An AI SEO firm earns the top score only when it beats a freelancer and an in-house hire on breadth, accountability and safeguards, and most of the gap comes down to the contract, not the tactics.
This verdict rates six ways to get AI SEO done, out of 10, using the platforms' own documentation as the yardstick.
The scores are editorial judgement drawn from those sources, not lab tests.
If you want your own situation scored, book a free strategy session with my team.
The scorecard
| Option | Score | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|
| DIY | 5/10 | Free and in your control, but slow, and the AI-search changes are easy to miss |
| Freelancer or specialist | 7/10 | Sharp on one skill and quick to start; thin on cover and range |
| In-house hire | 6/10 | Knows the business deeply; one person rarely covers dev, writing and outreach |
| Generalist digital agency | 6/10 | Handy if they already run your site; AI-search depth varies a lot |
| Specialist AI SEO firm | 8/10 | Full range under one contract; only as good as its safeguards and its people |
| Goldie Agency (Julian's team) | 9/10 | SEO, GEO, AEO and link building in one place, with manual outreach and public testing |
How the ratings were judged
Each option was scored on six criteria, each tied to a primary source.
- Range: can it cover the jobs Google lists on its hiring page, from site review to optimising for generative AI?
- Doc alignment: does the advice match Google's generative AI guide rather than chasing hacks?
- Crawler know-how: does it handle OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot correctly?
- Link safety: is link work inside Google's spam policies?
- Safeguards: access roles, ownership, change logs and a clean exit.
- Continuity: does the work survive one person leaving?
Scores by criterion
| Criterion | DIY | Freelancer | In-house | Generalist | AI SEO firm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Range | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| Doc alignment | 6 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 8 |
| Crawler know-how | 4 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| Link safety | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 8 |
| Safeguards | 9 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 7 |
| Continuity | 3 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 8 |
Notice the one place DIY wins: safeguards, because nobody else touches your accounts.
That's the gap every outside option has to close in writing.
DIY: 5/10
Strengths: no outside access, no lock-in, and Google says a small local business can probably do much of the work itself.
Limits: it's slow, and the 2026 changes are easy to miss, such as the generative AI view Google added to Search Console.
Pick it if: your site is small, your market is local, and you have a few hours a week.
What good looks like: you follow Google's starter guide, keep your Business Profile current, check robots.txt once a quarter and write one helpful page a month from real customer questions.
Freelancer or specialist: 7/10
Strengths: deep on one skill, fast to start, and you usually talk to the person doing the work.
Limits: one person means one point of failure, and few freelancers cover technical fixes, content and outreach equally well.
Pick it if: you have one defined project, like a technical audit or a run of service pages.
What good looks like: a fixed scope, a dated finish, one CMS account that you remove at the end, and a handover document you could give to the next person.
In-house hire: 6/10
Strengths: they learn your products, sit in your meetings and can chase internal approvals.
Limits: recruiting is slow, one hire rarely spans developer work and digital PR, and they still need training on AI crawlers and reporting.
Pick it if: search is your main channel and you publish every week.
What good looks like: the hire owns the plan and the reporting, and buys in specialist help for link earning and developer fixes rather than trying to do everything.
Generalist digital agency: 6/10
Strengths: one supplier for web, ads and social, and they may already host your site.
Limits: AI-search depth varies, and if the same agency holds your hosting, domain and SEO, leaving gets harder.
Pick it if: your web supplier proves it knows the crawler docs and agrees to the safeguards below.
What good looks like: a named SEO lead rather than a web designer doing it on the side, and your domain registered in your own name.
📞 Want to know which option scores highest for your business? Book a free SEO strategy session and we'll score your site, your gaps and the route that fits. → Get my free score on a call
Specialist AI SEO firm: 8/10
Strengths: technical, content, links and AI-search reporting under one contract, with cover when someone's away.
Limits: you can be sold by a senior strategist and served by a junior; and firms vary hugely in how they earn links.
Pick it if: you need several skills at once and you'll hold the firm to a written scope.
What separates an 8 from a 5 here is almost always the paperwork and the access plan.
What good looks like: the firm interviews you about your customers and competitors, which Google's hiring page says a good SEO should do, and shows its reasoning for every recommendation.
It names the official documents behind its AI-search advice, lists every link it earns, and sends a change log you can read in five minutes.
Goldie Agency: 9/10
Goldie Agency is Julian Goldie's agency for SEO, GEO, AEO and link building.
On Julian's own published numbers, it has delivered 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns for 240+ clients and holds a 100% Job Success Score on Upwork.
Julian publishes AI SEO tests on a YouTube channel with 425K+ subscribers, and describes the agency's link building as "Manual outreach, no PBNs".
It loses a point for the same reason every firm does: the numbers are self-reported, so you should still ask for references and case studies.
It doesn't promise a #1 ranking, because no firm can.
