What SEO agencies won't tell you (and what an AI agent will)

I worked with an SEO agency for eight months. They charged $4,500 a month. Every month I got a PDF report with charts, a list of keywords they were "targeting," and a few blog posts that read like they were written by someone who'd never visited my industry.

When I finally asked what specifically they did each month, the answer was vague enough to make me nervous. So I started tracking it myself.

Here's what I found, and what it taught me about where AI agents actually make sense.

What you're actually paying for

Most SEO agencies break their work into a few buckets. Here's what the $3,000-$10,000/month typically covers:

Keyword research. They use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to find keywords, analyze competition, and build a targeting list. This takes a few hours per month. The tools cost $130-250/month. The labor is real but not enormous.

Content creation. They write blog posts, update existing pages, and create landing page copy. This is usually the biggest time cost. A decent writer produces a solid 1,500-word blog post in 3-4 hours. Most agencies publish 2-4 posts per month per client.

Technical SEO audits. They run crawls, check for broken links, review page speed, and flag issues. Most agencies do this quarterly, not monthly. The actual tools automate 90% of it.

Backlink building. This is where the real human skill lives. Good link building requires outreach, relationship building, and creativity. Bad link building is sending templated emails to blog owners. Most agencies do the latter.

Reporting. They compile data into a monthly report. This takes 2-3 hours per client if done manually. Most agencies use reporting templates that auto-pull data.

When I added it all up, my agency was spending maybe 12-15 hours per month on my account. At $4,500, that's $300-375 per hour of actual work. Some of that work was genuinely skilled. A lot of it was repetitive data pulling and templated content.

The parts an AI agent handles better

Keyword research. An AI agent monitors search trends continuously, not once a month. It catches emerging keywords in days, not weeks. It tracks hundreds of terms across multiple competitors simultaneously. No human can match that coverage at that speed.

According to a 2024 survey by Search Engine Journal, 67% of SEO professionals now use AI tools for keyword research. The ones who don't are spending hours on work that takes an agent minutes.

Content first drafts. An agent produces a draft blog post in under a minute. It's not publishable raw — it needs editing, specific examples, and your expertise layered on. But starting from a targeted draft instead of a blank page cuts content production time by 60-70%.

Rank tracking. This is almost comically suited for automation. An agent checks rankings daily for every keyword, across every location you care about, and alerts you the moment something changes. No human should be doing this manually in 2025.

Backlink monitoring. Same story. The agent watches your backlink profile 24/7, flags lost links immediately, and spots new opportunities. A human checking this weekly will always be slower.

Reporting. Automated reports that pull real-time data, highlight changes, and suggest next steps. Ready for your review in seconds instead of hours.

The parts that still need humans

Strategy. An agent can surface data and opportunities, but deciding what to prioritize requires business context, market knowledge, and judgment that AI doesn't have yet.

Relationship-based link building. Getting a link from a respected industry publication requires knowing people, crafting a pitch, and following up. This is sales work, not data work.

Content editing. AI drafts need a human pass. Someone who knows the industry needs to add specific examples, correct misconceptions, inject personality, and catch the subtle things that make content genuinely useful versus generically correct.

Client communication. If you're an agency, your clients want to talk to a person. They want someone who understands their business and can explain what's happening in plain language.

The math that should worry agencies

Here's the part agencies don't like to discuss.

If an AI agent handles keyword research, rank tracking, backlink monitoring, content drafts, and reporting — that's roughly 60-70% of the monthly work on a typical SEO account.

A business paying $4,500/month for this work could instead:

• ·Use ClawKit for $29-79/month (agent handles the automated parts)
• ·Hire a freelance SEO strategist for $1,000-2,000/month (handles strategy and editing)
• ·Total: $1,029-$2,079/month for the same or better output

That's 50-75% savings. Not because AI is smarter than the agency's team, but because AI doesn't spend hours on tasks that should be automated.

What a good agency does differently

The agencies that will thrive aren't the ones fighting AI. They're the ones using it.

A smart agency deploys AI agents for every client (this is what the agency tier on ClawKit is designed for). The agents handle monitoring, drafting, and reporting. The human team focuses on strategy, relationships, and the creative work that actually differentiates the agency.

The result: each account manager handles 15-25 clients instead of 5-8. The agency serves more clients at lower cost per client while maintaining quality on the parts that matter.

What to do if you're currently paying an agency

Ask them specifically what they do each month. Hours, tasks, deliverables. If the answer is vague, that's a red flag.

Ask whether they use AI tools. If they don't, they're either behind the curve or charging you for manual labor that should be automated.

Consider a hybrid approach. Keep the agency for strategy and link building. Use an AI agent for monitoring, tracking, and content drafts. You'll get better coverage at lower cost.

Or start with ClawKit on the free tier. Let the agent run for a month alongside your agency. Compare what the agent catches versus what your agency reports. The overlap — and the gaps — will tell you a lot.