I'm going to say something that could cost me money.
A lot of agencies right now are selling “AI SEO” packages that are just old SEO with a new label and a bigger invoice. I run a marketing agency, I sell SEO, and I’m telling you this because the panic-pricing happening in my industry right now bothers me.
Here’s the twist, though. The reason agencies can get away with relabeling old SEO is that the old SEO actually is most of the work.
Let me explain.
The industry has a name for getting your business found in AI answers. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. New acronym, real thing. When someone asks ChatGPT, “Who’s the best painting contractor near me?” GEO is the discipline of making sure the answer includes you.
So how does the AI decide? A study tracked over 83,000 AI citations and found that 83% pointed to third-party sources. Review sites. Local press. Industry blogs. Only 17% pointed to a business’s own website.
If you’ve been around search for a while, that split should look familiar. It’s on-page and off-site. Content and authority. The exact same two ingredients Google has weighed for twenty years. Anyone who did SEO properly was already building both.
The signals didn’t change. The reader changed.
That’s why we still sell traditional SEO packages at Eighty6, and we combine them with our GEO services rather than replacing anything. The foundation is not optional. Your website is the source document that mentions links to and directories pull from. You cannot skip the foundation and buy your way into AI answers, no matter what a sales rep tells you.
So here's the test I'd give any agency pitching you AI services right now.
Ask them two questions. First, does your AI package replace my SEO fundamentals or build on them? If they say replace, hold onto your wallet. The fundamentals are the raw material AI reads. Second, how will you measure my AI visibility? Until recently, nobody could answer that honestly, because everyone was running prompts into ChatGPT and guessing. That’s changing fast, and an agency that can’t explain its measurement is an agency reporting vibes.
I’ve watched this movie before. When mobile phones arrived, panic was for sale everywhere. Same when social arrived. Both times, the businesses that won were the ones that kept doing the fundamentals and calmly added the new layer early. The businesses that lost were the ones that either ignored the shift entirely or torched a working strategy to chase it.
AI search is the third showing of the same story. Don’t buy panic. Buy the layer.
– Jay Eagleson, Managing Partner & Head of Growth
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