Times are changing fast and now you are here trying to find an agency who can actually help you with getting on AI Visibility answers.
It's hard though because as we have seen countless times and with the most recent trends of NFT's, Crypto, etc, there are a ton of purported experts.
So here's a list of companies we've put together to help you with your search.
How we evaluated the best AEO agencies
The difficulty with evaluating AEO agencies compounds already existing issues with evaluating for SEO. SEO isn't something that you can't necessarily look at an agency's other deliverables, like a website from a branding agency.
So that creates one dimension of difficulty, but with AEO being so new and with so much unknown the BS radar is hard for the average marketer and brand to detect.
The main method that we evaluated an agency's AEO prowess centered around:
- Thought Leadership & Expertise (Conference speaking, solid content, SEO community response)
- Relationships (Zupo's an active member in the community so we get an inside look at impactful agencies)
- Body of Work (The agency's body of work from SEO into AEO)
- Industry Fit (healthcare, tourism, multi-location, enterprise, B2B)
The 10 best AEO agencies
Let's just come right out with it, we think we are the best!
1. Zupo
Best for: B2B teams that want a practical AEO program tied to measurable AI visibility improvements.
Zupo takes AEO beyond just general best practices and amplifies them into methodical strategies to help brands specifically target the exact prompts that are the most important to them.
Our AI Visibility and AEO framework focuses on a complete top down approach, helping brands ensure:
- Brands appear in relevant product or solution searches
- Positive brand sentiment when AI users are evaluating the brand
- That the AI is properly aligned with a brand's target ICP and markets
Winning in Answer Engine Optimization for Zupo is proactive and aggressive in ensuring AI models understand your brand the way you intend to.
Key capabilities
- Top-down AI Visibility strategy built around how real buyers evaluate brands. This includes vendor discovery, brand checks, comparisons, and shortlisting
- AI Visibility tracking and reporting across major AI platforms with clear baselines and trendlines over time
- Fan-out query analysis to map how exactly LLM models answer a question and to target content strategy specifically around these queries.
- Content structuring for answer-friendly formats to ensure that LLMs can easily read, index and synthesize the information on your site for their responses.
- Competitive AI presence benchmarking, so you can see where competitors show up, where you are missing, and what themes AI associates with each brand
Pros
- Leader in AI Visibility research and testing, with a process built around what is actually happening in AI results today
- Strong brand and AI alignment focus, so what AI says about you matches your positioning and the way you sell
- High-touch, high-communication team, with education built in so your marketing team learns the “why,” not just the deliverables
Cons
- Not a checklist or tune-up shop. If you want light SEO tweaks or a quick AEO pass, there are agencies built for that
- Best fit when AI visibility is a priority. Zupo is for teams that want a focused program designed to win visibility and mindshare inside answer engines, not just “do a few updates”
2. Fire&Spark
Best for: Healthcare and digital health brands that need compliant, trust-first organic growth.
Fire&Spark has a clear focus on digital health, with messaging centered on trust, compliance, and patient-centric SEO. They also publish directly about AI search marketing for digital health, which is a strong signal they are actively adapting their playbooks to answer engines.
Key capabilities
- Digital health and healthcare SEO positioning
- AI search marketing guidance for healthcare teams
- Case study evidence in telehealth SEO outcomes
Pros
- Industry specificity (healthcare) is a major advantage for trust and compliance narratives
- Demonstrated focus on results, not just traffic
Cons
- If you are not in healthcare, you may want a more generalist AEO partner
3. Bastion Agency
Best for: Brands that need AEO plus PR and social trust signals that influence what people and platforms repeat.
Bastion emphasizes PR, social media, and influencer marketing as core levers for building trust and visibility. While that is not “pure AEO,” it can be highly supportive of AEO outcomes because off-site credibility and narrative consistency often shape what gets repeated in summaries and recommendations.
Key capabilities
Pros
- Strong fit when your AEO challenge is brand trust and narrative, not just onsite structure
Cons
- You may need a separate technical SEO partner if your site has significant structural issues
4. Sterling Sky
Best for: Local and multi-location businesses that want to win visibility in local-intent answers.
Sterling Sky is deeply associated with local SEO leadership and local search education, with Joy Hawkins highlighted as the founder and long-time practitioner. Their positioning covers GBP optimization, technical SEO, content, links, and development support.
Key capabilities
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile focused strategy
- Broad capability coverage across local growth needs
Pros
- Excellent fit when your “answer engine” queries are local-intent (near me, best in city, service area)
- Strong practitioner credibility in local search
Cons
- If you are enterprise-scale with global content systems, you may need a larger technical/content engineering bench
5. Seer Interactive
Best for: Enterprise teams that want data-heavy SEO, analytics, and a test-and-learn culture.
Seer positions itself as a B Corp agency with SEO, paid, social, and analytics, and highlights large-scale data and retention stats in its positioning. If your AEO roadmap needs measurement discipline and cross-channel alignment, Seer is a strong candidate.
