What Do SEO Companies Do, Exactly? | Full Guide
This is a question we hear all the time from curious businesses that reach out to Lil Shameless Plug. Which is exactly why we felt compelled to write this comprehensive guide. Our goal? To help you understand what we do (and what we do well).
On this page, we’ll cover everything you need to know about SEO agencies — from the initial consultation to what results will typically look like six months into a campaign.
What is an SEO company?
An SEO company is a service-type business that helps businesses improve their digital presence. They typically achieve this through search engine optimization (SEO) by on-page, off-page, technical methods, or a combination of the three to drive more clicks to your website.
While the primary objective varies depending on your specific goals, most clients aim to achieve higher rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs), increase organic traffic to their website, and ultimately generate more revenue through conversions.
Why hire an SEO company?
Before we explore what an SEO company brings to your business, let's ask ourselves these questions:
- Do you have the time to do SEO?
- Can you do SEO? (And do it very well?)
- If you can, is your current SEO strategy working?
- If not, do you have the budget to hire an SEO company?
Access to SEO Experts
SEO companies possess a level of technical SEO expertise that most businesses typically lack in-house. After all, it’s their job to stay on top of search engine algorithms and understand how to help your website rank higher.
Chances are, the agency has already handled dozens of projects similar in size and scope to yours, possibly even larger. This means they have the technical know-how to help you avoid the most common SEO mistakes, which happen more often than not!
SEO agencies also harbor teams of specialists already experts in their craft. For example, let's say you are a business that attracts 5k-10k users to your website per month and want to build an in-house SEO team. For you to match a typical agency, you will need one of each specialist:
- copywriter
- web developer
- web designer
- general SEO person
- technical SEO person
- project manager
Note: For convenience, we’re using the Lil Shameless Plug team as an example.
For larger scope projects, I can imagine you're also going to need a dedicated content marketer and a link-building specialist since everyone already has their hands full with tasks.
As you can see, not only is it very expensive to assemble a team, but also time-consuming as they need a certain period to work well with one another.
Access to Paid SEO Tools
Another big reason is access to premium SEO tools. An SEO agency not only has the manpower needed to utilize them, but each member using them is already a master with these tools.
If you decide to do SEO yourself, it's expensive, time-consuming, as you have to learn from scratch what they already know, and you have to take time off from your core business goals
Let’s use one of our favorite tools as an example. This is a snapshot of SEMRush’s monthly pricing, with the most affordable option costing over $100 per month. Not a bad deal, right? However, if you add in other costs like other paid tools, web hosting, and employee salaries, then it becomes a monthly recurring problem.
What does an SEO agency do?
Typically, an SEO agency's goal is to improve your website's visibility and get your website to the top SERPs. Better web visibility means more eyeballs coming to your website, which means more potential leads converting, ultimately more revenue for your business
Services may vary from company to company, but a good agency should be able to provide your business with what we call “essential” SEO services:
- SEO Strategy
- Keyword Research
- Link Building
- SEO Analytics and Reporting
- Content Creation
- Technical SEO
Creating an SEO strategy
This is a comprehensive, long-term plan aimed at improving a website’s visibility in search engines by boosting organic rankings and traffic. While every strategy is tailored to the needs of a specific business, most contain a blend of technical, on-page, and content-driven tactics to maximize your website performance. A strong SEO strategy typically includes:
- Competitor & SERP Analysis: Understanding how competitors are ranking and what kind of content performs best on relevant search engine results pages.
- Website Audit: Evaluating your website's current performance, structure, and SEO health to identify technical issues and optimization opportunities.
- Keyword Research: Identifying the terms and phrases your ideal audience searches for. Then, create a content roadmap that aligns with search demand and your business goals.
- On-Page and Technical SEO: Optimizing HTML elements, internal linking, site speed, mobile usability, and more.
- Link Building: Acquiring high-quality backlinks to boost domain authority and trustworthiness in Google's eyes.
Of course, the complexity of an SEO strategy depends on a range of factors, including your company’s goals, current website performance, competitive landscape, and target audience.
For example, a brand-new website in a competitive market will need a more aggressive and technically nuanced strategy than a well-established website in a niche market with little competition.
An experienced SEO agency will begin by learning everything it can about your business, industry, and target audience through a discovery call and then proceed to keyword research.
