Your reports look fine.
Impressions up. A handful of keywords climbing. A tidy green arrow next to something called "visibility." And your sales team still can't name a single deal that came from organic search.
Eighteen months in, that's not a slow start. That's a signal.
So when a marketing lead asks us, "What B2B SEO agency should I hire if my current agency isn't generating leads?" the honest answer doesn't start with a shortlist. It starts with learning to read what's already in front of you. The gap between an agency that builds your pipeline and one that builds your invoice shows up months before the contract ends—if you know which number to watch.
Here's how to spot it, and how to hire the right B2B SEO agency next time.
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TL;DR
Agency relationships fail quietly. The reporting stays green while the pipeline stays flat, and nobody says it out loud for three more quarters.
Six warning signs tell you whether your current agency is underperforming. The fastest one: ask where your brand shows up in AI answers and watch what happens.
Vet on five things—your goals, their industry experience, their strategy, their transparency, and the operational questions most buyers forget to ask.
AEO is part of the job now. An agency treating AI search as a side project is selling you a 2019 service at 2026 prices.
Branded web mentions correlate more strongly with AI visibility than backlinks do. Ask your agency what they're doing about that.
Price is the worst first question. Treat the call like an interview, not a quote request.
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A Denver cybersecurity firm was chasing national rankings and getting nothing back. We narrowed it to the market that could actually convert, and it went from zero to real leads in three months. See how a local refocus turned search into leads in three months.
Signs Your Current SEO Agency Isn't Working
Bad agency relationships rarely blow up. They erode. The deck arrives on schedule, the numbers tick up, and the quiet thing goes unsaid for another quarter.
Here's what to look for.
1. The Reporting Leads With Impressions and Rankings
Impressions are the easiest SEO metric to grow and the least connected to revenue. If your monthly report opens with impression growth and keyword movement, and you have to scroll to find anything about leads, they're showing you metrics that flatter the work instead of the metrics that fund it.
A good report opens with pipeline: form fills, demo requests, qualified leads, and closed revenue where you can attribute it. That's what SEO for lead generation actually looks like.
2. They Can't Tell You Where You Show Up in AI Answers
This is the fastest test in 2026, and most agencies fail it.
Ask a simple question: when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews to recommend a vendor in your category, does your brand come up? Then ask how they know.
94% of B2B buyers now use large language models during their buying process. — 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report
If the answer is a shrug or a redirect back to keyword rankings, you've learned what you needed to. Google publishes its own guidance on optimizing for generative AI search. When the search engine has documentation on this, and your agency has no position, the gap isn't in the industry.
3. Content Volume Is the Strategy
Four posts a month, every month, on topics that read like they came off a keyword tool and were never questioned. If you can't explain what any single piece is supposed to accomplish commercially, it probably isn't accomplishing anything.
96.55% of pages get zero traffic from Google. — Ahrefs, Search Traffic Study
Publishing more generates invoices faster than it generates pipeline.
4. You Have No Visibility Into the Work Itself
Not the results—the work. What shipped last week, what's queued, who's doing it. If the only artifact you ever see is a monthly PDF, you're paying for a black box and hoping.
5. The Pipeline Has Been Flat for Two Quarters or More
SEO takes time, and that's true. But "it takes time" has an expiration date, and around the two-quarter mark it stops being patience and starts being cover. Ask which leading indicators should move before revenue does. An agency that can't name them has no model of how its work turns into money.
6. Renewal Comes Up Before Results Do
You know this one. The contract conversation arrives on schedule. The results conversation never quite does.
How Buyers Actually Choose the Right B2B Agency
Before the questions, understand the room you're in.
B2B buyers spend only 17% of their purchase journey meeting with potential suppliers, and 27% of it researching independently online. — Gartner, The B2B Buying Journey
Gartner also found 75% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free sales experience. That cuts both ways. It's how your buyers evaluate you, and it's how you should evaluate an agency: most of what you need to know is visible before anyone gets on a call.
