How to Choose the Right AI SEO Agency for Better Visibility in AI Search Engines

Search is changing. If a CMO goes to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews and asks the “best partner for enterprise SEO”, page one ranking is not the destination. The question becomes can an AI search engine detect the information provided, believe the information is trustworthy and use it in their response. Selecting an AI SEO agency has become a choice regarding visibility within the answer itself. It is also more important for a big company because one response from AI will already have determined the short list before your team is even approached, which means that selecting the partner becomes not only the SEO but the visibility question as well.

What an AI SEO Agency does

An AI SEO agency takes SEO to a deeper level in two adjacent layers: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), where the aim is to ensure content is citable by the AI assistants, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), where the representation of the brand within the models of the engines is shaped. Good AI SEO services consist of three main elements: solid technical and entity structure, structured content, and authority signals. In theory, the technical layer helps to make your site machine-readable, the structural layer provides an engine with the copy that it can easily take out, and the authority layer provides the reason for the model to pick you over your competitor. Fail in one of them, and the two others are unlikely to do the job on their own.

Questions to ask before signing

Put all shortlisted agencies to the same test and compare the scores.

Interactive checklist – rate each one from 0 to 20

1. Are they able to provide evidence of where your content appears (or isn’t appearing) in the ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?
2. Do they do schema and entity marketing in addition to keyword marketing?
3. Do they assess results based on leads and pipeline rather than solely on rankings and views?
4. Do they use a methodology with a name that is visible and reviewable and not a black box system?
5. Will they share ownership of KPIs and provide a single source of truth reporting?
6. Do they list the sources of their claims?

A rating between 10 and 12 implies a mature partner. Less than 6 means that you’re paying for activity, not results.

How to measure success (and spot the red flags)

Ensure the agency establishes its criteria for success before finalizing the contract. Good agencies keep track of citations in AI engines, branded search, AI Overview, and leads/pipeline generated therefrom, and not just impressions. Consider these three aspects red flags: promised positions, reports that stay in the rankings dashboard only, and unwillingness to specify the data used to back up their statements.

The TechShu Way

TechShu views AEO and GEO as part of one cohesive layer that is above the foundational SEO, which is provided via DMFlow – our 61 step method which we have developed and perfected through over 1000 cases in 70+ industries. Our decisions are informed by our AI decision systems, thus many more factors can be considered than during any manual audit. We were one of the first movers in answer-engine optimisations, and we prefer to show you our method rather than promise you a rank which no agency can guarantee. We are jointly responsible for your KPIs and provide you with a single source of truth on them. And if we don’t think that we can add real value, we will tell you so – honesty is the key here.