How to Choose an AEO Agency
Choose an AEO agency on four things: whether it measures AI visibility honestly, as a tracked share of voice over time rather than a fake "AI ranking," whether it can earn you mentions on the third-party sources AI actually cites, the proof behind its own visibility, and a clear reporting cadence. Be wary of anyone who guarantees a number-one spot in AI answers.
The best AEO agency is the one that can prove its own visibility and refuses to promise a ranking it cannot control.
Four things that separate a real program from a dashboard
Honest measurement
Answer engines are probabilistic. A credible agency reports your share of answers over a fixed set of buyer questions, run repeatedly and trended over time, and pairs it with how customers say they found you. Anyone selling a single "AI ranking position" is selling a number that changes every time you ask.
Off-site authority, not just on-page work
The strongest lever in AEO is being mentioned and cited on the third-party sources models trust. That is an outreach capability. Most agencies are SEO shops that can tidy your pages but cannot earn those citations at scale. Ask exactly how they get you mentioned elsewhere.
Proof on themselves
An AEO agency that cannot show its own visibility climbing is asking you to take it on faith. Ask to see their own share of voice, and a real client trend, not a logo wall.
A reporting cadence you can read
You should always know your number and what is being done to move it. Plain-language reporting on a regular cadence, not a quarterly slide of vanity metrics, is the difference between a program and a retainer that quietly renews.
Walk away from these
Guaranteed number one
No one controls a probabilistic model's output. A guarantee is a sales line, not a capability.
Vanity dashboards
A score that only goes up and never ties to pipeline is decoration. Ask how the number connects to revenue.
Manufactured urgency
"The window is closing" is a close tactic. AEO rewards early, consistent work, but there is no cliff, and pressure is a tell.
Why an outbound company is built for this
SourceRank AI is the AEO arm of Danish Lead Co. The hardest, highest-value part of AEO, earning citations on the sources AI trusts, is an outreach problem, and outreach is the work Danish Lead Co has done to book 10,000+ meetings across 110 businesses since 2021. We come at the most valuable lever from the side most agencies cannot.
We also hold ourselves to the standard above: honest, trended measurement, no guaranteed rankings, and our own visibility shown rather than claimed. SourceRank AI was founded by Frederik Jakobsen.
The fastest way to compare is to measure
Before you hire anyone, see where AI ranks you today and who is named instead. The Visibility Audit gives you that baseline engine by engine, and it is the same number any agency should be accountable to.
Get your Visibility Audit
Where you show up across answer engines today, and the plan to close the gap.
View pricing ->How much does AEO cost?
Market ranges and what drives the price, so any quote is easy to sanity-check.
Read the answer ->How is AI visibility measured?
What honest measurement looks like, and what to distrust.
Read the answer ->Common questions
Should I hire an AEO agency or do it in-house?
In-house works if you have both technical SEO and active outreach capacity, because AEO needs both. Most teams have one, not the other, and the off-site citation work is usually the missing piece and the hardest to build from scratch.
What is the difference between an AEO agency and an SEO agency?
An SEO agency optimizes your pages to rank. An AEO agency also makes your entity unambiguous and earns citations on the third-party sources models pull from, so an AI will name you. SEO is the foundation; AEO adds the off-site and entity work that gets you into the answer.