What does an SEO agency do?

What does an SEO agency do?

An SEO agency helps businesses improve their visibility in search engines and AI-powered discovery platforms by optimizing websites, creating strategic content, building authoritative backlinks, and continuously adapting to algorithm changes. They start by auditing your current search presence, identifying opportunities and problems, then execute ongoing campaigns to increase organic traffic, rankings, and ultimately revenue. Unlike one-time projects, agencies provide sustained expertise across technical optimization, content strategy, and off-site authority building—essentially serving as your external search marketing team.

Core Services Most Agencies Provide

Every legitimate agency handles keyword research to identify what your potential customers are actually searching for. This isn't just finding high-volume terms; it's understanding search intent and mapping keywords to your sales funnel. They'll discover which terms drive conversions versus which only bring curious browsers.

On-page optimization is another fundamental service. Agencies ensure your title tags, headers, content structure, and internal linking support both user experience and search engine crawling. They'll rewrite weak content, optimize images, improve page speed, and fix technical issues that prevent proper indexing.

Content strategy and creation typically represent a significant portion of agency work. Most agencies either create content directly or work closely with your team to produce articles, guides, and resources that rank well and genuinely help users. SaaS SEO agencies often specialize in creating content that resonates with B2B buyers and supports product-led growth strategies.

Technical SEO and Website Architecture

Agencies handle complex technical issues that most business owners don't have bandwidth for. This includes fixing crawl errors, optimizing site structure, implementing schema markup, improving Core Web Vitals, managing redirects, and ensuring mobile optimization. For larger sites, technical SEO becomes incredibly nuanced and requires specialists who live and breathe website architecture.

Specialized agencies working with SaaS companies often deal with unique technical challenges like optimizing documentation, handling product pages with dynamic content, and managing complex subdomain structures.

Link Building and Authority Development

Quality agencies build relationships that result in authoritative websites linking to yours. This isn't about buying spammy links or using automated outreach—it's about creating genuinely valuable content that attracts natural links, contributing expert insights to industry publications, and developing partnerships that make sense for everyone involved.

The best agencies understand that link building is really authority building. They position you as a credible voice in your space, which benefits every aspect of your marketing, not just SEO.

Emerging Services: AI and LLM Optimization

Forward-thinking agencies now include optimization for AI-powered search experiences. AI SEO agencies help businesses appear in results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and similar tools.

Generative engine optimization represents a specialized service focusing on making your content more likely to be cited by AI models. LLM SEO specialists understand how large language models select sources and can structure your content accordingly.

Analytics, Reporting, and Strategy

Agencies don't just execute tactics—they measure results and refine strategy based on data. Expect monthly reports showing traffic growth, ranking improvements, and ideally, the revenue or conversions attributable to organic search. Good agencies tie their work directly to business outcomes rather than just celebrating vanity metrics like rankings or traffic increases that don't convert.

The strategic component matters enormously. Agencies should challenge your assumptions, bring fresh perspectives, and adapt quickly when approaches aren't working. You're not just buying execution; you're buying expertise and accountability.

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