Performing keyword research
- Intent: The goal or purpose behind a user’s search, categorized whether they’re looking to learn, compare, or buy.
- Search Volume (SV): The average number of monthly searches for a specific keyword.
- Keyword Difficulty (KD%): An estimate of how competitive it is to rank for a keyword. Typically, it’s harder to rank shorter keywords (short-tail) than longer ones (long-tail).
- Position: It’s not included in this snapshot, but this means your website’s ranking in search results for that keyword.
First, the LSP team will conduct thorough keyword research tailored to your goals. If your website is just starting out, we’ll focus on finding long-tail, low-competition, medium SV keywords to help you gain visibility and start ranking faster.
Conversely, if you're already an established brand online, we’ll target short-tailed, higher-competition keywords that align with your authority and long-term growth potential.
Next, we’ll analyze your competitors' keyword strategies and also take into account the specific keywords you want to rank for or be recognized for. We’ll assess both your organic and paid traffic data to create a more comprehensive and effective strategy.
Ultimately, keyword research provides critical insights into your audience’s search habits. When done well, it becomes a solid foundation for your website’s content plan, and what you publish will absolutely nail the things your target audience is searching for.
Content creation
If keyword research is the foundation of a high-ranking website, the content is the engine running the show. Most SEO companies offer a full suite of content and local SEO services to help your site not only rank well but also connect with the right audience at the right time.
They offer content creation across a wide range of formats, including:
- Blog posts, long-form articles, and pillar content
- Landing pages and service page content
- Product descriptions
- Case studies, white papers, and press releases
Some agencies also dip into creating newsletters, social media, and visual content, but this will depend on the scope of your service package.
Regardless, each piece follows the crafted SEO strategy outlined above and current trends to ensure relevance and searchability. The website audit would also identify your high-performing pages, the “could use a refresh” pages, and the severely outdated ones that need serious refreshing or outright removal.
From here, the agency develops a content calendar and handles production—writing, editing, optimizing, and even uploading content directly into your Content Management System (CMS) if access is provided.
They also focus on on-page SEO, ensuring elements like internal linking, headers, and metadata align with your SEO strategy. Many agencies provide content briefs to guide writers on how to meet SEO standards effectively.
However, content isn’t a one-and-done task — it needs regular refreshing to provide the best information for your target audience. This is why SEO agencies regularly update existing content to maintain rankings, improve clarity, and reflect new helpful content.
Local SEO
Local SEO is a type of SEO focusing on optimizing your online presence tied to a geographic area.
This is especially important for businesses that rely on foot traffic or serve a defined region, like service-based businesses. Local SEO concerns your Google Business Profile, location-based keywords, local reviews, and local citations and backlinks.
When people search for services near them—think “best plumbers in [location]”— Google pulls results based on relevance, proximity, and prominence. This helps your business appear in “map pack” listings and on the first page of search results.
Prime real estate for winning nearby customers.
SEO analytics and reporting
Results can be very hard to visualize, especially if you are a non-technical business owner hearing SEO for the first time. Which is why any reputable SEO company is committed to documenting and reporting your results. This is how we stay accountable and transparent about all the work to boost your online presence.
One of the first things a reputable agency will provide is an SEO roadmap. This document outlines the proposed strategy, deliverables, and timeline for your campaign. You'll have to review the roadmap and see if it's feasible for your business.
Once your campaign is underway, you’ll typically receive regular updates through bi-weekly or monthly check-in calls — with monthly reporting being the standard due to the long-term nature of SEO. This will cover real-time performance (rankings, traffic, impressions, and conversions), issues, and strategies on what's next.
A high-quality SEO report should typically include the progress of these metrics:
- Organic traffic
- Keyword ranking
- Technical SEO updates
- Content documentation
- Backlink performance
- Conversion rate (the most important one)
However, it shouldn’t stop there. The best SEO agencies go a step further by interpreting the data for you. After all, without context, it’s just a spreadsheet full of numbers.
If they’re explaining the metrics clearly — using charts and tables to visualize performance, and sharing actionable insights without overwhelming you with technical jargon — it’s a strong sign that your agency really knows what it’s doing.
Link building
Backlinks remain one of the most critical ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, making link building a cornerstone of nearly every SEO campaign. Backlinks are simply defined as other websites linking to yours.
