The billion-dollar one-person SEO agency: Fiction or the future?

“We’re going to soon see 10-man companies with a billion-dollar valuation…in my small group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year there’s a one-man billion-dollar company which would have been unthinkable without AI.And now [it] will happen.”

– Sam Altman, Co-Founder, OpenAI

The first goal is to see if we can reach a 10-person billion-dollar SEO agency.

But let’s also be clear: when I say a billion dollars, I mean the company’s valuation, not revenue.

The revenue for that valuation could be described as $100 million in annual recurring revenue… ouch!

My brain is already hurting so let’s try to break it down.

Arise AI SEO agents

We need AI agents for a 10 or even 1 person SEO agency to be 1 billion. Worth USD.

These AI agents will take care of the tasks that SEOs are doing now.

Before you shut this down, consider the makeup of the average SEO agency.

With the advent of AI, the roles of operations, customer service, writers, SEO managers, account managers, SEO directors, and tech SEOs could be significantly transformed or even replaced by AI agents, potentially reshaping the entire SEO industry.

AI agents could effectively handle these roles and demonstrate their adaptability and potential in the SEO industry.

We already see a lot of customer service being outsourced to AI in all sectors, so why not SEO?

Account management could be as easy as receiving a customer’s email or chat message. The agent would send a response based on their account status.

It’s hard to imagine why this wouldn’t be faster and better for customers.

As a general rule, if what you’re doing requires clicking on a computer, AI agents can be trained to do the same as you.

They just need to understand the rules of the game and what perfection looks like.

Even today, GPT can create SEO checklists in seconds:

And then tell you how to do each part.

This is alongside the likely future website that has its own AI that can instantly change URLs and make site-wide changes.

For example, an AI could be programmed to identify and repair broken links, optimize meta tags, or even suggest content strategies based on user behavior, automating many of the tasks currently performed by SEO professionals.

It’s easy to see how SEO AI could communicate with AI web developers inside the platforms.

When I raised this point on LinkedIn a long time ago, a couple of SEOs said:

“AI will never be able to do that?”

Ding dong… wake up, people.

AI is being used to detect cancers and sophisticated online fraud.

Don’t confuse the current version of AI with what’s to come.

Dig Deeper: Could AI Ultimately Make SEO Obsolete?

How would this system work? In a one- or 10-person agency using artificial intelligence, you’ll see a variety of roles performed by either a single responsible person or a few.

Let’s break this down into phases.

Phase 1: 10-person agency

Agency owner

At the top of the tree sits the owner of the agency. Their job is to be the agency’s voice and marketer.

Yes, they want a marketing manager, but they are the company’s CEO and main driver.

It is the owner who negotiates agreements and brings in customers.

Operations

The operations manager handles the machine and ensures that it runs smoothly, including contracts, staff wages, HR etc.

Marketing Manager

By using AI to generate content and run ads, the marketing manager helps the business get seen.

Customer service

This is the most important role outside of owner involvement.

AI client services will have an army of agents, chat assistants, and ways for large volumes of clients to have their concerns handled.

Like any modern business, AI assistants, chatbots and outsourced customer service will be available. No-code tools such as Allow for automation, especially in customer service.

The customer service manager only gets involved when a problem becomes too much for the AI. This will enable an AI-empowered customer service manager to handle countless clients.

Authors

Large Language Models (LLMs) can handle large-scale content, so this doesn’t need much explanation. However, one or two writers are needed to ensure that the content is created effectively.

SEO managers

An AI-empowered SEO manager will pretty much ensure that agencies run efficiently.

They ensure that the work gets done by making sure the agents have what they need.

Account managers

The account managers monitor it all.

As standard checkers, they make sure agents are doing the job correctly.

SEO directors

The SEO director in an AI world determines the strategies, processes and the right technology to use.

Assisted by AI agents that can build entire strategies, the director ensures that results happen across the agency.

Technical SEOs

A technical SEO in this world fixes the AI ​​agents. They are an AI technician.