Key capabilities
Pros
Cons
- Might be more process-heavy than a small team wants, depending on engagement model
6. iPullRank
Best for: Enterprise AEO that requires technical depth and content engineering.
iPullRank explicitly positions around enterprise SEO, content strategy, technical SEO, and generative AI services. If your AEO challenge is “we have a massive site and complex systems,” their positioning aligns well.
Key capabilities
- Enterprise SEO and technical SEO services
- Generative AI services and content engineering
- AI search technical foundations content
Pros
- Strong fit for complex technical environments and large content ecosystems
Cons
- Often a better match for mid-market and enterprise than very small businesses
7. DCI (Development Counsellors International)
Best for: Tourism and place marketing, where discovery depends on trust, storytelling, and authority.
DCI is heavily positioned in travel PR, tourism marketing, and place branding. For destinations, “answer engine” visibility often looks like recommendations, itineraries, and comparisons, where authority and narrative clarity matter as much as technical structure.
Key capabilities
Pros
Cons
- Not the best fit if you want a generalist AEO agency for SaaS or ecommerce
8. Wiideman Consulting Group
Best for: Multi-location and ecommerce SEO programs that need strong strategy and guidance.
Wiideman highlights multi-location and ecommerce SEO and SEM as core competencies, plus structured audit and roadmap offerings. That makes them a strong choice when AEO success depends on cleaning up foundational SEO across many locations or product categories.
Key capabilities
Pros
- Strong fit for brands where scale and consistency are the hard part
- Clear “specialist call” positioning for multi-location strategy
Cons
- If your priority is AI platform tracking tooling, you may need to pair with an AI visibility platform
9. Conductor
Best for: Enterprise teams that want an AEO platform to run AEO in-house (with visibility reporting and workflows).
Conductor is not an agency, it is an enterprise platform that positions itself around AI Search Performance and AEO visibility, including tracking how you show up in AI search. If your organization wants to operationalize AEO with internal teams, Conductor is worth considering.
Key capabilities
Pros
Cons
- You still need people (internal or agency) to execute strategy and content changes
10. Noble Studios
Best for: Brands in travel/tourism and health/wellness that need creative plus performance marketing.
Noble Studios explicitly highlights travel and tourism and health and wellness as key industries it serves. If your AEO needs include brand storytelling, UX, and performance, this positioning fits well for those verticals.
Key capabilities
- Travel and tourism marketing
- Health and wellness digital marketing positioning
- Multi-industry focus including travel/tourism and health/wellness
Pros
- Strong fit when creative and performance need to work together, especially in destination-style buying journeys
Cons
- If your primary need is technical AEO at enterprise scale, you may want a more engineering-led partner
How to choose the right AEO partner
All of this is probably a bit overwhelming. Our list is probably not the only one you are looking at so easily you can have 20 - 30+ brands that you are seeing.
At the end of the day, I have always run my marketing career with the idea that we need to give more businesses with a great marketing experience. That doesn't necessarily need to come from us.
Saying that, here's some questions that I'd recommend that you can ask agencies:
- How do you measure AI visibility today? (prompt testing, tracking mentions, competitive benchmarks)
- What are the methods you use to improve AI Visibility? Can you provide examples and a step by step example?
- How are you acquiring Fan Out Queries?
- What is your approach to selecting Prompts for Tracking and Optimization?
What AEO means
AEO is about making your site “referenceable,” not just rankable. In practice, that usually includes:
- Content structure that answer engines can parse (clear headings, Q&A blocks, bullet lists, tables)
- Entity clarity and topical depth (so your brand is the best source for a topic, not just one page)
- Technical signals that reduce ambiguity (schema markup, clean indexing, page quality)
- Visibility measurement across AI surfaces through prompt testing, monitoring mentions, and tracking how your brand shows up in AI responses
Zupo’s own AEO and AI Visibility content leans heavily on structured formats and schema as “translation layers” that help systems interpret your pages with higher confidence.
AEO's Relationship with SEO
The full brunt of Answer Engine Optimization, or what we at Zupo like to call AI Visibility, is here.
Whether or not you personally have adopted AI search, the influence of using AI for search is growing rapidly. Users are continually using AI to help research and understand potential solutions to problems.
And despite the initial response of AI killing SEO, the truth is companies and brands have complete control in their ability to appear in AI responses.
Yes, that means you have complete control of your brand's ability to show up in answer.
That shift is why Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) has become a new term for the evolution of SEO. Admittedly there are a handful of terms being used:
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- LLLM Optimization (LLMO)
- AI Visibility
All of these functionally can be seen as synonyms.
Conclusion
AEO is not a single tactic. It is a combination of technical clarity, structured content, topical authority, and credible signals that help answer engines confidently cite your brand.
If you want a partner that treats AEO as a measurable program, not a buzzword, Zupo is the top pick on this list because of its explicit focus on LLM visibility audits, structured optimization, and practical measurement through prompt testing and AI visibility best practices.