While there are hundreds of factors influencing how a site ranks in the SERPs, backlinks (especially from authoritative domains with high organic traffic) continue to carry substantial weight in campaigns.
Do backlinks matter?
Absolutely. Search engines like Google view backlinks as first-rate endorsements. However, quality and relevance directly influence how well your website ranks.
A single backlink from a highly authoritative site will almost always outperform dozens of backlinks from lower-quality domains.
When a relevant, authoritative site—let’s say, Forbes—links to yours, you’ll have a better chance of ranking higher in the SERPs since Google sees that link as a strong signal of your website’s relevance, credibility, and trustworthiness.
How it works
Typically, SEO agencies begin with a competitor analysis to establish a baseline and identify gaps in your backlink profile. From there, they engage in manual outreach, content marketing, and digital public relations (PR) to search for and secure high-quality, authoritative backlinks.
However, link building leans heavily on networking, and it’s both difficult and time-consuming. SEO agencies that are short on experience, resources, or patience may resort to black-hat techniques—methods that violate Google’s search guidelines.
Examples include using private blog networks (PBNs) or purchasing backlinks from “link farms” found on sites like Fiverr. These tactics almost always result in manual penalties that can severely damage your site’s visibility.
A reputable SEO agency already understands this and will follow ethical, sustainable link-building practices every step of the way to protect your site and build long-term results.
Technical SEO
One common misconception is that technical SEO is a one-and-done job. In reality, it’s an ongoing process. New issues can emerge from site updates, CMS changes, plugin conflicts, or platform migrations.
While content and backlinks play a major role in SEO visibility, technical SEO is the glue holding it all together. Without a solid technical foundation, even the most compelling content might never reach its intended audience.
This service ensures your site is crawlable, indexable, fast, and user-friendly.
Now, it’s standard practice for SEO agencies to use the results of a technical audit to identify any issues that may be preventing your site from ranking properly. From there, the agency continues to monitor, flag potential concerns, and proactively resolve issues, minimizing disruptions to your rankings or user experience.
Important areas of optimization include:
- Crawlability & Indexing
- Check the robots.txt file for errors or misconfigurations
- Ensure an up-to-date XML sitemap is submitted to search engines
- Resolve canonical issues to prevent duplicate content problems
- Site Speed & Performance
- Improve overall page load speed
- Optimize for Core Web Vitals (e.g., LCP, FID, CLS)
- Prioritize mobile performance and responsiveness
- Mobile Optimization
- Verify full mobile responsiveness
- Enhance mobile UX to reduce bounce rates and improve engagement
- Critical Technical Fixes
- Fix broken links (AKA 404 errors) and ensure proper 301 redirects
- Implement HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate
- Add structured data (schema markup) for enhanced visibility
- Site Structure & Navigation
- Ensure a clean, logical site architecture
- Optimize internal linking for better crawlability
- Image & Media Optimization
- Use compressed images with appropriate file formats and alt tags
- Implement lazy loading where applicable
- Analytics & Tools Integration
- Configure Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) correctly
- Set up conversion tracking aligned with SEO goals
How much does SEO cost?
It’s very hard to give an exact price point. SEO costs are highly dependent on your business goals, industry, location, and the competitiveness of the keywords/businesses you're trying to outrank.
Independent SEO experts typically charge between $2000 and $5,000 per month, with $3,000 being the average monthly retainer. This usually covers the basics like keyword research, monthly analytics, and performance reporting.
The cost can increase depending on how “new” your website is, as you’ll likely need additional services to compensate for a lack of domain authority, minimal content, and little to no backlink profile.
If you're starting from scratch, you’ll also need a full website audit and technical setup to ensure your site is crawlable, indexable, and optimized for both users and search engines.
On the other hand, if you’re already somewhat established in your niche and aiming to outrank high-authority competitors, expect to pay significantly more.
Let’s visualize an example. If you’re a law firm in New York just beginning your digital presence, you’ll likely need:
- A comprehensive SEO strategy
- Link building
- Content creation
Local SEO - Technical SEO
- Monthly analytics and reporting
This would typically cost between $2,500 and $10,000 per month, depending on the scale and aggressiveness of your campaign.
