Free scan

An honest comparison

Citemark, a traditional SEO agency, or doing it yourself?

There are three realistic ways for a UK service business to work on AI-search visibility: a specialist like Citemark from £195, a traditional SEO agency at a typical £1,000–£3,000 a month, or your own team using published methods. Each is the right answer for someone — this page sets out for whom, including when the answer is not us.

The three routes

What each one is actually good at.

TRADITIONAL SEO AGENCY

Broad fundamentals, retained delivery

Typically £1,000–£3,000 a month for UK SMBs. Strong on the fundamentals that AI visibility also depends on: content, links, technical health. Weaknesses for this specific job: most do not measure AI answers at all, few audit per-crawler access or rendering for non-Google crawlers, and pricing is rarely published.

Right when: you need the full breadth of search marketing — paid, content, links — and AI answers are one concern among many.

DO IT YOURSELF

Free, using published methods — including ours

Our method is published in full and the free scan shows your technical gaps without an email. A capable in-house person can fix crawler access, structured data and answer content. The hard part is disciplined measurement: repeated observations across surfaces, monthly, with the evidence preserved — that is a real time commitment.

Right when: you have technical capability in-house and the patience to measure properly rather than react to single answers.

CITEMARK

Measurement-first, fixed published prices

Diagnosis from £195, implementation from £595 a month, every scope published, rolling contracts. We measure what AI engines actually say with repeated observations, fix eligibility and evidence, and report with raw data you can verify. What we are not: a full-service marketing agency — no paid media, no social, no broad content marketing.

Right when: you want the AI-answer question answered with evidence and the specific fixes implemented, without an enterprise retainer.

Line by line

The comparison that matters.

CitemarkSEO agencyDIY
Typical cost to start£195 one-off£1,000–£3,000/month, often with minimum termsYour time
Measures actual AI answersYes — repeated, dated observations on named surfacesRarely; some resell dashboard scoresPossible, but time-consuming to do properly
Search fundamentalsThe ~80% that overlaps AI eligibilityYes — the full breadthDepends entirely on your team
Published prices and scopeYes, in fullUncommon—
ContractRolling, cancel any monthCommonly 6–12 month terms—
Paid media, social, broad contentNoOften yesDepends
Guarantees mentions or rankingsNo — and we publish whyThe good ones also say no—

Agency cost band reflects typical published UK SMB retainer ranges; individual agencies vary. Where an agency guarantees rankings or placements, both Google’s and Bing’s own guidance says to treat that as a warning sign — that cuts against us too, which is why we make no such promise.

Straight answers

The questions behind the comparison.

Is AI search visibility just SEO with a new name?

About 80% of it is search fundamentals done properly: crawlability, structured data, real content, consistent facts, reviews. We say that openly. The genuinely different 20% — per-crawler access rules, rendering for engines that do not execute JavaScript, repeated multi-run answer measurement, and citation-source analysis — is real, but it sits on top of fundamentals, not instead of them.

Should we replace our SEO agency with Citemark?

Usually no. If your agency is doing the fundamentals well, keep them — we add the measurement layer and AI-specific eligibility work alongside, or hand them our fix lists to implement. Replacing a good incumbent adds risk for little gain. If the fundamentals are not being done, that is a different conversation, and the evidence will show it.

Can we genuinely do this ourselves?

Yes, and our method page publishes how. The free scan shows your technical gaps, the method explains every layer, and a capable in-house person can action most of it. What is hard to replicate in-house is disciplined repeated measurement across surfaces and the time to keep doing it monthly — that is mostly what you are buying from us.

Why are you cheaper than most agencies offering this?

Structure, not corners: no office, no account-management layer, no sales team, published fixed scopes, and a founder doing the work. The £250–£800 monthly band is thin in the UK because agencies carrying that overhead cannot serve it profitably. We can, while it stays lean.

Decide with evidence

Whichever route you choose, baseline first.

The free scan shows your technical readiness in about sixty seconds. The £195 Snapshot shows what AI engines actually say. Both outputs are usable by any of the three routes on this page — including the two that are not us.

Run the free scanSee the £195 Snapshot