to consider when hiring an AI SEO agency:

1. The Level of Support You Need
2. How Much You’re Willing to Invest
3. What Type of Agency You Want to Work with
4. Local vs. National SEO Agency
5. Skills and Experience of the Agency
6. Approach to AI SEO Strategies
7. Contract Structure

1. The level of support you need

Before you start vetting AI search agencies, think about how much support you need from them. Not only does it help you set budget expectations, but it gives you a better idea of who you should outsource to.

If you’re only looking for a little bit of support, you might be able to just hire a consultant. On the other hand, if you’re looking for full-time support, an AI SEO agency is a better fit.

2. How much you’re willing to invest

When you’re trying to hire an AI SEO company, you need to think about how much you want to invest in the strategy. Your budget determines who you can hire and how aggressive your SEO strategy can be.

If you have a small budget, you may only have room to hire a consultant or a freelancer to handle your AI SEO. A more substantial budget enables you to hire an agency to handle your AI SEO.

Typically, SEO costs $1,500–$5,000 per month for SEO services from an agency. For freelancers, you can pay anywhere from $100 to $500+ per hour.

3. What type of agency you want to work with

If you’re opting to hire an AI SEO agency, you need to consider what type of agency you want to work with.

There are a couple of options:

• Strategy-specialized: A strategy-specialized agency only offers AI SEO services. You can opt to work with an AI SEO-only agency if you aren’t looking for/won’t need support with additional strategies.
• Industry-specialized: You can opt to partner with an agency that specializes in AI SEO for your industry. Many businesses will opt for industry-specialized agencies to have a partner that knows their industry inside and out.
• Full-service: A full-service agency doesn’t just offer AI SEO, but offers additional support strategies like SEO, PPC, social media, and more. These agencies can serve as a one-stop-shop for all your marketing needs.

4. Local vs. national SEO agency

When thinking about hiring an AI SEO agency, think about whether you want to hire one local that only serves your surrounding area or an agency that serves multiple regions.

Hiring an agency local to your area can offer a lot of benefits like:

• Easy to access (you can visit them)
• They know your area well
• Easier communication (same time zone)
• May be extra invested in your success because you’re in the community

But, national agencies come with their advantages too. Here are some of the biggest ones:

• Typically more access to resources and ability to scale strategies
• Broader experience in different markets that can help you excel in yours
• Often have more cutting-edge AI capabilities because they’re larger
• Brand credibility and trust

It’s really going to depend upon what matters most to you. If easy access and local knowledge are of utmost importance to you, a local agency might be the better option. If you want to have access to more resources and stay on the cutting edge, a national agency may be a better option.

5. Skills and experience of the agency

To hire the best AI SEO agency for your business, you need to consider the skills and experience of an agency.

Even though AI SEO is still relatively new, a good agency will be able to prove they are skilled and experienced with AI SEO. Because the strategy is still developing, you want to work with agencies that have already gathered a lot of experience with the strategy.

If an agency can show proof of AI SEO work, like portfolios or case studies, they have potential to be a good agency to hire for AI search.

6. Approach to AI SEO strategies

This is a critical component to ensure you hire the right AI SEO agency — make sure you ask about their approach to AI SEO.

If they provide you with a really generic plan, it indicates they operate on a cookie-cutter model. A cookie-cutter model means that you aren’t going to get a plan tailored to your business, which indicates your AI SEO strategy won’t reach its full potential.

For any marketing strategy to be successful, it can’t be templated. It needs to be customized and tailored to your business, so it works for your industry, market, and sector.

Stick to the agencies that tailor their strategies to fit you, as that will maximize your success.

7. Contract structure

Lastly, take note of the contract structure when you’re hiring an AI SEO company. You want to make sure you’re partnering with an agency that offers the contract structure that works for you.

You’ll want to consider things like:

• Duration of the contract (month-to-month, 6 months, 1 year?)
• Exit clauses
• Ownership of any work created
• Pricing and payment cadence
• Performance accountability (how do they keep you in the loop?)

Make sure you’re choosing an AI search partner that gives you a contract that fits your business best.

AI SEO agency onboarding: What you’ll need to provide

If you decide to hire an AI SEO agency, you’ll have to provide some business information in order to kick off the partnership.

Here are a few things you’ll need to provide:

• Credentials for major logins: Your AI SEO agency will need access to the backend of your website to make changes and optimizations. They’ll also need to access things like Google Analytics and Search Console to properly track your performance.
• Business background: A good AI SEO agency will ask you to provide detailed information about your business. That includes an overview of products and services, target audience information, and brand guidelines, amongst other things.
• Goals: You’ll need to share your business goals, so an AI SEO agency can ensure your strategy is aligned to help meet them.
• AI SEO history: If you have any history of AI SEO work or previously worked with a different agency for it, you’ll want to provide that history to your new agency.
• Stakeholder information: You’ll want to ensure you share the name and contact information of all the major stakeholders that need to be kept in the loop about your AI SEO strategy.

Your agency may ask for a few other things, but this is a basic list of what you can expect most AI SEO agencies to ask for after you hire them.

Ready to hire an AI SEO agency?

An AI SEO agency can make or break your strategy — it’s critical that you hire the right one to ensure you see success versus decline. Don’t want to go through the hassle of researching and vetting agencies? Consider putting WebFX (the team behind SEO.com) at the forefront of your mind.

As an agency on the cutting-edge of AI search, we build custom strategies that help businesses achieve better visibility, brand recognition, and leads from AI engines.

Connect with us today to learn how we can help you achieve it, too, with our AI SEO services!

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