Should SEO and AEO/GEO be handled by separate agencies?

You can, but the work overlaps and often conflicts. Site structure, meta tags, schema, and content formatting are touched by both disciplines, so a single team diagnosing them together usually costs less to manage.

Can I buy only the diagnostic report first?

Yes, and it's the order we recommend. SAENRU's measured diagnostic report is KRW 190,000 (5 business days, VAT excluded), and the fee is fully credited toward a build contract. After reading it you can decide whether to handle the work in-house or outsource.

How do you check whether AI assistants cite your brand?

Build a question set your customers would realistically ask, query multiple assistants repeatedly, and log which sources get cited. Answers vary by model and by date, so it should be measured periodically to see a trend rather than once.

Hiring an SEO, AEO & GEO Agency? Ask These First

Choosing an agency is less about what results they promise and more about what they measure and what they hand back to you. Visibility now depends on both search algorithms and how AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude decide what to cite. A partner who documents their diagnosis is safer over time than one who quotes numbers.

Why don't the old SEO selection criteria work anymore?

Because there is now a second path to your audience: an AI assistant summarizes an answer and cites a source. Keyword-rank reports simply don't capture that path. If the terminology is fuzzy, our complete guide to SEO, AEO and GEO lays out the definitions and a comparison table before you read anyone's proposal.

In practice you need three things at once: a crawlable structure (SEO), documents that answer questions directly (AEO), and source credibility that generative engines can lean on (GEO). A proposal that covers only one of these while claiming full coverage deserves a follow-up question about scope.

What should you ask before signing a contract?

Five questions filter out most of the noise. Watch whether the answers arrive as documents or only as talk.

How do you show your diagnostic evidence? Look for rendered HTML, structured data (JSON-LD) validation, indexing status, robots and sitemap checks in the report.
How do you verify AI citations? A credible answer involves a fixed question set, repeated queries across assistants, and a log of whether your brand or a competitor's page gets cited.
Who owns the deliverables? Content, schema markup, and code changes should remain usable by you after the engagement ends.
Can you edit the site's code directly? There's a big difference between adding scripts through a tag manager and editing HTML, meta tags, and schema.
What exactly is in the monthly retainer? Number of content pieces, technical audit cadence, report contents, and response channel should be written as specifics.

What are the red flags in a proposal?

The three most common are guaranteed outcomes, black-box methods, and vague scope. Firms that promise a specific rank or citation count, refuse to explain their approach, or omit deliverable units tend to produce disputes later.

Hard numeric promises about rankings or traffic
Bulk link building presented as the core strategy
Volume of AI-generated articles emphasized with no review process
The agency's own site lacking even basic structured data
No clause covering handover of content and markup on termination

How should you compare quotes?

Compare by stage, not by total. Agencies often bundle diagnosis, build, and retainer into one number; asking "can I buy the diagnosis alone first?" usually reveals the structure. Also confirm the report stays with you and can be taken to another vendor if you choose.

How does SAENRU handle this?

SAENRU is an open launch stage for AI builders and also runs integrated SEO, AEO and GEO consulting — covering Google and Naver search through to citations in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude answers. The stages are separated: a measured diagnostic report at KRW 190,000 (5 business days), build packages from KRW 3.6M, and monthly operations from KRW 1.47M. The diagnostic fee is fully credited if you proceed with a build, and all prices exclude VAT.

We split it that way for exactly the comparison reason above: it's better for the buyer to hold the report first and decide afterward. For reference, the SAENRU homepage itself is a working AEO example — raw HTML with embedded JSON-LD and llms.txt — and "how is this agency's own site built?" is a fair criterion to apply to any proposal. If you need a new site altogether, SAENRU Studio builds websites from KRW 2.7M (about 2 weeks) and web app MVPs from KRW 8.7M (4–6 weeks), handing over the full GitHub repository.

In short, a good agency isn't the one that sells best — it's the one that leaves behind verifiable evidence and deliverables you can keep. Paste those five questions into an email and compare the specificity of the replies.