In this model, a 10-person agency could handle many clients and enjoy high profits.

Dig Deeper: Will AI Replace SEO Professionals?

SEO is all about patterns that AI loves

Tools like Semrush have led the way with their very useful AI SEO assistant.

Ahrefs has brought out its equally impressive page inspection and content modification tool, which allows you to see what changes were made to a website to boost its rankings.

Both tools get data to train their AI models.

In the not-too-distant future, AI may reverse-engineer exactly what you need to rank simply by observing sites in each niche and the changes that lead to better results.

Remember, SEO is largely a game of recognizing and applying success patterns in the SERPs.

Hold fast. If Ahrefs and Semrush are going to unlock the SEO secrets, doesn’t that mean everyone is going to plug their sites into these tools?

This is not SEO Communism; it is a capitalist market where several SEO tools will compete for customers, each collecting data and developing its own AI models.

The same applies to SEO agencies.

For an SEO agency to be that 10 or even one-man billion-dollar brand, they need to win clients.

These clients want to avoid dealing with SEO tools or platforms or creating AI agents; they will also run their own organizations.

But for now, let’s be clear.

We will be able to configure AI agents to handle everything from client onboarding to SEO tactics and delivery.

And that’s an important part of the next bit.

‘Who has the best SEO AI agents?’

If we remove staff from SEO, we will inevitably end up with a replacement.

An army of AI agents, but these need training from SEO.

This will be the first port of call for differentiation in the market. The actual abilities of the AIs through their training.

Even with data from SEO tools about what works and what doesn’t, SEOs will still decide how to train their AIs and what to focus on.

And even with AI agents, SEOs can still differentiate themselves in the market.

Phase 2: The Billion Dollar One Person SEO Agency

If phase 1 introduced the 10 (or so) person AI model, phase 2 occurs when the AI ​​is so powerful that it handles everything.

This is simply a case of someone setting up all the AI ​​to do SEO the way they want.

AI is the super extension of the freelancer.

Remember “The Matrix” movies where Agent Smith could copy himself as a program? The SEO experts do the same and make themselves several other versions with AI.

It sounds far-fetched, but AI has already empowered SEOs to increase productivity. This is just the next development.

This could be years away… maybe decades.

But it could be a possibility.

AI tools that create super SEOs.

But for any agency to reach that volume of business, there needs to be a pipeline.

Marketing: It’s a game changer

We have been through the most problematic economic years in living memory.

Agencies are having a hard time right now.

This has shown us how important marketing is to winning business.

Brand is everything and it grows through sales.

Sales happen when two things increase.

• Mental Availability: The likelihood of being thought of in a buying situation.
• Physical/digital availability: The ease and convenience of being bought from.

Be easy to think of and easy to find.

And this is where the one-person billion-dollar brand must thrive.

They will need to have brands that are big enough to soak up such a lot of high paying customers/high volume that they reach those numbers.

If you spend time on any social platform, you already see this.

SEOs that create great personal brands.

Here are some statistics from my own personal brand impact on Linkedin.

And that’s how SEO is going.

In the AI ​​era, we will see agency marketing become the biggest superpower.

The ‘who’ you hire will be the most important, not because they are better than others, but because they are more visible.

They say smart things.

They run ads that grab your attention.

They write books.

They have newsletters.

They get your attention.

Dig deeper: How SEO Grows Brands: The Science Behind the Service

So can we build this agency?

Will there be a $1 billion SEO agency?

With inflation, in a decade or so? It still seems unlikely.

However, this exercise shows that agencies can become more AI-empowered.

Less staff, more profit, increased value for customers and staff.

This seems to be the future.

• Lean AI-powered SEO agencies competing with AI-powered freelancers.
• AI agents are used to automate every possible SEO task.

Maybe artificial intelligence is the end of the big agency?

Only time will tell.

And I think the future of SEO lies with AI.

But then again, doesn’t everything?