How to Choose an SEO Company (2026): Glossary for Ecommerce

TL;DR

Choosing an SEO company is one of the most consequential vendor decisions an ecommerce brand makes. The right partner compounds revenue; the wrong one burns budget for months before you realize the mistake. This guide defines every term you’ll encounter during the evaluation process, from core SEO concepts through AI search terminology and contract language, with practical notes on what each means for your brand. Use it as a reference when comparing proposals, interviewing agencies, and negotiating contracts.

Why Choosing an SEO Company Is Harder Than It Looks

Roughly 68% of online experiences start with a search engine, and that statistic hasn’t budged much even as AI-generated answers reshape how people find products. For ecommerce brands, organic search is the one channel where the economics improve over time: you invest upfront, and compounding visibility drives down your effective cost per acquisition month after month. But only if you hire the right agency.

The problem is that evaluating SEO companies requires you to understand vocabulary you’ve probably never encountered outside a pitch deck. Proposals are full of acronyms, metric names, and strategy jargon that make it nearly impossible to compare apples to apples. Practitioners on Reddit consistently point out that most buyers compare agencies on retainer price alone, ignoring scope, team seniority, measurement clarity, and whether the agency even specializes in ecommerce.

This glossary fixes that. Each term below includes a plain-language definition and, more importantly, an explanation of why it matters when you’re evaluating agencies. Whether you sell on Amazon, through your own Shopify store, or both, these are the words you need to know before signing anything.

Before reading further, you might want to request a free brand audit to see how your current SEO performance stacks up. It makes the concepts below much more concrete when you can map them to your own data.

Core SEO Concepts You’ll Hear in Every Pitch

These are the foundational terms that every agency will use. Knowing them prevents you from nodding along to something you don’t actually understand.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The practice of improving your website’s visibility in organic (unpaid) search results. For ecommerce brands, SEO means more product page visits, more collection page traffic, and ultimately more orders without paying per click.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: If an agency can’t articulate how SEO specifically drives revenue for product-based businesses, they’re likely applying a generalist playbook.

On-Page SEO

Everything that happens on your actual web pages: title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, product descriptions, image alt text, and internal linking. It’s the content and HTML elements that tell search engines what a page is about.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Ask to see examples of how they’ve optimized product pages specifically. Optimizing a blog post is very different from optimizing a product detail page with variants, reviews, and pricing.

Off-Page SEO

Signals that come from outside your website, primarily backlinks (other sites linking to yours), digital PR, brand mentions, and citations. Think of it as your site’s reputation across the web.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Agencies that rely on purchasing links from low-quality sites (more on “link farms” below) can get your site penalized. Ask about their link acquisition process and whether their methods align with Google’s official guidance on hiring SEO providers.

Technical SEO

The backend work that ensures search engines can efficiently crawl, render, and index your site. This includes site speed, mobile usability, Core Web Vitals, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, and structured data.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Ecommerce sites average 4.3x more indexable pages than service businesses, according to a Semrush study cited by WebMedic. That volume makes technical SEO exponentially more important. An agency that treats technical SEO as a one-time audit rather than an ongoing discipline isn’t equipped for catalog-scale sites.

Local SEO

Optimization for geographically-specific searches, including Google Business Profile management and local citations. Relevant if you have physical retail locations, but not the primary growth driver for most online-only brands.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: If a prospective agency’s portfolio is full of local SEO work (dentists, law firms, restaurants), their expertise probably doesn’t transfer well to ecommerce. The strategies are fundamentally different.

Ecommerce SEO

A specialized discipline distinct from general SEO. It covers product schema markup, catalog management at scale, commercial keyword mapping, faceted navigation handling, collection page taxonomy, and inventory-driven indexing decisions.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: This is the single most important distinction when learning how to choose an SEO company for your online store. A general SEO agency optimizes for rankings and traffic. An ecommerce SEO agency optimizes for revenue, which requires understanding platform-specific architecture (Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon) and how organic traffic converts into transactions.

If the agency’s case studies include B2B software companies and professional service firms but no product-based businesses, they don’t specialize in ecommerce. Full stop.