So do the research. Most of how to choose the right B2B agency happens before the first call: read their own site the way a buyer reads yours. If an agency selling SEO can't rank, can't be found in AI answers, and writes the same vague copy it warns you against, that's your case study.
The Five Steps to Hiring Right
1) Know Your Goals Before You Search
Without a defined outcome, you'll be sold whatever the agency presents best.
"At SpearPoint Marketing, LLC, we don't start an SEO campaign before we and the client define our specific goals. That way we start the campaign in sync with the right expectations." — Jesse McFarland
Start with leads and work backward:
Qualified leads per month. Name the number that would make this obviously worth it. Everything else serves that one.
Pipeline influence. Not every B2B deal starts with a form fill. Decide up front how you'll credit search for deals it touched but didn't originate.
Reduced reliance on paid ads. If the goal is to stop renting traffic, say so. It changes which pages get built first.
Visibility in AI answers. Increasingly the thing that decides whether you make a shortlist at all.
Specific competitors on specific commercial terms. Pick the queries where a buyer is close to deciding.
Bring that list to every call. The agencies worth hiring will push back on at least one item, and the pushback is the best information you'll get all week.
2) Experience in Your Industry
SEO skills transfer. Judgment doesn't, at least not quickly. An agency that already knows your buying cycle, your objections, and the five vendors you're compared against can get to useful work in weeks, not months.
“An agency will have to know or learn your industry to deliver success. An agency that has experience in your industry has a massive head start.”
Ask them: What are the highest-performing keywords in our category? Do you have case studies in our industry—with numbers, not logos? Can we call a current client? How would you approach the goal list we just handed you?
3) SEO and AEO Strategy
"What's your strategy?" invites a rehearsed answer. Go a level down and ask why each piece works.
“SEO is a strategy, not a ‘thing’ you just buy or turn on. Understand the agency’s approach to SEO and ask questions on why and how it works, especially if you don’t know anything about SEO.”
A complete 2026 program covers keyword research tied to your ICP, content built for intent (service, comparison, "vs," and "alternatives" pages before generic explainers), on-page and technical work, link and mention building, conversion optimization, and answer engine optimization.
That last one is where most agencies haven't caught up.
Branded web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664. Backlinks come in at 0.218. — Ahrefs, AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75,000 brands)
Brands in the top quartile for web mentions averaged 169 AI Overview mentions. The bottom half averaged between zero and three. Your agency should build your presence across the web your buyers and the models both read—not just acquire links to your domain. Unlinked mentions count now. Review profiles count. Being named in someone else's roundup counts.
4) Transparency
Every agency claims it. Far fewer practice it. It means you can see the work, the reasoning, and the results without having to request them.
“Transparency is one of the most vital things in an SEO partnership. A good agency removes the curtains and provides you full access to the work they’re doing and the results.”
| What to ask for | Weak agency | Strong agency |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting | Monthly PDF, impressions first | Live dashboard, leads first |
| AI visibility | Not tracked | Tracked over time, reported monthly |
| The work itself | "Ongoing optimization" | Shared queue you can open on a Tuesday |
| Account team | Unnamed, rotating | Named lead, standing meeting |
| Ownership on exit | Murky | Site, content, and accounts are yours, in writing |
Our AI Search Dashboard exists because that third row kept being the one nobody could fill. If an agency has no equivalent, ask what they're using instead.
5) The Rapid-Fire Questions
Save fifteen minutes at the end. These surface more than the strategy discussion usually does.
How do you use AI in your own process?
Where does our brand show up in AI answers today, and what would you do about it?
What have you changed in your approach in the last six months?
Who manages our account, and how long have they been with you?
What should move in months one through three, before revenue does?
What does this cost, and what's inside the number?
How long is the contract, and how do we get out?
“If your only question for SEO is ‘how much does it cost?’… Then you’ve failed at finding a successful partner. Meet with an agency and treat it like an interview, not just a vendor.”
