Survey of 73 SEO Agencies Reveals AI Strategies, Pricing, and KPI Shifts

A survey of 73 SEO agencies conducted by Ivan Palii puts a hard number on something practitioners have felt for months: the industry is restructuring around AI search, and the clearest pressure point is measurement. Agencies across the sample identified measuring SEO revenue impact amid fragmented AI search as their primary concern, with the practical response showing up in two places: KPI frameworks and retainer models.

The survey covered pricing, margins, AI success strategies, KPI changes, and 2026 investment plans. While Palii has not released a full breakdown of aggregate responses, the agency profiles emerging from the research illustrate how differently firms are positioning themselves within the same disrupted market.

Xponent21 operates on a project-plus-retainer model, with foundational project work starting at $20,000 and ongoing optimization retainers beginning at $5,000 per month. The agency targets mid-size to enterprise brands with, in its own framing, "serious growth ambitions and the investment capacity to match." That structure, separating a defined upfront engagement from recurring work, reflects a broader industry move to tie pricing architecture to AI strategy phases rather than flat monthly fees.

Omniscient Digital, a boutique agency co-founded by practitioners with roots in growth marketing at HubSpot, has staked its positioning on what it calls Generative Engine Optimization. Its client roster spans major B2B SaaS brands including SAP, Loom, Jasper, Hotjar, Asana, and Adobe, all segments where AI-driven search disruption is most acute because buyers increasingly rely on large language model outputs rather than traditional search results pages. The agency's research found that firms updating their strategies monthly based on AI performance data deliver significantly better client results than those relying on static approaches, a cadence argument that has direct implications for how retainers are scoped and priced.

At the enterprise end, iPullRank, founded by Mike King and based in New York, claims over $4 billion in documented results for clients including SAP, American Express, Nordstrom, and HSBC. King was named 2025 AI Search Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land, his second time receiving the recognition.

The survey's findings arrive as the SEO industry confronts a structural problem that pricing models were not designed to solve. When AI-generated answers absorb queries that would previously have produced trackable clicks, the attribution chain between SEO effort and client revenue becomes increasingly difficult to reconstruct. The agencies adapting fastest appear to be those rebuilding that chain at the KPI level first, then repricing their services around the new measurement reality.