Now consider this: Let’s say you're located in one of the five boroughs of NYC, and your competitors are already established firms with in-house SEO teams and hundreds of high-authority backlinks.
Your campaign will require more time, effort, and budget to compete, hence the higher price point.
However, it's generally easier to rank you if you're operating in a less competitive area like Albany. That means lower monthly costs, since less work is needed to achieve visibility and traffic in a smaller market.
Regardless of where you're based, we highly recommend setting clear KPIs and getting full transparency into results.
What to expect from a good SEO agency
pages (SERPs), ideally to the first page. Any agency worth its salt can aim for this, but not everyone can deliver sustainable, long-term growth that aligns with your business goals.
While most agencies operate with transparency and a commitment to value, others may rely on shortcuts or flashy, short-term tactics that ultimately fail to deliver meaningful results. Worst-case scenario: Some may even mislead clients by overpromising, underdelivering, or misrepresenting their expertise.
This is why choosing the right agency is critical. The wrong partner can cost you more than just money—it can waste your time, erode your trust, and damage your business’s online reputation. Here are key ways to properly evaluate and choose the right SEO partner for your business:
1. Vet the agency
Narrow your list down to two or three agencies you believe are the best fit for your business. Once you’ve identified them, it’s time to validate their credibility.
Start by reviewing the testimonials or case studies page on their website. These often highlight real-world results from past (and ongoing) SEO campaigns.
Pay close attention to examples involving businesses similar to yours—whether by industry, size, or goals. If you recognize any of the companies listed, great! They’re a gold mine for insights.
Reach out directly to one or two of those businesses, if possible. A quick conversation can offer a glimpse into how the agency communicates, delivers value, and handles challenges.
Firsthand feedback like this is often more revealing than anything you’ll find in a proposal or sales pitch.
2. Prepare a lot of questions
During your first meeting with an SEO agency, be crystal clear about what you want to achieve online as a business and arm yourself with probing questions. This allows the agency to hone in on your goals and meet those objectives efficiently.
Typically, the end goal for most businesses is to boost conversions and increase revenue, so this becomes the main metric to focus on.
Less critical, but still important, metrics include monthly organic traffic, keyword rankings, and lastly, engagement signals like bounce rate and average session duration.
With this in mind, be thorough in defining your KPIs and ask how long it might realistically take to achieve them. Ask about their approach to link building, what tools and platforms they use to track performance and conduct audits, and how they consistently monitor and report on results over time.
You should also ask what happens if the agency fails to meet the roadmap. What’s their contingency plan? Will they revise the strategy and try a different approach? If not, can you cancel the contract?
SEO is a long-term investment—but with the right agency, it’s well worth the money.
Just remember to use the suggested baseline above when gauging price points to ensure you're getting value for what you pay.
That said, be cautious of agencies offering rates that seem too good to be true. In many cases, they may be cutting corners or relying on black-hat techniques. While these methods might produce short-term gains, they can be highly detrimental to your website’s performance and credibility in the long run.
3. Know the team behind your campaign
As a client, you should treat the team driving your SEO campaign as a temporary extension of your business. After all, their results—good or bad—will directly affect your online visibility, reputation, and bottom line.
Aside from meeting the account manager or SEO lead, you can make the effort to get familiar with the rest of the team working on your campaign.
You don’t need to have a heart-to-heart talk with each member, but a quick chat can help you subtly gauge their skills, experience, and whether they’re the right fit for your business.
Some things to note
Before we wrap this up, a word of caution. Steer clear of agencies offering rates that seem too good to be true.
In many cases, they may be cutting corners or relying on black-hat techniques. While these methods might produce short-term gains, they can seriously harm your website in the long run.
Also, don’t be swayed by agencies that showcase a “Google Partner” badge. While it sounds impressive, this badge is only relevant to Google Ads and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, not SEO. It has no bearing on an agency’s ability to improve your organic search rankings.
Wrapping Up
SEO agencies like us are here to make your life easier. We handle the work of getting more eyeballs to your website and turning them into paying customers, allowing you to focus on what you do best —running your business.
Sure, it might seem pricey at first, but that’s because SEO is a long-term investment with sustainable, compounding returns.
If you’re looking for a tight-knit, all-star SEO agency, why look any further? Lil Shameless Plug is already a trusted partner for businesses across the country. Contact us to kickstart your SEO journey today.