Is an SEO agency still worth paying for in 2026?
Yes, for firms whose customers search in volume and click through to websites. The technical basics of SEO still matter, and AI assistants draw on much of the same material. What has changed is that rankings alone no longer decide who gets recommended. AI assistants weigh what others say about a firm: press, reviews, expert content and consistent facts. Work that covers only rankings covers half the job.
The same questions, both ways.
| What you are weighing | SEO agency | Fortitude |
|---|---|---|
| What gets reported | Rankings, traffic and sometimes enquiries, usually in a long monthly report. | One page a month: meetings held, pipeline accepted by sales, buyer questions where an AI assistant names you. |
| AI answers | Some now offer this. Ask how many questions they track, and how often. | Our own platform asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google 40 to 150 buyer questions every week. |
| Content | Often written to a keyword brief by a generalist writer. | A monthly interview with your experts becomes three expert pieces in your voice. |
| Links and press | Varies widely. Some earn coverage. Some buy links, so ask directly. | One to four earned press placements a month. Never bought links. |
| The website itself | Recommendations handed to your developer, who may or may not get to them. | We build and run the site, with at least one dated, logged improvement a week. |
| Depth of technical SEO | A specialist goes deeper on very large or complicated sites. It is their whole trade. | Sound foundations for a B2B firm's site. Not the choice for a vast catalogue. |
When each option is the right one.
When the alternative is the better choice
- You run a large e-commerce or catalogue site where technical SEO at scale is the whole game. Hire a specialist.
- Your SEO agency already reports enquiries and customers, not only rankings, and you can see the line from their work to your revenue. Leave it alone.
- You have a capable marketer and developer in-house who only need audits and advice. A narrow SEO retainer will cost less than a programme.
When we are
- You pay for SEO and cannot say what you get. If the report runs to forty pages and none mentions a customer, the ranking is not the problem.
- You rank well and still are not named when a buyer asks ChatGPT who to use. That is a reputation gap, and keyword work will not close it.
- Recommendations pile up because nobody implements them. When one team owns the site, the content and the press, something ships every week.
Website That Sells costs £5,000 to £10,000 to build and from £999 a month to run, live in 4 to 8 weeks. Reputation That Wins is from £1,999 a month. To compare with your current SEO retainer, add up twelve months of fees and set the total against the customers you can trace to that work. If you cannot trace any, fix that first, whoever you use. Prices exclude VAT.
What this looks like, for real.
Three brands, one group.
AI could only see the pieces.
The short answers.
Partly. Clean structure, fast pages and marked-up facts help with both. The difference is what gets rewarded. Google ranks pages. AI assistants name firms, and they lean on what independent sources say: press, reviews, listings, expert pieces. A firm can rank first for a phrase and be absent from the answer.
Not on our say-so. Ask them three things first: which enquiries came from their work last quarter, whether any links were paid for, and whether they track who AI assistants name for your buyers' questions. Good agencies answer all three without fuss. If yours does, keep them.
Months, not weeks. Assistants are slow to change what they say about a firm, and they trust repetition across sources, so one article changes nothing. A steady run of expert pieces, earned press and accurate listings moves it over time. Anyone promising a date is guessing.
Founders weighing this also said these.
I'm paying for SEO. I don't know what I get.
Ask for a dated list of what was changed on the website last month, and why. Real search work leaves evidence: pages rewritten, faults fixed, coverage earned on other sites. An agency that can show only rankings and traffic charts is reporting on the weather. The test that matters is whether enquiries from people who did not already know the firm are rising.
Website That SellsCompetitors rank above us. They're worse.
Google cannot see how good your work is. It ranks what it can read: pages that answer the question searched, other sites that mention and link to the firm, reviews, and how recently anything was published. A weaker competitor who has described their work in public for years will outrank a better firm that has not. AI assistants draw on the same evidence.
Reputation That WinsThree things worth reading first.
Do we still need SEO now that buyers ask ChatGPT instead of Google?
22 April 2026
We rank first on Google. Why does ChatGPT not mention us?
31 March 2026
How do we choose a firm to help us get recommended by ChatGPT?
31 March 2026
Weigh it with someone who has done both.
Thirty minutes with a founder. We check your site, two competitors and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three beforehand. You leave with three fixes in writing.