"AI SEO agency" means two different things in the UK market, and they are different purchases. The first is an agency that uses AI tools to do traditional SEO faster. The second is an agency that optimises your business for AI engines, so that ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity name you when customers ask. We are the second kind. This page exists because proposals rarely say which kind they are, and the difference decides what you get for the money.
Kind one: SEO produced with AI
AI-assisted keyword research, AI-drafted content at volume, automated briefs. This is traditional SEO with a faster engine room, still measured in rankings and organic clicks. It can be good work. It also carries a specific risk worth asking about: AI engines and Google both deduplicate similar content, so volume aimed at questions a bigger rival already owns can simply consolidate to the rival, and Google's spam policies now name mass-produced low-value content directly, as scaled content abuse. If the proposal is priced in articles per month, this is the kind you are buying.
Kind two: SEO for AI engines
This kind starts from a different question: when your customers ask an AI engine who to use, does it say you? That is measurable. We run real customer questions repeatedly across engines and score every answer: recommended, mentioned or absent. Then the work is diagnosis and fixes, and the proof is a re-measure against untouched control queries, necessary because AI answers change between identical runs 19% of the time. The deliverable is movement in measured answers, not a content calendar.
You do not need to fire your SEO agency
The two kinds are complements, not rivals. Keep the incumbent; the division of labour is real and we have written out how we work alongside SEO professionals without treading on their patch.
Searched for a different name?
This discipline is young enough that the market has not settled on one name for it. The same work is sold as: AEO agency · GEO agency · LLM SEO · AI visibility agency · AI search optimisation agency. Every one of these labels contains the same two-kinds ambiguity this page just untangled, so ask the what-do-you-report question whatever the name on the proposal.
Common questions
Is AI SEO the same as normal SEO?
Depends which AI SEO you were sold. SEO done with AI tools is normal SEO produced faster; it is still measured in rankings and clicks. SEO for AI engines is a different discipline, measured in whether ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity actually name your business when customers ask. An agency can be good at either; the deliverables are not interchangeable.
Can my current SEO agency do this?
Often partly, and you should not fire them to find out. The substrate overlaps: crawlability, structure and credible sources help both. What most SEO agencies lack is the measurement layer, repeatedly running real customer questions across engines and scoring who gets named. We work alongside incumbent SEO agencies rather than replacing them.
How do I tell which kind of AI SEO an agency is selling?
Ask one question: what number do you report each month? If the answer is rankings, traffic or content volume, it is SEO with AI in the name. If the answer is measured AI answers, who each engine recommends, how often, and against which competitors, it is the AI-engine kind. Proposals that never mention measuring actual AI answers are the tell.
Not sure which kind you need? The data decides: the free ten-question audit shows who the AI engines name when your customers ask, which tells you whether your gap is rankings or answers. No charge, and if the answers already favour you, we say so. Pricing is public: pilot from £500, monthly from £700.
Updated July 2026