Not sure whether your current agency is building a pipeline or padding a report?
Get a free B2B SEO and AI-visibility audit—we'll show you exactly where your buyers are finding competitors instead of you.
What Not to Do
Hiring on price. The cheapest proposal is usually cheap because something's missing, and in SEO, that's senior judgment. Sometimes it's worse—ask any agency selling discount link packages how they source them, then read Google's spam policies on link spam.
Skipping the goal-setting. Without benchmarks, nobody can tell whether the engagement is working—which conveniently means nobody can tell whether it's failing.
Expecting fast results. Technical fixes move quickly. Competitive rankings and pipeline don't. Anyone promising otherwise is telling you what you want to hear.
Leaving expectations vague. Deliverables, timelines, cadence, what happens when something slips. Settle it before the contract starts, because ambiguity always resolves in favor of the party doing the work.
Conclusion
The agencies that fail you usually aren't incompetent. They're measuring the wrong things, reporting on the wrong things, and optimizing for a version of search that's three years old. The work looks busy. The pipeline stays flat.
So hire for the opposite. An agency that opens with leads. One that tells you where you stand in AI answers before you ask. One that shows you the work, and disagrees with your goal list on the first call.
That's a different conversation than "what does it cost?"
It's also the one that gets you a partner instead of a vendor.
FAQs
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Start by diagnosing why. Most underperforming engagements fail on measurement rather than effort—the agency optimizes for rankings and impressions while pipeline is the thing that needs to move. Shortlist agencies that open their reporting with leads, can show where your brand currently appears in AI answers, and will tell you which of your goals they think is wrong. Those three filters are the short version of how to hire the right B2B SEO agency, and they clear most of the field. Our B2B SEO services are built around them.
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For a company in the $1M to $10M revenue range, most serious B2B SEO and AEO engagements run between $1,000 and $5,000 per month, depending on competitiveness and whether content production is included. The useful question is what's inside the number. A low retainer covering two blog posts and a report isn't cheaper than a higher one covering strategy, content, technical work, and AEO—it buys less work. We break down what B2B SEO should actually cost by scope.
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Expect meaningful movement in three to six months, and nine to twelve before organic search is a dependable pipeline source in a competitive category. Technical fixes show up sooner. Ask which leading indicators should move in months one through three, and hold them to those rather than waiting a year to find out.
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That's one of the strongest reasons to hire one. Paid search stops producing the day you stop paying; rankings and brand mentions keep working. The handoff isn't instant—most companies run both for six to twelve months while organic builds. Make the goal explicit on the first call, because it changes which pages get built first.
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Less than the marketing suggests. Traditional SEO still feeds AI retrieval, so an agency that only does AEO leaves out the foundation. The real distinction is whether they measure and optimize for AI visibility at all, or stop at keyword rankings and call it finished. Measuring across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot is the work, and it has a name: answer engine optimization.
Should I hire an agency or build an in-house team?
In-house makes sense when SEO is a permanent function, and you can hire senior enough to set strategy. An agency makes sense when you need range or need to move before a hire would ramp. We break the comparison down—including whether AI tools change the answer—in In-House SEO vs Agency.
Suggested External Links
Jesse McFarland has spent 17+ years helping businesses turn search visibility into real revenue, with a focus on conversion-driven SEO and AI search. He founded SpearPoint Marketing to do B2B SEO the way it should be done: tied to leads and pipeline, not vanity traffic.
Conclusion
Choosing the right B2B SEO agency involves defining clear SEO goals, assessing the agency's industry experience, and understanding their specific strategies, such as keyword research and content marketing. It's essential to demand transparency and detailed reporting. SpearPoint Marketing excels in these areas, offering deep industry knowledge, tailored strategies, and a commitment to transparency that aligns well with best practices for achieving sustained digital growth. Avoiding common pitfalls like focusing solely on cost and expecting immediate results is crucial. With its proven track record, SpearPoint Marketing is a reliable choice for businesses looking to enhance their SEO effectively.
