What is an SEO agency?

An SEO agency sells the work of getting a business found on Google and, more and more, in AI answers. Some agencies do only that. Others offer it alongside website design, paid advertising or social media, and the word "agency" covers anything from a single consultant to a firm with dozens of staff.

The work usually splits into four parts. Technical fixes, so search engines can read the site properly. Content, meaning pages that answer what customers search for. Reputation, built through reviews, listings and links from other websites. And reporting, which shows what has changed in where you appear and, ideally, in the enquiries you get.

What you get depends heavily on who you hire. Some agencies write pages, fix problems and build your presence every month. Others send an automated report and do very little else. The way to tell them apart before signing is to ask what will be done in the first three months, who will do it, and how results will be measured in enquiries rather than charts.

For a trade or local service business, a useful agency spends most of its time on what brings local calls: the Google Business Profile, reviews, accurate listings and pages for each service and area. If a proposal is mostly blog posts on national topics or buying links, it was written for a different kind of business.

Agencies usually charge a monthly fee, a fixed price for a project or an hourly rate, and prices vary widely. You can do some of the work yourself. An agency makes sense when the time it frees up, or the extra work it brings in, is worth more than it costs.