| Who actually does the work? | A junior or an outsourced team you never meet, in a spreadsheet you never see. | A named person on your account, with a login to the same screens they use. |
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| Can you see what you are paying for? | One retainer line on an invoice. What it bought is anybody's guess. | Every job carries its real cost, logged against your account. |
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| What happens to pages that already rank? | Rewritten along with everything else. | Marked protected. The software cannot change title, headings or copy. They get links instead. |
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| Do they build links, or just write blogs? | Content, mostly. Link building quietly never happens, or appears later as an upsell. | Backlinks and digital PR in every engagement, and a person approves each email before it sends. |
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| Do they know if AI recommends you? | Usually not. At best one ChatGPT screenshot pasted into a slide. | 6 assistants checked on your buyers' questions, plus every question where AI names a competitor and not you. |
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| Who signs off before something goes live? | Sometimes nobody. Automated fixes push live and get noticed when a ranking drops. | You do. Articles and outreach wait for your approval. Nothing can hide your site from Google automatically. |
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| What does the monthly report look like? | A PDF built the night before the call, with charts that only go up. | Rankings, pages, links, map coverage, AI mentions and cost, in one view you can open any day. |
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| What happens if you leave? | The tool accounts are in the agency's name, so the history walks out with them. | Everything is yours. Pages, links and data, exported whenever you want. |