LLM SEO services get one verdict from me: buy them only from someone whose plan matches what OpenAI, Google, Bing, Perplexity and Anthropic actually publish about how their AI search finds pages.
That single test separates useful providers from the ones selling AI hacks.
Below, I rate the five ways to get the work done, out of 10, with a one-line reason for each score.
The ratings are editorial judgement drawn from the platforms' own documentation, not a lab test. If you want to compare notes on your own site, book a free SEO strategy session.
The scorecard: five ways to buy LLM SEO, rated
| Option | Score | One-line reason |
|---|---|---|
| Goldie Agency (Julian Goldie's team) | 8.5/10 | SEO, GEO, AEO and manual-outreach link building in one team, with tests shared in public. |
| Specialist SEO / AI search agency | 8/10 | Covers access, content, mentions and measurement; quality depends on how closely it follows the docs. |
| Freelancer or specialist | 6.5/10 | Deep in one area, but one person rarely covers technical, content and outreach at once. |
| Generalist digital agency | 6/10 | Strong on web and brand, though AI search is often a bolt-on rather than a core skill. |
| DIY | 5/10 | The basics are learnable, but firewall checks and earning mentions trip most owners up. |
The criteria behind the scores
I scored each option on five things the platform docs say matter, each out of 10.
| Criterion | DIY | Freelancer | Generalist | Specialist | Goldie Agency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI crawler and index access | 5 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 8 |
| Citable, non-commodity pages | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 |
| Mentions and links within policy | 3 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 9 |
| Citation measurement | 5 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 8 |
| Docs-aligned advice, no guarantees | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
The headline scores weigh mentions and access most heavily, because those are where DIY and generalist work most often falls short.
Criterion 1: Can the AI search bots reach you?
This is pass or fail before anything else counts.
OpenAI's crawler overview says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and its help centre adds that your host or CDN must let OpenAI's published IP addresses through.
Perplexity and Anthropic run their own search bots, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, and each documents its own controls (Perplexity, Anthropic).
Google is the outlier in a helpful way: AI Overviews and AI Mode use the normal Search index, and Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search.
A provider who can explain those differences without notes scores well here.
Criterion 2: Pages worth citing
Google's generative AI optimisation guide says unique, non-commodity content will likely matter more for AI search presence than anything else it suggests.
Bing's guidelines push the same way from a different angle: facts stated explicitly, pages that stand on their own, one topic per URL.
I marked down any approach built on mass page generation, since Google treats pages made mainly to manipulate rankings or AI answers as scaled content abuse.
Criterion 3: Mentions and links, earned properly
AI answers reflect what other sites say about you, so off-site work carries real weight.
The rules are clear: Google's spam policies define link spam and allow paid links only when marked rel="sponsored" or nofollow, and Bing names link buying and private networks as schemes.
Goldie Agency scores highest here because link building is its origin, and it describes the work as "Manual outreach, no PBNs".
DIY scores lowest, because outreach is a skill and a time sink, and owners rarely have contacts at the sites AI tools already cite.
📞 Want your site scored the same way? Book a free SEO strategy session and the team will rate your access, pages, mentions and measurement against the platform docs. → Get your free strategy session
Criterion 4: Measuring citations, not vibes
Good LLM SEO reporting uses the first-party tools that now exist.
Google's Search Console has a generative AI performance report for AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions, rolled out to all sites on 31 August 2026.
Bing Webmaster Tools has AI Performance, with total citations, cited pages and grounding queries across Copilot and Bing's AI summaries.
For ChatGPT, there's no equivalent site-owner report outside Business Hub insights for claimed businesses, so providers rely on referral data and repeat prompt tests.
In our checks, ChatGPT referrals usually land in analytics under chatgpt.com, which is our observation rather than anything OpenAI documents.
Criterion 5: Fair about what can't be promised
Google's hiring guide says nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking, and its 2026 version asks whether a provider's AEO or GEO advice aligns with Google's official guidance.
Bing says GEO doesn't guarantee grounding or citations, and OpenAI says ChatGPT search placement isn't guaranteed.
Any option that leans on guarantees loses points; any that quotes these lines back to you gains them.
Goldie Agency: strengths and limits
Strengths. One team covers classic SEO, GEO, AEO and link building, so access, pages and mentions don't fall between suppliers.Julian Goldie's own published numbers cite 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns, 240+ clients and a 100% Job Success Score on Upwork.
He also tests AI SEO on his own sites and shares results with 425K+ YouTube subscribers, which lets you judge the thinking before you hire.
Limits. Those figures are self-reported, as every agency's are, so ask for examples relevant to your industry.Its service list includes llms.txt setup; Google says Search ignores llms.txt, so treat that line as being for other systems only.
And like everyone else, it can't promise a ChatGPT mention.