Content Strategy

The planning framework behind what content gets created, in what format, targeting which search intents, and in what order. A good content strategy for ecommerce covers blog content, collection page copy, product descriptions, and buying guides organized into topic clusters.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Ask whether they plan content around purchase intent rather than just search volume. A keyword with 500 monthly searches and clear buying intent is worth more than one with 10,000 searches and purely informational intent.

Keyword Research

The process of identifying what terms your potential customers actually type into search engines. Good keyword research segments terms by intent (informational, commercial, transactional, navigational), difficulty, and estimated value.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Watch for agencies that present a keyword list sorted only by search volume. Volume without intent classification is a vanity metric that leads to traffic that doesn’t convert. For deeper context on building an effective search strategy, paid and organic keyword research should work together.

Ecommerce-Specific Terms (The Differentiators)

These terms separate ecommerce SEO specialists from generalists. If an agency’s proposal doesn’t address most of them, they probably aren’t the right fit for a product-based business.

Product Schema / Structured Data

Code added to product pages that tells search engines exactly what the page contains: product name, price, availability, ratings, review count. When implemented correctly, this generates rich results in search (star ratings, price ranges, stock status), which dramatically improves click-through rates.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Ask the agency whether they implement product schema manually or through a Shopify app, and whether they validate it regularly. Broken schema means no rich results. Product pages with proper schema and 5+ reviews generate 270% more revenue than those without, according to Baymard Institute’s 2025 research.

Faceted Navigation

The filtering system on collection pages (size, color, price range, brand). Each filter combination can create a unique URL, and if left unmanaged, those URLs multiply into thousands of thin, duplicate pages that waste crawl budget.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: This is a classic technical SEO challenge specific to ecommerce. If the agency hasn’t dealt with faceted navigation before, they’ll either ignore the problem or make it worse.

Crawl Budget

The finite number of pages Google will crawl on your site within a given time period. Large ecommerce catalogs compete internally for crawl attention, so wasting crawl budget on filter pages, out-of-stock products, or pagination URLs means important product pages get indexed more slowly.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: An agency should be able to explain how they manage crawl budget on catalog sites. If they’ve never heard the term, that’s a significant red flag.

Category (Collection) Page Optimization

For most ecommerce sites, collection pages are the biggest organic revenue drivers, not individual product pages. Optimizing them involves keyword targeting, unique descriptive content, internal linking, and proper hierarchy.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Many generalist agencies focus exclusively on blog content for SEO. An ecommerce SEO agency will prioritize collection pages because that’s where the commercial intent lives.

Inventory-Driven Indexing

The strategy for handling pages when products go out of stock. Should a sold-out page stay indexed? Redirect to a parent category? Display a “back in stock” signup? The answer depends on whether the product is temporarily unavailable or permanently discontinued.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: An agency that doesn’t address this will let sold-out product pages accumulate 404 errors or soft-404 signals, which erode your site’s overall search performance.

TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale)

A profitability metric that measures your total ad spend (across all channels) as a percentage of total revenue, including organic revenue. Unlike ACOS, which only looks at advertising-attributed sales, TACOS captures the full picture of how paid and organic work together.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: A profit-first agency tracks TACOS because it reveals whether paid advertising is building organic momentum or just substituting for it. If your TACOS is declining while total revenue grows, that’s a sign your organic presence is strengthening. Learn more about how TACOS works and see the TACOS formula and benchmarks for practical calculations.

ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale)

An Amazon-specific metric: ad spend divided by ad-attributed revenue. Lower ACOS means more efficient ad spend, but optimizing for ACOS alone can lead to under-investing in growth.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Agencies that obsess over ACOS reduction sometimes do so by cutting broad-match campaigns that drive discovery. Ask how they balance ACOS targets against growth objectives.

BSR (Best Sellers Rank)

Amazon’s ranking system that shows how well a product sells relative to others in its category. BSR updates hourly and reflects recent sales velocity.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: For Amazon-focused brands, BSR is a key health indicator. An agency managing your Amazon presence should monitor BSR trends and understand the relationship between advertising, organic rank, and sales velocity.

Buy Box

The “Add to Cart” button on an Amazon product detail page. When multiple sellers offer the same product, Amazon rotates Buy Box ownership based on price, fulfillment method, seller metrics, and inventory availability. If you don’t have the Buy Box, you’re essentially invisible. For more on what causes Buy Box rotation, the factors are worth understanding in detail.

