01Services
SEO and AI search services: twelve, and most clients need three
Twelve services, from $900 a monthMost clients need two or three, not twelve. We will tell you which ones you can skip.
Searlixa is an SEO and AI search agency. Twelve services are listed below; most clients need two or three of them, and we will tell you which you can skip.
Quick answer
Work is grouped by what it produces, not by which acronym is fashionable. Almost every engagement starts with the $99 audit, because you cannot prioritise a gap you have not sized.
Most clients need two or three of these, not twelve. A proposal listing all of them is usually padding, and we will tell you which ones you can skip.
Key takeaways
- Measurement first, always. The audit is $99 and comes back in three working days.
- The disciplines overlap heavily. We will say when two services you are considering are 80% the same programme.
- Every engagement has a named owner who runs the measurement and signs the recommendations.
- You keep the raw data whether or not the engagement continues.
- There is a published list of what we will not sell you, with reasoning for each item.
- Prices are published. Almost no competitor does this.
Where to start with SEO and AI search work
If you can already answer "are we cited in AI answers, on which platforms, for which buyer prompts, against which competitors", start with whichever service addresses the gaps you have found.
If you cannot answer that, start with the audit. Not because it is a clever funnel, but because the alternative is committing a quarter of budget to a guess. In most audits the first finding is not content at all. It is a blocked crawler, a stale third-party profile, or three of your own pages competing for one intent. Those take days to fix and they move first.
The twelve services, and what each one covers
Each links through to what it covers, what it costs, and where it stops. The audit is first because it is what tells you which of the others you need.
Where they overlap, and why that matters
This is the part most service pages leave out, because it shortens the invoice.
| If you are considering | Overlap | What we would actually recommend |
|---|---|---|
| AEO and GEO separately | ~80% | One programme. The optimisation is nearly identical; only the measurement differs |
| SEO and AI Search separately | High | Scope together, report apart. Google states generative features run on core ranking |
| Technical SEO and the audit | Partial | The audit diagnoses; technical work fixes. Sequential, not duplicate |
| Entity and off-page | Moderate | Genuinely different. Entity corrects facts; off-page earns sources |
| Tracking and the audit | Low | Also different. One is a baseline, the other is a trend |
| Enterprise and international | Low | Different constraints. One is organisational, one is linguistic |
A firm that sells you AEO and GEO as two line items is billing twice for one body of work. That is the single most common way budget leaves this category without producing anything.
What we will tell you to skip
There is a published list of things we do not sell, and it is longer than most agencies would show a buyer: llms.txt as a billable service, content chunking, AI-specific schema packages, guaranteed rankings or citations, bought links or paid guest posts, page-count content programmes, and any single blended AI visibility score.
Each has its reasoning published beside it. Most cost us revenue, which is the only real test of whether a refusal is a position or marketing.
Beyond that list, the more common conversation is narrower: you arrive wanting three services and need one. We would rather run a smaller engagement that works than a larger one that dilutes. Prices for everything are published.
02Common questions
Questions about scope
Where should we start?
Almost always the $99 audit. If you cannot currently answer whether you are cited, on which platforms, for which buyer prompts, then every other decision is a guess with a budget attached.
Do we need all of these services?
No, and we will say which ones you do not. The disciplines overlap heavily — most clients need two or three, not twelve. A proposal listing all of them is usually padding.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO is being found in search results. AEO targets AI assistants. GEO targets AI summaries inside search engines. Google's position is that all three are the same discipline for its own products. The optimisation overlaps; the measurement does not.
Is AI Search a separate programme from SEO?
For most clients it should not be. Selling them separately is how agencies bill twice for one body of work. We scope them together and report them apart.
Can we buy one service on its own?
The audit, yes. The rest work as a programme, because fixing entity facts while ignoring crawler access produces a partial result you cannot interpret.
What do you refuse to sell?
llms.txt as a billable service, content chunking, AI-specific schema packages, guaranteed rankings, bought links or paid guest posts, page-count programmes, and any single blended AI visibility score. Each refusal has its reasoning published.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of the following. Where a claim is ours rather than a source’s, it carries an evidence label instead.
- Rankability — State of AI Search, 1,645 citation observations across 31 topics, 2026. Source for the 24.1% cross-platform overlap and the structural citation signals referenced. Independent study
- Google Search Central — Optimizing your website for generative AI features (15 May 2026, updated 10 July 2026). Primary
- Searlixa delivery across client engagements, labelled Observed with sample and date. Our own
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