Specialist agency: strengths and limits
Strengths. A dedicated SEO or AI search agency usually has the technical depth for bot access and the processes for monthly citation reporting. Limits. Specialists vary widely; some lean on dashboards of AI "visibility scores" that no platform publishes.Google warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, so judge any proprietary score with that in mind.
🔥 Learn AI SEO yourself, then decide who to hire Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step AI SEO trainings, the installable Agent OS to run audits, and four live coaching calls a week. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom
Freelancer and generalist agency: strengths and limits
Freelancer strengths. Direct access to the person doing the work, and often sharp expertise in one area such as technical SEO or content. Freelancer limits. Capacity; one person running logs, content and outreach for five AI engines is stretched thin. Generalist strengths. Good when you also need a website rebuild, paid ads or branding from one supplier. Generalist limits. Ask who on the team owns AI search, and how they keep up with changes like Bing's new grounding preferences that take effect on 1 February 2027.DIY: strengths and limits
Strengths. You know your customers better than anyone, and that first-hand knowledge is exactly what Google says AI search rewards. Limits. Most owners stop at robots.txt and never check whether a CDN setting is turning the bots away, or whether nosnippet tags are limiting what AI Overviews can use.Earning mentions on the sites AI tools already cite is the hardest part to do alone.
Who should pick what
- Owner with time and a simple site: start DIY, then buy a one-off audit.
- Business that needs a new website too: a generalist agency, with an AI search specialist reviewing access and pages.
- Clear technical gap only: a freelancer with crawler and rendering experience.
- Competitive market where rivals already get cited: a specialist agency, or Goldie Agency if links and mentions are the gap.
Small-business examples, step by step
A dental clinic losing "best dentist near me" answers: 1. Test 15 local questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Mode. 2. Fix the Business Profile and service pages. 3. Hire for review and local mention work if rivals dominate the citations.Keep health information on those pages accurate; Google's helpful content guidance says topics like health must be highly accurate and consistent with established expert consensus.
A B2B consultancy invisible in Perplexity: 1. Check PerplexityBot hits in logs. 2. Publish one in-depth page per service with named experts. 3. Pitch guest commentary to trade publications, marking any paid placement as sponsored. A craft shop shown with the wrong opening hours: 1. Correct the hours on the site and Business Profile. 2. Make the name and address match across directories. 3. Re-test in a month.How to compare two proposals side by side
Proposals for this work rarely use the same words, so put them through the same five criteria from the scorecard.
Score each proposal yourself out of 10 on access, pages, mentions, measurement and transparency, and write one sentence of evidence next to each score.
If a proposal doesn't mention crawler access or firewall checks at all, it scores low on access, however good the content plan looks.
If it promises a number of AI citations by a date, it scores low on transparency, because none of the platforms allow anyone to promise that.
Ask both providers for a sample monthly report and compare which one shows citations, cited pages and referral traffic rather than only rankings.
The higher total usually wins, but weigh mentions more if your rivals already dominate the answers.
Finally, check who will actually do the work each month, and whether you'll keep every page, report and account if you end the contract.
Ownership terms belong in the contract, not in a sales email, so ask for them in writing before you sign.
The final verdict
Rated against the platforms' own docs, a specialist team that covers access, pages, mentions and measurement beats every other option for a business already competing in AI answers.
Goldie Agency edges the category on mentions and link building, with the fair caveat that no one, including Goldie Agency, can guarantee a citation.
DIY is the right start for owners with time, as long as someone checks the technical layer.
📞 Get the verdict for your own site Book a free SEO strategy session and leave with a scored list of what to fix first. → Book your strategy session
🎁 Free before you buy Get the 200+ AI SEO Prompts to run your own prompt tests and the free link building book to judge any link offer. Prefer to learn the lot? Join the AI Profit Boardroom. → Book a free SEO strategy session
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 The nine-step delivery run sheet for LLM SEO, with log commands
- 🌐 Whether LLM SEO is worth it for your small business, and what to ask
- 🌐 Five Agent OS prompts that baseline your AI citations before you hire
- 🌐 Which AI models draft LLM SEO pages and tools, by GoldieBench score
FAQ: LLM SEO Services Verdict
What's the highest-rated way to buy LLM SEO services here?
Goldie Agency at 8.5/10, narrowly ahead of specialist agencies at 8/10, mainly on mentions and link building. The scores are editorial judgement from the platform docs.
Why does DIY score only 5/10?
The on-site basics are learnable, but checking CDN bot access, preview controls and earning third-party mentions are where most owners stall.
Should I trust an agency's AI visibility score?
Use it as a rough guide only. Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
Is any provider able to guarantee ChatGPT citations?
No. OpenAI says placement isn't guaranteed, and Bing says GEO doesn't guarantee citations, so a guarantee is a red flag.
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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 options against the docs, not the pitch, and when you want a team rated 8.5 on that scale to look at your site, book a free strategy session for LLM SEO services.