A+ Content / Enhanced Brand Content

Amazon’s rich content feature that lets brand-registered sellers add comparison charts, lifestyle images, and detailed product narratives below the fold on product detail pages. It improves conversion rates and, in premium format, can include video and interactive modules.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: If an agency handles your Amazon presence but doesn’t create or optimize A+ Content, they’re leaving conversion rate improvements on the table. See our A+ Content guide for module types and eligibility requirements.

AI Search Terms (The 2026 Factor)

Search behavior has changed significantly. Approximately one in four searches now ends without a click because users get answers directly from AI-generated responses. Any agency you hire in 2026 needs to address this reality, and if they don’t mention these terms, they’re behind.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

The practice of optimizing content so it gets cited or referenced in AI-generated search results (Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity). This involves structured content, authoritative sourcing, clear entity definitions, and concise answer formatting.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Google’s own June 2026 guidance on third-party SEO advice specifically calls out GEO, noting that some advice “may misinterpret or make claims about what Google says.” Ask prospective agencies how their GEO approach aligns with Google’s official documentation.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Closely related to GEO but broader. AEO focuses on getting your brand cited across all answer engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants. The tactics overlap with GEO but extend to platforms outside Google’s ecosystem.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: One of the most revealing vetting questions you can ask is: “Can you show me a real client report that includes both Google rankings and AI citation share?” If the agency only measures traditional rankings, their reporting is incomplete for 2026.

AI Overviews

Google’s AI-generated summary blocks that appear at the top of many search results. They synthesize information from multiple sources and often answer the query without requiring a click to any website.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Your agency needs a strategy for earning mentions within AI Overviews, not just ranking below them. This requires different content structures than traditional SEO.

Zero-Click Search

A search where the user gets their answer directly from the search results page (featured snippets, AI Overviews, knowledge panels) and never clicks through to a website. For ecommerce, this means product specifications, pricing, and availability information may be consumed without a site visit.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: Agencies that only report click-through traffic are missing a growing portion of your brand’s search visibility. Ask how they measure and optimize for zero-click exposure.

Citation Tracking

The process of monitoring when and where AI systems mention your brand, products, or content in their generated responses. This is a new metric category that most traditional SEO dashboards don’t capture yet.

Why it matters when evaluating agencies: If the agency can demonstrate citation tracking capabilities, it signals they’ve invested in modern tooling and methodology. If they’ve never heard the term, they’re not ready for the current search environment.

Pricing and Engagement Terms

Understanding pricing models is critical to learning how to choose an SEO company without overpaying or, worse, underpaying and getting subpar work. Here’s what each model means and what to watch for.

Monthly Retainer

A fixed monthly fee for ongoing SEO services. This is the dominant engagement model, with 78.2% of SEO providers offering it, according to Ahrefs’ survey of 439 providers. The average agency retainer sits around $3,209 per month globally, though US-based ecommerce agencies typically charge more.

2026 benchmarks: Small businesses generally pay $2,500 to $5,000 per month for comprehensive SEO. Mid-market companies invest $5,000 to $10,000, and enterprise organizations spend $10,000 to $50,000 or more.

What to watch for: Make sure the retainer specifies deliverables, not just hours. “20 hours of SEO work” tells you nothing about what actually gets done.

Project-Based Pricing

A one-time fee for a defined scope of work: a technical audit, site migration, content overhaul, or competitive analysis. The most common project band is $2,501 to $5,000 according to the same Ahrefs survey.

What to watch for: Ensure the project scope includes a final deliverable you can act on, not just a report that recommends hiring them for more work.

Performance-Based Pricing

The agency gets paid based on results, typically rankings achieved, traffic milestones, or revenue generated. This sounds appealing but carries real risks.

What to watch for: Performance-based models incentivize agencies to chase the easiest wins rather than the most valuable ones. They may target low-competition keywords that rank quickly but don’t drive revenue, or use aggressive tactics that risk penalties.

Hybrid Pricing

A base retainer combined with performance bonuses tied to milestones. This is often the best structure for ecommerce brands because it gives the agency stable compensation while aligning incentives with outcomes.

