The hire SEO agency decision gets easier once you rate the real options side by side: doing it yourself, a freelancer, a generalist agency, a specialist agency, or Goldie Agency.
This verdict scores each one out of 10 on six criteria, using Google's hiring guidance and the official docs from OpenAI and Bing as the yardstick.
Want the verdict applied to your own site? Book a free SEO strategy session with Julian Goldie's team.
The scorecard: five ways to get SEO done
Ratings are editorial judgement based on the sources linked below, not lab tests.
| Option | Score /10 | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | 6 | Cheapest in cash and fine for simple local sites, but slow and easy to get wrong |
| Freelancer or specialist | 7 | Deep skill in one area, limited capacity and cover |
| Generalist digital agency | 6 | Convenient one-stop shop, SEO can be a side service |
| Specialist SEO agency | 8 | Focused team and process, quality varies a lot by firm |
| Goldie Agency (Julian's team) | 9 | SEO, AEO, GEO and outreach links under one roof, with a free session to test fit |
How the ratings were judged
Each option was scored on six criteria drawn from Google's hiring page and AI-search docs.
| Criterion | What we looked for |
|---|---|
| Fit with Google guidance | Works inside Search Essentials and the spam policies |
| Transparency | Explains every change and shares a log |
| AI-search readiness | Advice that matches official Google, OpenAI and Bing docs |
| Capacity | Enough hands to keep work moving each week |
| Link building quality | Earned or properly marked links, no schemes |
| Low-risk start | A way to test fit before a long commitment |
Google's Do you need an SEO? page was the main yardstick, since it sets out the questions and warning signs most owners need.
Do it yourself: 6/10
Strengths: nobody knows your customers better, and Google says small local businesses can do much of the work in-house.
You also keep every account, every decision and every lesson inside the business.
Limits: it takes steady hours, and mistakes with redirects or robots.txt can hide the whole site.
Best for: owners with a small site who'll read the starter guide and stick with it.
Freelancer or specialist: 7/10
Strengths: a good specialist often knows one area, such as technical SEO or content, better than a busy agency generalist.
Limits: one person means one calendar, so holidays and illness stall the work.
Best for: a business with a clear, narrow problem, like a site migration or a content plan.
Check references with past clients, as Google suggests, and ask whether the work was easy to follow and produced results.
Ask them the same questions you'd ask an agency, especially about experience in your industry.
Generalist digital agency: 6/10
Strengths: web design, ads, social and SEO through one contact can save time.
Limits: SEO sometimes gets bundled as a checklist rather than a strategy.
Best for: a business mid-redesign that wants SEO baked in from the start, which Google calls the best time to hire.
Confirm who actually does the SEO work and whether they can explain it.
If SEO is a line item next to social posts and ads, ask how many hours actually go to search each week.
📞 Comparing proposals right now? Send them our way: on the call we'll score each one against the same six criteria used on this page. Book a free SEO strategy session. → Book my free strategy session
Specialist SEO agency: 8/10
Strengths: a team that lives in search usually has process, tools and people for technical work, content and links.
Limits: the range in quality is wide, and some still sell guaranteed rankings.
Best for: businesses where search drives real revenue and the site is too big for one person.
Use Google's interview questions to separate the careful firms from the loud ones.
The best specialist firms will show you change logs, explain every recommendation and point to official docs when you challenge them.
The weaker ones lean on dashboards full of activity and avoid naming the URLs they changed.
Goldie Agency and Julian's team: 9/10
Strengths: Goldie Agency positions itself as an SEO, GEO, AEO and link building agency, so search and AI search sit in one plan.
Its link building is described as "manual outreach, no PBNs", which lines up with Google's link spam rules.
Julian's own published numbers, on his about page, include 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns, 240+ clients and a 100% Job Success Score on Upwork.
Limits: like any agency, it can't guarantee a #1 spot or an AI mention, and it won't claim to.
Best for: owners who want classic SEO and AI-search work handled together, and want to test fit first through a free strategy session.
The AI-search factor in every rating
Google now asks owners to check whether any AEO or GEO advice matches its official generative AI guide.
That guide treats AI-search optimisation as SEO, and says Google Search doesn't need llms.txt files or chunked content.
OpenAI's bot documentation says allowing OAI-SearchBot is what makes a site eligible for ChatGPT search answers.
Bing's guidelines state that GEO doesn't guarantee citations in AI experiences.
Options that scored higher here gave advice grounded in those pages, not in secret formulas.
Red flags that drop any option to zero
- A guaranteed first-place ranking, which Google says nobody can deliver.
- A promised ChatGPT or AI Overview mention.
- Claims of a special relationship with Google, or a "priority submit".
- Private blog networks or paid links without rel="sponsored", against Google's spam policies.
- Secrecy about what they're changing on your site.
