The SEO Skill That's Quietly Disappearing From Agency Pitches

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-15

Hiring an SEO agency used to be a contained decision. You checked the case studies, looked at ranking history, agreed on a reporting cadence. Done. That decision has gotten a lot more complicated. AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews now sit alongside — and increasingly in front of — the traditional results page. And the skill set that earns a spot in one doesn't automatically earn a spot in the other. Here's the uncomfortable part: you can hire a perfectly competent SEO team and still be completely invisible in the answer an AI assistant gives a buyer researching your category. That's why more procurement conversations now name generative engine optimisation (GEO) capability as a separate line item. Not something you assume any SEO vendor can bolt onto an existing retainer. ### Why SEO and GEO Aren't the Same Job The two disciplines share a foundation — a crawlable, well-structured, credible website. But they're measured differently, reported differently, and often need different specialists to execute well. Treating them as identical is one of the more common ways brands end up disappointed six months into a contract. Traditional SEO is still mostly about earning a ranking position and a click. Backlinks, on-page relevance, and technical health decide who shows up in those ten blue links. GEO is about earning a citation inside an answer the user never has to click through. That's decided by entity authority, structured data, and independent mentions the AI system trusts. The overlap in the middle is where most of your budget should actually go. Content that's genuinely well-sourced and clearly structured tends to perform in both systems at once. A competent combined agency should be optimising for that overlap, not treating it as two separate deliverables. ### What to Evaluate Before You Sign A few questions tend to separate agencies with real GEO capability from ones that have simply relabeled an existing service: - **Documented proof in both channels.** Ask for actual ranking data alongside specific, verifiable examples of the agency's content being cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews. Not just a claim of "AI SEO" on the services page. A screenshot of a single citation isn't a track record — ask how many clients, and over what period. - **A technical foundation, not just content tricks.** The strongest GEO work is usually built on the same technical rigor as strong SEO: crawlability, site architecture, structured data. If an agency can't speak to your site's technical health, its GEO plan is probably just content rewrites. - **A real measurement method.** Standard rank trackers don't capture whether a brand was cited inside an AI answer. Ask exactly how the agency tracks citation frequency and "share of voice" across AI platforms, how often that gets reported, and what a baseline audit looks like before work starts. - **Transparent, scoped pricing.** Mid-market GEO retainers typically run anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 per month, so ask what's actually included at each tier — audits, content production, digital PR, ongoing monitoring — rather than accepting a vague monthly number. - **Fit with your industry.** Some agencies specialise by vertical, client size, or number of markets served. A firm built for enterprise technical SEO audits isn't necessarily the right fit for a regional service business, and vice versa. > "The agencies winning this next phase aren't the ones with the biggest link portfolios. They're the ones who understood two years ago that visibility was moving from a ranking problem to an authority problem." ### A Quick Note on Agency Selection When you're comparing agencies, look at how they split their work between traditional SEO and GEO. Some lean heavily on technical audits. Others build schema and E-E-A-T content. The best ones do both, and they'll tell you exactly how they measure it. Ask for a sample AI-visibility scorecard. If they can't show you one, that tells you something. The bottom line: don't assume your SEO agency is covering AI search. Ask the question directly. The brands that figure this out early will own the answers their buyers are already reading.