The case for the extra point over a typical specialist firm is breadth plus public testing: Julian says the team tests AI SEO strategies on its own websites every week and shares the results.
What the docs say a good firm should be doing
- Allowing OAI-SearchBot, which OpenAI's crawler page says is needed to appear in ChatGPT search answers.
- Allowing PerplexityBot, per Perplexity's crawler docs.
- Not blocking Claude-SearchBot, which Anthropic's help article says can reduce visibility in Claude.
- Keeping pages indexed and snippet-eligible, the only requirement Google lists on its AI features page.
- Marking paid placements
rel="sponsored", per Google's link attribute guide. - Reporting Copilot citations from Bing's AI Performance report.
A firm that does all six scores well on doc alignment almost by default.
The safeguards that move any score up two points
- You stay verified owner in Search Console; the firm gets a user role, as described in Google's permissions help.
- The firm is a manager on your Business Profile, never the primary owner.
- You keep the domain and DNS.
- All content, schema and reports belong to you in writing.
- A shared change log and a full list of every link and mention earned.
- An exit clause with a handover pack and access removal.
Without these, I'd knock any outside option down by two.
Red flags that drop any option to zero
- Guaranteed #1 rankings or guaranteed AI mentions.
- A claimed "special relationship" with Google.
- Private blog networks or unlisted links.
- Selling llms.txt as the main AI fix; Google says its Search ignores those files.
- Owner access demanded on day one.
- Asking you to link back to the firm.
Google's hiring page warns against almost every item on that list.
One more to watch: a cold email claiming your site isn't listed in the major search engines, which Google quotes on that same page as a typical spam pitch.
Treat a firm that finds you that way with the same caution.
Who should pick what
| Your situation | Best pick |
|---|---|
| Local trade, simple site, owner has some time | DIY, then a freelancer for the audit |
| New site launch or redesign | Specialist AI SEO firm, brought in early |
| One clear gap, such as thin service pages | Freelancer |
| Search is the main channel and you publish weekly | In-house hire plus a firm for links |
| You want SEO, AI search and links run together | Goldie Agency or another specialist firm |
Scored in practice: three small businesses
A landscaping company covering four towns
- Needs a page per service and per town, plus reviews and Business Profile work.
- DIY scores low on time; a freelancer can't do outreach as well.
- Verdict: a specialist firm, with the owner keeping Business Profile ownership.
A one-person bookkeeper
- Six service pages, one location, steady referrals.
- A firm would be more than the job needs.
- Verdict: DIY with Google's starter guide, then a freelancer for one audit.
An online pet supplies shop
- Hundreds of products, crawl issues and no links.
- An in-house hire would struggle to cover technical fixes and outreach.
- Verdict: a specialist firm on a written scope, with every link listed.
🔥 Want to raise your own DIY score? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you can learn AI SEO yourself with step-by-step trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom
Final verdict
A specialist AI SEO firm is the strongest choice for most growing businesses, but only once the safeguards are signed.
A freelancer wins for single projects, DIY wins for small local sites, and an in-house hire wins only when search is the business.
Whichever you pick, the docs set the bar: crawlable pages, fair content, clean links and no guarantees.
Score any provider you meet against the six criteria above, add two points if the safeguards are signed, and take away two if they aren't.
The option left at the top is your answer, whatever the sales deck says.
If you want to learn AI SEO yourself before you hire, start in the Boardroom; if you want it done, book a free SEO strategy session.
📞 Ready for the 9/10 option? Book a free SEO strategy session and see what Julian's team would fix first on your site. → Book my strategy session
📘 Free resources to score providers yourself Get the 200+ AI SEO Prompts and the free link building book, Link Building Mastery, before your first sales call.
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 The client-side access, contract and crawler setup before an AI SEO firm starts
- 🌐 Whether a small business should hire an AI SEO firm, a freelancer or nobody yet
- 🌐 Six Agent OS prompts that build your evidence pack before hiring an AI SEO firm
- 🌐 Which AI models an AI SEO firm should draft with, by live GoldieBench scores
FAQ: AI SEO Firm Verdict
Why does the specialist firm score higher than a freelancer?
Range and continuity. A firm can run technical, content, links and reporting together and keep going when one person leaves.
Why does DIY score highest on safeguards?
Because nobody outside your business touches your accounts. Every other option has to match that with access roles and contract terms.
Were these ratings based on tests?
No. They are editorial scores drawn from Google, OpenAI, Bing, Perplexity and Anthropic documentation and the providers' own published information.
What instantly drops a firm to zero?
A guaranteed #1 ranking, claimed special ties to Google, private blog networks or a demand for owner access on day one.
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About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
- I've built a 7-figure SEO and link building agency, Goldie Agency, with a team of 70+ SEO experts.
- I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
- I wrote "Link Building Mastery".
- My Udemy courses have taught over 29,000 students.
→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom
Sign the safeguards, hold the scope, and book a free strategy call when you want help choosing the right AI SEO firm.