What to watch for: Define the bonus triggers precisely. “Increased organic revenue” is vague. “15% increase in organic revenue for collection pages within 6 months, measured in GA4” is specific and verifiable.

Hourly Consulting

Paying $75 to $300 per hour (North American range) for advisory time. Best suited for brands that have an in-house team and need strategic guidance rather than execution.

RFP (Request for Proposal)

A structured document you send to prospective agencies outlining your goals, budget range, timeline, and evaluation criteria. Using an RFP forces agencies to respond to your priorities rather than pitching their standard packages.

Why it matters: Practitioners on LinkedIn frequently recommend RFPs as a way to filter agencies quickly. If an agency can’t respond to a structured RFP thoughtfully, they probably won’t be structured in their delivery either.

SOW (Statement of Work)

The specific deliverables document attached to a contract. It should detail exactly what the agency will do each month: how many pages optimized, what reports delivered, which tools used, and what meetings held.

Why it matters: The SOW is where vague promises become concrete commitments. Never sign a contract without one.

MSA (Master Services Agreement)

The legal wrapper around your engagement. It covers liability, intellectual property ownership, confidentiality, payment terms, and termination conditions. The SOW lives underneath the MSA.

Worth noting: AI-powered tools have reduced routine SEO costs by 20 to 30% for tasks like content briefs, technical audits, and reporting. If an agency hasn’t passed any of those efficiency gains along, their pricing may be outdated. It’s worth asking how they use AI tools internally.

Contract and Reporting Terms

This is where agencies make their money on inattentive buyers. Understanding these terms protects you legally and financially.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

The specific metrics you and the agency agree to track as measures of success. Good ecommerce SEO KPIs include organic revenue, organic conversion rate, keyword visibility for commercial terms, and indexed page health. Bad KPIs include raw impressions and total keyword count.

If you don’t define KPIs early, it’s easy to fall for vanity metrics that look great in a slide deck but don’t contribute to actual sales.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Total revenue divided by total ad spend. While technically a paid media metric, ROAS becomes relevant in SEO conversations when agencies propose hybrid paid-organic strategies. It’s important to understand why ROAS can look good while profit is negative, a common trap for ecommerce brands.

LTV (Lifetime Value)

The total revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with your brand. SEO agencies that think in terms of LTV (rather than just first-purchase revenue) will build strategies that attract repeat buyers, not just one-time bargain hunters.

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

The total cost to acquire one new customer, including agency fees, ad spend, and content production. A good agency should be able to show how their work reduces CAC over time as organic traffic compounds.

GA4 (Google Analytics 4)

The current standard for website analytics. GA4 tracks user behavior across sessions and devices using an event-based model rather than the old pageview model. It’s where you’ll verify most of what your agency reports.

Critical test when choosing an SEO company: The agency should confirm in writing that you will have Admin access to GA4 from day one. If they want to set up accounts under their control or are vague about permissions, walk away. For setup specifics, see our GA4 and ecommerce tracking guide.

Google Search Console

A free tool from Google that shows how your site appears in search results: which queries trigger impressions, what your click-through rates are, which pages are indexed, and where technical errors exist. It’s your direct line to how Google sees your site.

Critical test: You must have Owner-level access to Google Search Console. No exceptions. Any agency that pushes back on this is planning to hold your data hostage.

Data Ownership

Who keeps the reports, content, strategy documents, and analytics data if the relationship ends. This should be explicitly addressed in the MSA.

Non-negotiable: You own all content created for your site, all reporting data, and all strategic documentation. Period. Confirm this in writing before signing.

Termination Clause

The conditions under which either party can end the contract. SEO contracts typically span 6 to 12 months because results take 3 to 6 months to materialize. Google itself recommends expecting results in 4 months to 1 year.

Best practice: Negotiate a mutual exit clause with 30-day written notice after an initial lock-in period (typically months 1 through 3). Avoid contracts that let agencies retain access to your accounts or content after termination.

Auto-Renewal

A clause that automatically extends your contract for another term unless you provide written notice by a specific date. These clauses catch many brand owners off guard.

Best practice: Demand opt-in renewal rather than auto-renewal. If the agency insists on auto-renewal, negotiate a shorter renewal period and a wider cancellation window.

Kill Fee

A penalty for terminating the contract early. Some agencies charge the remaining months’ fees in full; others charge a percentage. This is negotiable, and you should negotiate it before signing.