Any one of these overrides the score, whichever option it comes from.
Google also tells owners to be wary of agencies that email out of the blue, so treat an unsolicited pitch as a reason to look harder, not a shortcut.
🔥 Prefer to run the DIY option properly? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week, so you can learn AI SEO yourself and move DIY closer to a 10. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom
Who should pick what
| Your situation | Best pick |
|---|---|
| Small local business, simple site, some spare time | DIY with the starter guide |
| One clear technical or content problem | Freelancer or specialist |
| Redesign underway with a web agency | Generalist agency, with SEO in the brief |
| Search drives revenue, site is growing | Specialist SEO agency |
| Want SEO, AI search and links in one plan | Goldie Agency |
Verdicts in practice: three small businesses
A dog groomer in a market town
Pick: DIY.
Fix the Business Profile, add a page per service, and ask happy clients for reviews without offering anything in return.
A software start-up with a JavaScript-heavy site
Pick: specialist SEO agency or Goldie Agency.
Rendering and indexing problems need someone who can read Search Console reports and fix templates.
A regional cleaning company
Pick: Goldie Agency or a specialist agency.
Service-area pages, local links and AI-search checks need steady weekly attention.
A solo consultant with a five-page site
Pick: DIY, with a freelancer for a one-off audit.
A single expert can write the best answers in the field, then pay for a fresh pair of eyes on the technical side once.
What each option looks like in the first month
Scores only go so far, so here is what the first four weeks tend to involve with each route.
DIY: you read the starter guide, claim and tidy your Business Profile, fix titles on your main pages and set up Search Console.
Freelancer: a focused audit of one area, a written list of fixes and perhaps the first few done for you.
Generalist agency: SEO notes folded into the wider website or marketing plan, often led by someone who also runs your ads.
Specialist SEO agency: a full audit, a prioritised fix list, a content plan and a reporting baseline.
Goldie Agency: starts with a free strategy session, then the same audit and plan, with AI-search checks and outreach links in scope from the start.
Whichever you choose, ask for read-only Search Console access at audit stage and a shared change log from day one.
Scoring the AI-search criterion in detail
This criterion moved more scores than any other, so it deserves a closer look.
An option scored well here if its advice matched three things: Google's generative AI guide, OpenAI's crawler page and Bing's guidelines.
In practice that means checking crawler access for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, writing content that answers real buyer questions, and reporting AI-feature impressions from Search Console.
It scored badly if it leaned on llms.txt as a Google ranking trick, promised citations, or sold chunked content as a secret method.
DIY can reach a high score here with some reading, and the AI Profit Boardroom is one place to learn it step by step.
Related verdicts on this site
If you're weighing which tasks to keep in-house, read our guide on outsourcing SEO services, and for links specifically, our take on choosing a link building agency.
Questions that test any option before you commit
- Which official Google page supports this recommendation?
- What will you change on my site in the first 30 days, page by page?
- How will I see AI-feature impressions and Copilot citations in your reports?
- How do you earn links, and how are any paid placements marked?
- What happens to my content and accounts if we part ways?
Each answer either backs up the score above or pulls it down, so ask them in every conversation, even with yourself if you go DIY.
Final verdict
DIY is right for small, simple sites.
A specialist agency wins once search matters to revenue.
Goldie Agency earns the top score for owners who want SEO, AI search and outreach links covered together, with a free session to check fit first.
📞 Want this verdict for your own business? We'll look at your site and tell you which of the five options fits, even if it isn't us. Book a free SEO strategy session. → Claim a free strategy session
🎁 Free tools to raise your DIY score Get the 200+ AI SEO Prompts and the free link building book, then compare your results against any agency's proposal. → Book a free SEO strategy session
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 The eight-step vetting process with interview script, access rules and change logs
- 🌐 Whether a small business should hire outside SEO help, and what to ask first
- 🌐 Five copy-paste Agent OS prompts to prep before you sign an agency
- 🌐 Which AI models draft SEO pages best, with live GoldieBench scores
FAQ: Hire SEO Agency Verdict
Is a freelancer or an agency better for SEO?
A freelancer suits one clear, narrow problem. An agency suits ongoing work across technical fixes, content and links.
How were these ratings worked out?
They're editorial judgement against six criteria taken from Google's hiring page and the official AI-search docs from Google, OpenAI and Bing.
Does any option guarantee a ChatGPT mention?
No. OpenAI says ChatGPT search placement isn't guaranteed, and Bing says GEO doesn't guarantee citations.
When does DIY SEO stop making sense?
When search drives real revenue, the site grows past what one person can manage, or a redesign puts rankings at risk.
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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
Score your own options with the same six criteria, and if Goldie Agency looks like the fit, start with a free strategy session before you hire SEO agency support for the long term.
