By role
Depth on the engagements that need it, without carrying the specialism year-round
A migration diagnosis, a GEO assessment or a recovery investigation may come up three times a year. Hiring for that is difficult to justify; declining the work is worse.
Work delivered through an agency stays with that agency. We do not approach your clients.
Most agencies are competent across a broad range and deep in a narrower one. That is a reasonable way to run a business, and it creates a predictable problem: the engagements that require the depth you do not have arrive anyway, usually from a client you would rather not disappoint.
The options are to decline, to attempt it and learn expensively, or to bring in someone who does it regularly. The third is generally the cheapest and is only awkward if the specialist treats your client relationship as an opportunity.
This page exists to be explicit about that. Work arranged through an agency stays with that agency, in writing, as a term of the engagement.
Engagements
Where agencies bring us in
The pattern is consistent: specialist depth on a defined problem, delivered to your timeline and, where you prefer, under your name.
Migration protection
A replatform or domain change where the downside is severe and the client's expectations are absolute. Planning, verification and post-launch monitoring alongside your build team.
Recovery diagnosis
Visibility has fallen and the cause is genuinely unclear. Diagnostic work that establishes what happened before anyone commits to a response, which is where most recovery efforts go wrong.
GEO assessment
A client is asking about AI visibility and wants a substantive answer. Entity clarity, retrievability and citation readiness, assessed honestly and without the overstatement common in this area.
Independent second opinion
Where a client has resisted a recommendation, or where you want an outside check on your own conclusion before committing the client's budget to it.
Technical depth
Rendering problems, indexation issues at scale, architectural questions on large sites. The work that requires someone who has seen the failure mode before.
Pitch support
An assessment of a prospect's site to ground a pitch in evidence rather than in generic observations. Delivered quickly, and under your brand where appropriate.
A specialist who treats your client relationship as a lead is a specialist you use once. The commercial logic of not doing that is straightforward.
Arrangements
How the work is structured
Two models, and the choice is yours. In the first, the work is delivered to you and presented as your own. Reports are produced without IXSEO branding, communication runs through your team, and the client sees a single supplier.
In the second, we are introduced as a specialist partner. This works well where the client values evidence of specialist input, and where the subject matter benefits from being seen as independent.
Neither is better. Agencies with strong client relationships usually prefer the first; agencies pitching against larger firms often find the second strengthens the proposition.
Delivered as your work
Unbranded reports, communication through your team, single supplier from the client’s perspective. Common where the agency holds the relationship closely.
Named specialist partner
Introduced explicitly, with direct involvement in client conversations where that helps. Common on technical and GEO engagements where independence carries weight.
In both cases
The client relationship remains yours. No independent approach, no direct solicitation, documented in the engagement terms rather than promised informally.
Frequently asked questions
Will you approach our clients?
Can the work be delivered under our brand?
Do you work with agencies that already have SEO people?
Can you provide an independent second opinion?
How are agency engagements priced?
Start with a specific engagement
Most agency relationships begin with one piece of work on one client. Tell us what the problem is and we will say whether we are the right people for it.