Red-Flag Terms to Watch For

If you hear or see these during the evaluation process, proceed with extreme caution or walk away.

Guaranteed Rankings

Nobody can guarantee specific rankings on Google. Google’s own documentation says so explicitly. Practitioners across forums and industry publications are unanimous on this point: any SEO company that promises page one rankings on a fixed timeline is selling certainty in an environment that doesn’t allow it.

As eMarketer’s analysis puts it: watch out for “guarantees about rankings, guarantees about revenues they can drive, and link building which is generally against Google’s guidelines unless it’s organic PR.”

Link Farms / PBNs (Private Blog Networks)

Networks of low-quality websites created solely to generate backlinks. These are against Google’s guidelines and can result in manual penalties that devastate your organic visibility. If an agency mentions “link building” without specifying their method, ask directly whether they use PBNs.

Keyword Stuffing

Cramming target keywords unnaturally into page content, titles, or meta tags. This was outdated a decade ago. If an agency’s content samples read like a keyword was shoehorned into every sentence, their methods are antiquated.

Cloaking

Serving different content to search engine crawlers than what real users see. This is a direct violation of Google’s guidelines and grounds for immediate site-wide penalties.

Vanity Metrics

Metrics that look impressive in a report but don’t connect to business outcomes. Impressions, total keyword count, and raw traffic without conversion context are the most common offenders. If the agency’s sample reports lead with impressions, they’re measuring activity rather than results.

Green-Flag Signals (What Good Looks Like)

These are the positive indicators that an agency knows what they’re doing and operates with your interests in mind.

Free Audit / Discovery Call

A substantive pre-engagement analysis, not a five-minute sales pitch disguised as an “audit.” A real audit involves hours of research and produces specific, actionable findings. EZCommerce’s free brand audit, for example, delivers a scorecard with quick wins and a 90-day action plan within 5 to 7 business days. That level of pre-sale investment signals confidence in the agency’s ability to deliver.

Case Studies With Baselines

Specific metrics (revenue, traffic, conversion rate), clear date ranges, identified industries, and documented starting points. Vague claims like “we increased traffic by 300%” mean nothing without knowing the baseline, timeline, and whether that traffic converted.

Look for real ecommerce case studies that show before-and-after data with context.

Transparent Reporting

You own the dashboards. You can log in anytime. Reports include both wins and setbacks. The agency explains what didn’t work as openly as what did.

Named Account Team

You know exactly who works on your business: their names, experience levels, and how many other accounts they manage. If the agency can’t tell you who will touch your account, the work is likely handled by junior staff or outsourced contractors.

90-Day Roadmap

A structured plan for the first quarter that includes specific milestones, deliverables, and decision points. The most revealing question you can ask a prospective agency is: “Walk me through how you would prioritize the first 90 days for our business.” A CRO-focused agency might also present a testing roadmap that overlaps with SEO improvements.

Governance Cadence

A defined rhythm for communication: weekly reports, biweekly strategy calls, monthly performance reviews. Agencies that propose “check-ins as needed” tend to disappear for weeks at a time.

Five Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Knowing the vocabulary is half the battle. Here are five questions that separate serious agencies from pretenders when you’re figuring out how to choose an SEO company:

1. “Walk me through how you would prioritize the first 90 days for our business.” This forces them to think about your specific situation rather than recite a generic process.

2. “Can you show me a real client report that includes both Google rankings and AI citation share?” This tests whether they’ve adapted to the 2026 search reality.

3. “How do you measure success beyond keyword rankings and traffic?” The answer should involve revenue, conversion rate, and profitability metrics. If it doesn’t, they’re measuring activity, not outcomes.

4. “Which AI surfaces do you optimize for, and how is that different from classic SEO?” This reveals whether GEO and AEO are part of their actual workflow or just buzzwords on their website.

5. “Who specifically will work on our account, and how many other accounts do they handle?” Account manager overload is the number one reason agency performance degrades after month three.

For a more complete checklist, see our questions to ask before hiring an ecommerce SEO agency.

