Is the SEO Agency Undervalued in 2026? Or Are We Flogging a Dead Horse?

Last month, a business owner I respect sent me a message that summed up a frustration I hear constantly: "I'm not sure I'm getting anything from my SEO spend anymore. Traffic is down, my agency just sent a monthly report that felt pointless, and I'm wondering if I'm throwing money at something that no longer works."

I didn't respond with a pitch. I just said, "Tell me more."

That feeling is valid. If your agency hasn't sat down with you and had an honest conversation about what's happening, that's the real problem, not SEO itself.

Getting Straight to the Point

I've worked in this industry long enough to recognize when something is genuinely broken versus when it only looks broken from the outside.

Right now, it looks broken because reporting hasn't caught up with how search actually works. Your agency shows you a ranking. You look at your enquiry volume. The two numbers don't line up, and the math in your head stops making sense.

Nine times out of ten, the problem isn't that SEO stopped working. The problem is that the version of SEO you've been paying for stopped working, and nobody told you.

Search Has Changed, Significantly

Compare how you find information now to three years ago. You ask ChatGPT a question. You might use Perplexity. Google summarizes an answer with AI before you scroll past the first screen. Your customers behave the same way.

The numbers back this up. When a Google AI Overview appears at the top of a search result, organic click through rates drop by 61 percent. That's not a minor dip; it reflects a structural shift in how people interact with search results. Gartner predicts traditional search engine volume will fall 25 percent by 2026 as more users move toward AI powered answer engines.

So if your traffic has dropped and your agency still points to keyword rankings and calls it a win, your skepticism is justified.

There's another side to this shift, though. Brands cited inside AI Overviews see 35 percent higher organic click through rates and 91 percent higher paid click through rates than brands left out entirely. Traffic arriving from AI tools converts at 4.4 times the rate of standard organic search. SEO isn't dying. It's sorting itself into winners and everyone else.

Which side of that line does your business sit on right now?

The Conversation More Agencies Should Be Having

When a client questions their SEO spend, I open their website in a fresh browser and type the exact question their ideal customer would ask into ChatGPT. Then I check one thing: does their brand appear in the answer?

Most of the time, it doesn't. That's the conversation worth having, not whether a page ranks third for a keyword fewer people type into Google each month.

Forrester research from 2024 found that 92 percent of B2B buyers begin the purchasing process with at least one vendor already in mind before formal evaluation starts, and 41 percent had a preferred vendor selected before any evaluation began at all. For many buyers, the process has shifted from selection to confirmation.

Getting onto that shortlist matters. If you're not part of the conversation happening inside AI generated answers, someone else may be shaping the narrative around your business, and it might not favor you. Creating your own story, through content and earned authority, gives you a say in how that narrative develops.

For businesses earlier in their journey, that shortlist forms inside AI answers, Google's featured snippets, and the content people find while they're still trying to understand their own problem. If your business isn't visible during those early moments, you're not losing to a competitor on price or product. You're losing before the race starts.

Closing that visibility gap is what SEO should deliver in 2026.

What You Should Actually Be Paying For

The SEO work that still drives real business results looks different from what many businesses are used to receiving.

It means building a technically clean website that both Google and AI tools can read and interpret correctly. It means producing content that answers genuine customer questions, written with real expertise rather than generated purely to hit a keyword count. It means building brand authority and reputation so that when an AI tool assembles an answer, your business becomes a natural reference point.

BrightEdge found a 60 percent overlap between the pages AI tools like Perplexity cite and the pages already ranking in Google's top ten results. Foundational SEO work, done correctly, feeds both channels at once.

Here's what that looks like in practice, drawn from a client I worked with directly.

This client came to us with modest traffic and a small, moderately engaged audience. Over two years of focused SEO work, organic sessions grew from 498 to 1,304, a 162 percent increase. Direct sessions, the ones driven by people specifically seeking out the brand by name, climbed 282 percent. Organic engagement rate moved from 50.6 percent to 94.8 percent, a shift that matters more than the raw traffic figures. Visitors arriving from search weren't landing and leaving. They were reading, exploring, and engaging with the client's services.

By 2025, the site held 4,746 clicks in UK search alone, with an average click through rate of 5.85 percent and an average ranking position inside the top ten. The site also began appearing in US, EU, and Asia Pacific searches, well beyond its original local footprint.

This growth didn't come from chasing volume. It came from building genuinely useful, client focused content that answered real questions and built real authority. The site moved, in measurable steps, from discovery to demand generation within a competitive niche, producing business outcomes rather than a vanity metric buried in a SERP report.

That's the return this kind of investment should produce.

The Honest Question to Ask Your Agency

On your next call with your SEO agency, ask this directly: "If someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity the question our ideal customer is searching for, does our brand appear in the answer? What are you doing to change that if it doesn't?"

Pay attention to how they respond. A capable agency will have a plan already in motion. They'll show you where you currently stand in AI visibility and outline what it would take to improve that position.

An agency that struggles to answer, becomes defensive, or pivots straight back to keyword rankings is the one worth questioning, not the channel itself.

So, Should You Keep Investing in SEO?

Here's my honest answer.

If you're paying for SEO work that still treats 2025 like it's 2017, producing generic blog posts, sending ranking reports disconnected from revenue, and never mentioning how your brand performs inside AI answers, question it. That version of SEO no longer justifies the invoice.

But if you're working with people who understand the full picture, building your authority, your technical foundations, and your AI visibility, and connecting all of it to business growth, you're not funding a dead channel. You're investing in the infrastructure that determines whether your business gets found over the next five years.

Two SEO packages might look identical on a price list. The results they produce rarely are.

If you're unsure which one you've been paying for, that conversation is worth having. No pitch, no pressure, just an honest look at where you stand and what it would take to change it.

Send me a message. I'd genuinely like to help you figure it out.