What Is an SEO Agency? What It Does, What a Month Looks Like, and What to Ask
Updated: 5 days ago
An SEO agency is a company you pay to make your website show up in unpaid search results for the searches your customers make. It checks your site for problems, researches the words people search, improves your pages, and reports what changed. An SEO agency is also called an SEO company; the name changes nothing.
If an SEO agency has pitched you, or you are thinking of hiring one, the question underneath is simple: what will they actually do with the money? This page explains what an SEO agency is, the services it offers, what a month of the work looks like, and the questions that tell a useful agency from one to avoid.
What is an SEO agency, in plain terms?
An SEO agency is a specialist marketing business that works on one channel: being found in search engines such as Google. A general marketing agency runs many channels, such as ads, social media and email. An SEO agency's work is changes to your website and your business profile, so that people already searching for what you sell can find you.
It does not buy you a place. Google does not sell one: placement in its unpaid results cannot be paid for. What you pay an SEO agency for is the work on your site, and the record of it. If you are comparing an SEO agency with a broader one, our page on what a marketing agency is sets the two side by side.
What do SEO agencies do?
SEO agencies work on your website so it shows up in unpaid search results. They check the site for technical problems, research the words people search, improve your pages and content, earn links from other sites, and report what changed. Not every agency does all of it, so ask which parts are in the price you are quoted.
SEO agency services can include a site audit, technical fixes, keyword research, on-page changes to titles and headings, content writing, link building, local listings work, and reporting. Google's own page on hiring an SEO lists the same kind of work, from reviewing your site's content and structure to keyword research and optimizing for generative AI.
Service | What it is | What to ask |
Site audit | A review of what keeps the site from being found, with fixes in order | Can I see a sample report? |
Technical SEO | Fixes to crawling, indexing, redirects, speed and mobile | Which pages, and how will I see the change? |
Keyword research | Finding the words your customers search with | Which searches are you targeting, and why those? |
On-page SEO | Titles, headings, meta descriptions and copy on existing pages | How many changes a month, and where are they listed? |
Content | New pages or posts written for searches you do not yet answer | Who writes it, and who checks the facts? |
Link building | Getting other sites to link to yours | Where will the links come from? Is money changing hands for them? |
Local SEO | Google Business Profile, reviews and listings | Is this included, or extra? |
Reporting | A record of what was done and what changed | Is the work listed by page, written at the time? |
Not every agency does all eight. Ask which ones are in the price you are quoted.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Choosing a provider? Know where you stand first
See where your site shows up in Google search, and which searches moved since the last check. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
What does an SEO agency actually do each month?
In a month of ongoing work, an SEO agency often picks the pages that matter most, makes a set number of changes to them, checks that the changes went live, watches what moved in search, and sends you a report. A good month ends with a list you can read: which page, what changed, and why.
The audit and research often come first and are repeated less often. The monthly part is the changes, and that is the part most worth asking to see.
SEO agency or another way to get SEO done?
An SEO agency is one of several ways to get the work done. The others are a freelancer or consultant, a one-off audit, or your own time. Which fits depends on how much work your site needs, and whether you or someone else will make the changes.
Option | What you get | What to check |
Full-service SEO agency | Most of the eight services, often with links and content | Which services are in the monthly price |
Freelancer or consultant | One person's time, often on a narrower set of services | How many hours, and on what |
One-off SEO audit | A list of what to fix, without the work | Whether each finding names a page and a fix |
Do it yourself | Free tools and your own time | Whether you have the hours every month |
Capron Media (ours) | Starter, our monthly SEO subscription: five optimizations a week, made for you on the site you already own, and each one shown in your portal. A person reads every change before it goes on your site. | Starter does not include Google Business Profile or local listings work, link building, a redesign, social media, ads or email marketing. New pages are an SEO Project, quoted separately |
How much does an SEO agency cost?
SEO agencies price by scope: how many changes a month, on how many pages, and whether links, content or local listings are included. That is why two quotes for the same site can be far apart. Ask for the price in writing with the list of work it covers.
What different providers charge is in our guide to SEO company prices. Capron Media's prices, for the monthly subscription and for a one-off SEO audit, are on our pricing page with what each one includes.
What is the 80/20 rule for SEO?
The 80/20 rule for SEO is a rule of thumb, not a Google rule: a small share of your pages and fixes tends to bring most of the results. In practice it means fixing the few pages your customers land on before polishing the rest. A good agency should be able to say which pages those are on your site.
Can a beginner do SEO without an agency?
Yes, for a small local business. Google says plainly that if you run a small local business, you "can probably do much of the work yourself", and suggests hiring when you are redesigning or launching a site. What a beginner tends to run out of is time, not skill: choosing which page to change this week, and coming back next week.
Is SEO dead now with AI?
No. People still search, and Google now lists "Optimizing for generative AI" among the services SEOs provide. What has changed is that an AI answer now sometimes appears above the results, which makes being the page that answer draws on worth working for. For a closer look at the decision, see whether SEO is worth it for a small business.
What should an SEO agency never do?
An SEO agency should never guarantee you a first-place ranking, buy links for you, hide text on your pages, or make changes you cannot see. Google's advice on hiring is blunt about the first: "If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else."
Our post on white hat SEO services sets out three checks you can run on any proposal against Google's own rules. Capron Media publishes the nine tactics we never use on our pricing page.
How do you choose an SEO agency?
Ask each agency for last month's list of work on a site they already look after, and for that site's owner as a reference. Ask which of the eight services are in the price, who does the work, and how you will see every change. Then compare the lists, not the logos.
The right SEO agency for you is the one whose work you can check, of the kind that fits your site, and a ranked list of firms cannot know that. If you came here looking for one, our post on how SEO company rankings are made explains how to read it.
The full set of questions, and the order to ask them in, is in our guide on how to choose an SEO agency. And if you want to see what a provider's monthly report should show, read which lines in an SEO agency report mean work happened. More about how Capron Media works is on our home page.
If you would like a second opinion on a proposal you have been sent, book a free call about your site. It takes about 15 minutes, and it is about whether we are a fit for you.
From Capron Media: the free Lite subscription
Check any website, a provider's or your own
Your own site doesn't use up a check. You can check up to three other sites, each once every 30 days. Lite does not include the work on your site. Starter does.
If you would rather have the work done for you, Starter is five optimizations a week, made for you on the site you already own, and each one shown in your portal. See every price.
Written by Spencer Capron, founder of Capron Media, a Middleborough, Massachusetts SEO service for small business owners. Spencer is HubSpot SEO II certified, holds CompTIA Security+, and has run recurring SEO programs for 30+ small-business clients. He wrote this post in collaboration with our AI agents, and he reviews everything published here.
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