Is an SEO agency worth it?

An SEO agency is worth it when you have a competitive niche, a real budget, and someone internal to manage the relationship. Retainers in the US typically run 1,500 to 5,000 dollars a month, so the pages they produce have to generate serious revenue to pay back.

For small sites, it is often not worth paying an SEO company. Agencies front-load audits and reports, and many outsource the actual writing. Six months in, plenty of clients hold documents instead of rankings.

Judge any agency on published pages and ranking movement, not deliverables. Ask what they will ship in month one. A vague answer is your answer.

BlazeHive exists as a startup SEO agency replacement that publishes researched pages every day instead of monthly reports.