When You’re Ready to Hire: Timing Signals

Not every brand needs an agency right now. But certain signals indicate the time has come:

Your organic leads have plateaued for 3 or more months. If you’ve been executing SEO in-house and traffic has flatlined, you’ve likely exhausted the low-hanging fruit. An agency brings fresh perspective and specialized tools.

You’re planning a site migration or redesign. Migrations are the highest-risk SEO event for any ecommerce site. Doing one without expert oversight is how brands lose 40 to 60% of their organic traffic overnight.

You lack in-house SEO capacity. If nobody on your team has the time or expertise to manage technical SEO, content strategy, and measurement, the work simply won’t get done.

Traffic exists but conversions don’t. This usually means one of three things: the wrong keywords are ranking, product pages aren’t converting, or the agency (or in-house team) is measuring the wrong metrics. A fresh audit can diagnose which.

How This Applies to Your Brand

SEO doesn’t exist in isolation. For ecommerce brands selling on Amazon, through their own D2C store, or both, the agency you choose should understand your full growth stack. That means connecting organic search strategy to PPC campaigns, listing optimization, conversion rate optimization, and inventory planning.

The most common mistake when choosing an SEO company is treating the hire as a standalone decision. Your SEO partner should coordinate with your paid media, your marketplace operations, and your analytics infrastructure. Brands that unify these functions under one strategy, rather than managing them in silos, consistently outperform those that don’t.

If you’re evaluating agencies and want a benchmark for your current performance, start with a free brand audit. It takes 30 to 45 minutes, produces a scorecard with quick wins, and gives you a 90-day action plan you can use whether you hire us or not.

For brands focused on D2C growth, the evaluation criteria above apply with special emphasis on GA4 implementation, CRO capabilities, and cross-channel attribution. The right agency won’t just rank your pages. They’ll make those rankings profitable.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to hire an SEO company in 2026?

The average agency retainer is roughly $3,209 per month based on Ahrefs’ survey of 439 providers. Small businesses typically pay $2,500 to $5,000 monthly, mid-market companies pay $5,000 to $10,000, and enterprise brands pay $10,000 to $50,000 or more. AI tools have reduced routine SEO costs by 20 to 30%, so ask agencies how they’ve adjusted pricing to reflect those efficiencies.

How long does it take to see results from an SEO agency?

Results typically take 3 to 6 months to materialize, and Google’s own guidance suggests expecting meaningful impact within 4 months to 1 year. Be skeptical of any agency promising faster timelines, especially for competitive ecommerce categories.

What’s the difference between ecommerce SEO and regular SEO?

Ecommerce SEO deals with product catalog management, structured data for rich results, faceted navigation, inventory-driven indexing, collection page optimization, and commercial keyword mapping. General SEO agencies built for content sites or lead generation businesses will adapt their processes to product catalogs, but that adaptation usually produces slower results and more technical errors.

Should I choose a specialized ecommerce SEO agency or a general one?

Specialized. If the agency’s case studies feature law firms, dental practices, and B2B software companies, their strategies won’t transfer effectively to a product-based business. Look for agencies with demonstrated experience on your specific platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon).

What is the biggest red flag when choosing an SEO company?

Guaranteed rankings. No legitimate agency can guarantee specific positions in search results because Google’s algorithms are complex, constantly changing, and influenced by competitor activity. Ranking guarantees signal either dishonesty or incompetence, neither of which you want in a long-term partner.

Do I need an agency that understands AI search and GEO?

Yes. With approximately 1 in 4 searches now ending without a click due to AI-generated answers, an agency that only optimizes for traditional blue-link rankings is ignoring a growing share of your potential visibility. Ask specifically about GEO, AEO, and citation tracking capabilities.

How do I compare SEO proposals fairly?

Focus on five dimensions beyond price: scope of deliverables (what exactly gets done each month), team seniority (who works on your account), measurement framework (which KPIs and tools), AI search capability (GEO, AEO, citation tracking), and contract flexibility (termination terms, data ownership). An RFP that standardizes these dimensions across agencies makes comparison much easier.

Can one agency handle both Amazon SEO and D2C SEO?

Yes, and there are significant advantages to unifying both under one partner. Coordinated keyword strategies, shared inventory planning, and unified reporting across channels reduce waste and reveal opportunities that siloed agencies miss. The key is ensuring the agency has genuine expertise in both ecosystems, not just a claim on their website.