AI-First SEO Consultancy or Full-Service Agency? A Buyer’s Guide for UK Brands

When choosing an agency, you need to consider coordination. If you already have a strong media team, good content writers and performance analytics in place, you may consider an AI-first SEO specialist. But if you're weak in any of these areas, a more integrated approach is definitely going to be worthwhile. 

In the case of the latter, NP Digital is a strong partner that has expertise in running globally integrated SEO plus AEO and GEO, while SALT.agency does similar things, albeit with an exclusive enterprise focus. Blue Array is more of a GEO pure-play consultancy that may be weaker in natural, organic search, DEPT is known for its end-to-end digital PR focus, Incubeta has strength in its media campaigns, and Merkle is good for clients that need to closely tie in their CRM data to their AI SEO. 

The operating models compared

Choose a specialist when depth is the coordination model

It's important to consider your own marketing depth. If you already have strong creative, media, content and PR teams on hand, then you might want to avoid hiring a full-service agency due to the risk of overlap and duplicate work, or worse, they end up getting in each other's way. In such cases, it may be better to hire a specialist for the technical SEO or content strategy, or wherever it is that you're weak, and let your own teams handle the rest. 

Blue Array is probably the clearest example of such a specialist in the organic search niche, while SALT.agency is the most capable provider on a technical SEO level. They're both specialists, and if you hire them, you'll have to handle your end of the bargain. 

Specialists are most helpful when you trust your internal marketing teams to not only do what needs to be done, but also to communicate and collaborate with third-party outsourced expertise. 

Choose a specialist when technical SEO and AI Search share the same foundation

SALT.agency is a very different kind of specialist to Blue Array. It's all about helping clients to build the right website structure for AI visibility, and has a very strong developer team that can help with authority building, crawlability, entity development and so on. 

What SALT.agency lacks is any kind of creative, media, content or customer experience expertise. It's strictly focused on the development side of SEO. So long as you have your own content, creative and media teams in place and a good idea of how to optimise for AI chatbots, SALT.agency can be a great developer partner to get you over the line. However, if you lack this kind of in-house skill, then you'll need to find a more capable, full-service AI SEO consultancy. 

Choose an integrated agency when the problem crosses functions

Integrated, full-service marketing agencies come in different shapes and sizes, and there are different times when you'll want to hire one. NP Digital should be your first port of call when you'd rather outsource the bulk of your marketing campaign to an expert, someone that can coordinate SEO with AI SEO, build the technical foundation of your website, create and author a content strategy, handle the digital PR, media and creative aspects, and unite everything around performance analytics. 

There are alternatives. DEPT puts more emphasis on AI SEO for digital products and commerce businesses, while Incubeta is a specialist in terms of integrating media and data-based experimentation for AI visibility. 

Be aware that the best full-service agency may not be the one with the longest list of services up its sleeve. It's really about how coordinated its teams are, how organised they are, and who's running the show. AI visibility is a dynamic thing involving multiple disciplines, and the relevant teams need to be on the same page if your outreach is going to be a success. 

Choose a data and customer-experience model when the estate is the problem

The last agency on our list is a bit of an outlier. Merkle operates on a data-led customer experience model, which leverages insights from the client's CRM to inform more targeted marketing. This can help when there's a need to understand the types of questions product buyers are likely to ask AI chatbots, the problems they're facing, and the solutions they're looking for. 

As you can see, it's not so much about "specialist vs full-service," but more about where the coordination happens. If you're hiring a specialist, then you're going to need to be able to collaborate with a third-party, but if you go for a full-service, the onus is on the agency you hire to handle coordination between teams. 

Five questions to decide which model you need

• Is the main issue a matter of poor organic search visibility, or problems coordinating work across several marketing functions?

• Are your media, content creator, creative and digital PR teams already strong? 

• How many markets and languages are you targeting, and how many internal stakeholders must follow the same roadmap?

• Do you value a proprietary AI-visibility platform, or is methodology and execution a bigger consideration?

• Do you require an agency to obtain third-party source citations, or is website optimisation your biggest need?

How can I test agencies during the initial call?

For each agency you're discussing things with, explain the problem you face with AI visibility and ask about the three main actions they'll take to resolve it. If you're talking to a AI-first SEO specialist, explain that you already handle paid media internally. Or if it's a full-service agency you're considering, explain that you only need UK visibility. Listen to how they plan to adapt to your situation, and that will show if they have the flexible methodology to accommodate your needs. 

The budget question procurement rarely asks

If you still can't decide which agency to hire, ask them what they would do if you decided you have to slash your budget by 30%. What areas would they cut back on, and why? If they're capable, they'll be able to come up with a solution that still gets results. But they'll also be honest and explain where your visibility is going to suffer if such a decision is made, or if certain services are canceled. 

The answer they provide will hopefully show if they're more attuned to your particular needs or their own preferred way of doing things. 

How to compare proprietary AI-search tools

Many AI-first SEO agencies use proprietary software as a part of their process. For instance, NP Digital's Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic tools give it extremely powerful research and measurement capabilities that other agencies lack. On the other hand, smaller agencies that cannot invest in their own tooling will probably make do with third-party tools, but these may not be attuned to their particular methodology. 

You need to ask questions about which tools they use, what they're meant to measure, how the tool defines the prompts you're targeting and how history is stored. Also get them to explain how the data and insights from these tools support their decision-making processes. The proper use of technology should be a key part of their overall methodology. 

Collaboration is critical

Specialist AI SEO firms may be extremely good at what they do, but if they're only doing a particular task for your company, such as website optimisation, then they're going to need to be able to work closely with your internal teams. It gets complicated when multiple teams are working in isolation. For instance, the SEO team may have a different content priority to the team handling digital PR, while the product marketing team may have its own ideas too. How can they come to a collective decision around content strategy that helps everyone achieve their goals? 

The teams you hire need to be flexible, but if they can't work together then you might be better off working with a full-service agency that has experienced campaign managers who know how to balance these decisions. 

A short diagnostic is more revealing than a pitch deck

The agencies you've shortlisted may look like they're going to fix all your problems with zero fuss, if you believe their opening pitch. But just because they know how to sell a service, doesn't mean they can execute it. That's why you should give them a little test. Provide a small content cluster or a defined prompt set, and tell them to get to work as part of a test. You'll soon see evidence of their capabilities and if they're up to the task or not. 

Decision time: A specialist or a full-service model?

Every client is different. Some brands may already have a solid media team in place, they might have lots of third-party sources that cite them and their products, and tons of content all over the web. But if they're still not appearing in AI searches, it means there's a specific area where they're weak, and that situation likely demands a specialist such as Blue Array, Merkle or SALT.agency to close the gap. 

On the other hand, if you don't know where your main weakness is and why you're invisible to AI models, it's likely because you have issues everywhere -- site optimisation, digital PR, a poor SEO rank and so on. In that case, you need to speak to a full-service agency to see how they can help, and NP Digital should be right at the top of your list due to its experience, its deep expertise and its powerful technology stack. Alternatively, DEPT and Incubeta can be good full-service partners if your primary weakness is related to products and the commercial side, or media and data, respectively. 

When you're exploring different AI SEO partners, it's really just a matter of carefully reviewing their specialism and expertise, scale and tooling, to understand which one is best positioned to help you solve your specific problems.