If you want more enquiries from search without hiring or managing an agency, Heddle is a third option. Our AI agents find what your buyers search for, publish checked pages that answer them and draft a reply to every enquiry, so leads come in without you running the work. A free search audit shows where you're missing today.
What an AI SEO agency sells
Onely's research, published 6 October 2026, makes the split clear. Onely opened 14 "best AI SEO agencies" lists. Four of them counted using AI tools to do SEO work as AI SEO, and ten meant appearing in AI answers. Level Agency lists four more names for the second job: AIO, AEO, GEO and LLMO. Spicy Margarita argues the split is false and that good SEO is good AI SEO.
In practice the sellers come in a few shapes. SeoProfy says most agencies come at AI SEO from one of three angles. Some lead with technical SEO and data analysis, some with content, and some with authority built through digital PR and links.
Then there's software that calls itself an agent. SEO.AI describes itself as "not another agency". It says it installs in 10 minutes, publishes pages to your site automatically or as drafts, and trades backlinks through its own link exchange network.
The label matters far less than three facts you can check. Who does the work, who checks it before it goes live, and who owns it afterwards. Don't build your shortlist from an AI answer. Onely asked the same question of five AI engines twice on one day, and four of the five changed most of the agencies they named. Of the 14 lists it opened, 12 were published by an agency that ranked itself first.
What it costs
Prices are rarely published, but some are. Respona's list of agencies records the figures that are public. Respona sells link building and puts itself first on that list.
- uSERP publishes plans from $10,000 a month for foundational link acquisition, $15,000 for growth campaigns and $25,000 or more for authority programs.
- Skale's Clutch listing shows a $5,000 minimum project and hourly rates from $100.
- SayNine charges per placement, from $200 to $800 per brand mention and $250 to $900 per listicle.
- Linkflow typically starts engagements with a $2,500 AI visibility blueprint.
- OutreachBloom quotes custom prices on month-to-month contracts.
Software is priced differently. SEO.AI offers a 7-day trial and monthly plans with no binding period. Annual plans are binding for the period paid. Many agencies open with something free. Level Agency offers a visibility audit, and Thrive offers a proposal.
When you compare quotes, work out the unit you're paying for. A per-placement price buys mentions. A retainer buys people's hours, and software buys output. Heddle has no published price. Plans are quoted after a free search audit, as the pricing page explains, and ad spend is always paid by you, straight to Google.
What to ask before you sign
These six questions hold whichever kind of provider you're talking to.
Which AI SEO do you sell? Onely puts this first, and it's the fastest way to find out whether you'll get rankings work, AI answer work or both.
Where do I stand today, measured from where my buyers are? Ask for a dated baseline. Location changes the reading more than most people expect. A page on one of our own sites was reported at #48, and it was #3 when read from the city it targets.
How do you stop pages repeating each other? Pages for each service, city or comparison are where sites get into trouble. Two city pages on one of our own sites once shared 67% of their sentences. Heddle now measures every page against its siblings on the built HTML, against an 80% ceiling.
Who checks the facts? SEO.AI says its AI researches and writes, and its specialists spot-check the output. Ask every provider the same thing, and ask what happens to a sentence nobody can back up.
How are links and mentions earned, and in whose name? The approaches on page one vary widely. SEO.AI uses an automatic link exchange. SayNine sells mentions and listicle placements. OutreachBloom says it seeds brand mentions on Reddit. Pick the approach you'd be comfortable defending if a buyer asked.
What happens if we stop? Find out where the pages, data and accounts live, and whether you keep them.
Treat technical setup as housekeeping, not as proof of quality. Onely cites an Ahrefs study of 1,885 pages that added schema markup, compared with 4,000 matched pages that didn't. Adding schema produced no major uplift in AI citations. Heddle writes llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page. Google said on 15 May 2026 that Google Search ignores llms.txt and Markdown files, so they aren't a ranking lever, and Heddle doesn't sell them as one.
Where Heddle fits
We build Heddle, so what this page says about other firms comes from their own pages, and nothing here is a ranking.
Heddle sits between an agency and a tool. It's a team of AI agents that our team sets up in your own repository and accounts and then runs with you. You keep everything if the engagement ends.
Every engagement runs the same eight stages, and each has a written definition of done. The how it works page lays them out. First pages usually go live in three to five weeks.
The first decision to expand or prune comes about six weeks after that, roughly two and a half months in. You supply what you sell and to whom, the claims you can back with evidence, a named person to approve each agent's work, and read access to Search Console.
Heddle ships 14 page families. Each lists the material every page must carry, its doorway risk and how its pages link. Linking needs care. Thirteen of twenty-five pages in one family on our own site were never fetched, because every page linked the same nine siblings, so Heddle now rotates sibling links.
Built pages go through 27 checks, including uniqueness against siblings, claims with evidence, a buyer test and agent readiness. For engineers, those checks run in your own build, and a page that fails doesn't ship.
The agents run at one of four levels: off, report, propose or merge. Each has a kill switch, a budget floor, a watchdog, a canary and signed approval links. Pitches and replies to buyers are always drafted, never sent. A person on your team sends each one.
The proof so far is limited. The method was built on one of our own sites, where an SEO agent and a content agent run on a schedule. Heddle hasn't published a measured traffic or ranking result yet. Rankings are Google's to give, so Heddle reports them and promises nothing.
Who should choose something other than Heddle
You want something running this week without a call. Heddle starts with a call and takes three to five weeks to get the first pages live. Software such as SEO.AI says it installs in 10 minutes and offers a trial.
You sell in several countries and need AI search researched in each market. Onely says it's built for enterprises in exactly that position. Nothing in Heddle's own pages claims that capability.
Links and press are your main gap. Firms like uSERP and SayNine sell link acquisition as their core product. Heddle's authority agent drafts pitches and listings, and your team still sends every one.
You want outreach sent for you. OutreachBloom runs cold email end to end. Heddle never sends anything in your name.
You need a reference client with measured results before you sign. Heddle has none to show yet. Thrive publishes case studies, and Onely recommends asking for proof from a business like yours.
You're a consumer brand that needs marketplaces and paid social alongside search. SeoProfy describes Darkroom as working across Shopify, Amazon and TikTok Shop. Heddle's paid work is limited to planning Google Ads campaigns for you to approve.
If nobody at your company can approve the work, or there isn't yet anything buyers search for, hold off on all of these, Heddle included.