While the SEO agency will be able to demonstrate to you increases in traffic, rankings, and numerous green arrows, do you know for sure that all these things are bringing you any real profit? Working with an SEO agency resembles solving a problem that is not always visible to you.
You are aware of the fact that your traffic needs to increase, your pages need to be optimized, and your rankings need to change in the right direction, but how do you know that this is being done by the agency?
A beautifully designed report does not give the full picture. You need to know what exactly the agency did, why they did this, and how it relates to your objectives.
You’ll notice that these 5 agencies aren’t all the same, which is exactly why they’re on this list.
They’re all excellent at what they do, but not everyone requires the same things, so it’s worth comparing them to find one that does precisely what you need.
Stellar SEO shows its main strength as soon as you get to the site – link building.
To be fair, though, the agency’s case studies show that what they do goes way beyond getting backlinks. In short, they’re highly prioritizing quality over quantity. They do outreach, publisher research, content, anchor text, and placements.
For instance, they mention a personal injury campaign where they cut a 340-page website down to 101 because the client had too many pages that overlapped and didn’t really add anything of value. They reconstructed the pages that made the cut; they changed internal links, updated the schema, removed old templates, and reorganized the structure of the site.
They separated the keyword work by intent, which includes searches from people who were actively looking for a lawyer and broader terms used in research. They then built the links around the pages and topics the campaign was already trying to enhance.
According to the agency’s own case study, monthly organic traffic went from 3,047 to 14,670 in 5 months (a 381% increase!). In terms of monetary value, their traffic value increased from approx. $20,500 to $120,500 (a 488% increase).
And you’d think, profit making and reaching more customers, there had to be some huge page-building campaign, but no. As mentioned above, around 70% of their entire original site has been removed/consolidated.
There’s also another case study that involves a hard-money lender, which follows a similar practice of page consolidation and changes being made to internal links – 6,900 to 34,700 monthly traffic in 14 months with almost 3000 page increase in top-10 rankings for targeted keywords.
Stellar SEO has proven time and time again that they’re very reliable and they know what they’re doing, since they’re also delivering on their promises. 25,000+ high-quality backlinks across law, finance, and real estate sectors alone prove this. And their 2024 and 2025 (back-to-back) Inc. 5000 listing awards also signal success.
So yes, the main product here is link building, but the actual campaigns go beyond that; they’re quality.
WebFX is much wider, and SEO is only a part of what the agency does. They do paid ads, content, web design, CRO, and other services.
The part that varies the most is the reporting. WebFX uses its RevenueCloudFX platform to connect SEO work with calls, leads, sales, and revenue. For you as a client, it means that you’re not just looking at a chart that says your traffic went up. Rankings are still important, of course, but WebFX puts a lot of weight on what those visits turn into, which is exactly what you want.
The SEO work covers technical problems, content, internal linking, research of competitors, page optimization, and off-site authority. As far as the technical side goes, that includes things like crawlability, indexing, redirects, page speed, structured data, and architecture of the site.
The agency also has a big section on case studies.
One of them concerns Great Northern Corporation, which got a 109% increase in organic traffic compared to the previous year. There’s also another case study that involves Resource Furniture, for which WebFX reports a 217% increase in SEO form completions and a 108% increase in showroom appointments compared to the previous month.
But nobody’s denying the significance of increased traffic since its importance is already known to all.
But what you really want is for that traffic to turn into money in your account. And that’s what WebFX wants, too.
Victorious’ services revolve around SEO, content, technical work, link building, keyword research, migrations, and AI search visibility. In other words, their priority is a lot more narrow than what you’ve seen with WebFX which increase the visibility of your website.
According to the company, it starts with products and services the client wants to grow, and then builds the keyword plan around that. This is really good to know because it means that they’re not just trying to find easy keywords and hope some of them bring in business.
Technical SEO is also ongoing work as far as Victorious is concerned. The site lists crawlability, indexing, internal links, schema, Core Web Vitals, page speed, redirects, and site structure as some of the things they work on. They also do site sweeps on a regular basis to catch new issues. As for content, that could mean rewriting what’s already there or creating new content from scratch. Although fresh content is important, there’s also something to be said about making what you already have better.
You will also find figures to consider since they have an entire library that specializes in case studies.
The company reports a 105% increase in conversions for Delta Electronics, and a 252% increase in organic clicks for GE Digital. Clients get access to a live dashboard, and there’s also AI-search visibility included in the same setup.
If your site is big or messy, you’ll probably be happy with the work Ignite Visibility does. Its enterprise SEO service is built for things like big URL counts, lots of locations, different markets, or websites where every fix first has to go through a development team.
One detail that’s very valuable is how the company manages technical challenges. Ignite says that its recommendations can be turned into tickets that are ready for development, meaning that the people who are making the fix can get something they can work with instead of a vague audit note.
The reporting is also broken down by page type. What that means is that you’re not getting one big site-wide number; you can track categories, production, location pages, editorial content, and different markets separately.
That’s very critical at a large website because one part of the site may be performing extremely well and the other may be performing extremely poorly.
Straight North spends a lot of time talking about leads, and that’s really the major thing that makes its SEO pitch different from others.
Don’t worry, rankings are still in the picture, but the company also wants to know what those rankings bring – calls, form inquiries, etc.
As for the SEO work, that can include keyword research, research of competitors, analysis of gaps in the content, technical audits, link building, content, and working on landing pages. That mix changes depending on the kind of campaign (e.g., local, national, ecommerce, enterprise).
A lot of the tracking goes through Go North!, which is Straight North’s reporting platform. The platform is very helpful because it pulls information from tools like Google Analytics, BrightEdge, and CallRail. As a result, it brings rankings, traffic, phone calls, form submissions, conversions, and campaign work in one place, which is very practical and saves a ton of time.
It’s especially valuable for clients because they get more than a report saying that a keyword moved up a few spots. They can see what happened after somebody clicked, which page brought them in, where the lead came from, what the visit turned into, and so on.
The company’s philosophy is straightforward — as important as rankings and traffic are, the useful part is being able to connect them with the leads they can produce.
As you can see, the agencies on this list all do their own thing, and that’s exactly what a good list should have – something for everyone. Every company has a separate approach, so what’s best for you will boil down to what kind of SEO you need and which agency fits that.
Sit down and take an honest look at your online presence. What do you want to change? What kind of results would you like to see?
When you have a picture of what your business requires, just do some research or use the list to make your choice.
There’s no shame in saving time!
Ask yourself what’s wrong with your site. If your issue is that you aren’t showing up in searches, you don’t need the same kind of help as someone who has problems with indexing. You’ll want to check the agency’s case studies and see what they usually work on before you contact them.
Keyword positions aside, you’ll want to check whether the important pages are moving up and getting more traffic. Of course, you should also check whether that traffic is doing anything.
To be honest, there’s no single answer to this question. It all depends on what shape your site is in and how much work it needs. Some fixes can work quickly, and others take 6 months or even a year.
