Outsource GEO or do it yourself? The trade-off for small businesses

You want to be found in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, but should you take it on yourself or hand it to an agency? Both can work. The right choice depends on your time, budget and ambition. Below is the trade-off, plus a simple decision guide.

Do it yourself: cheap, in your own hands

With a tool that does the measuring and the advice for you, you can do most of GEO yourself. You stay in control, get to know your market well and only pay for the tool.

Pros: lowest cost, full control, you build knowledge yourself. Cons: it takes time, and you have to create and improve content yourself.

Doing it yourself suits small businesses and freelancers who want to be involved and have time to learn. A good starting point is GEO optimization in six steps, and you measure with a prompt tracker. No time for that? Read about outsourcing SEO and GEO.

Outsource: faster, more expertise

When you outsource, an agency takes over the work: content, technical work and sometimes digital PR. You buy time and expertise.

Pros: saves time, brings experience, faster results are possible. Cons: higher costs, less knowledge built in-house, dependence on one party.

Outsourcing suits businesses with little time, bigger ambitions or complex needs. Are you a marketing agency yourself? Then you can deliver GEO as a service to your clients.

What such an agency does day to day and which questions to ask up front is on GEO agency.

The combination: the best of both

In practice, many businesses choose a middle road. They measure themselves with a tool, so they keep a grip on the data, and bring in an agency for the heavy lifting, such as technical changes or building authority. That combines low costs with expertise where it counts.

Decision guide

• Have time and want to learn? Do it yourself with a tool.
• Little time, some budget, and want results fast? Outsource or combine.
• Several brands or markets? Consider an agency for scale and consistency.
• Are you an agency yourself? Deliver GEO as a service with a tool that supports multiple domains.
• On WordPress with no time? A tool that publishes the improvements for you closes most of the gap without an agency.

What does a tool cost, what does an agency cost?

GreatCompany has fixed prices. Pro is $49 a month for one site. Automatic (for WordPress) is $99 a month without an annual contract: AI visibility is measured every day and GreatCompany publishes up to 5 improvements to your site every Monday. Want to check first? Set any item to Approve first and you get each proposal by email with Yes or No. Every page improvement can be undone with one click. Agency is $149 a month for 3 sites, with extra sites at $39 a month.

What an agency charges depends on the scope, and most do not publish a GEO price. We do not print amounts without a public source and a date. What we could verify is in what GEO costs.

What does outsourcing GEO cost on average?

Costs vary widely. An agency that provides ongoing work often uses a monthly retainer that depends on scope: only measuring and advising is cheaper than measuring, content creation and digital PR together. A one-time audit or plan can be a project fee. Doing it yourself with a tool is usually the cheapest, because you only pay for the software and handle the execution yourself.

What SEO costs with an agency, a freelancer and software is in what SEO costs.

How much time does doing GEO yourself take?

The biggest cost of doing it yourself is time, not money. Count on a few hours to define your most important questions and set up the measurement, and then recurring time to improve content based on what you see. Measuring itself takes little time when a tool does it automatically every day. The execution (writing content, technical changes) decides how many hours you spend. The six-step GEO plan helps you do that efficiently.

How to do the same for your visibility in Google is in DIY SEO.

Which tasks are best done yourself?

Measuring always belongs in-house: it is your steering information and you want to see the data yourself. Improving existing content and answering customer questions are also often better done yourself, because you know your trade and your customers best. A tool that gives advice in plain language makes this very doable without technical knowledge.

Which tasks are better outsourced?

Deep technical changes (server-side rendering, structured data at scale, crawlability) and building authority through digital PR require specialist knowledge. If you do not have that in-house and speed matters, outsourcing pays off there. Are you a marketing agency yourself? Then this is exactly the service you deliver to clients, with a tool that supports multiple domains.

Start by measuring, whatever you choose

Whether you do it yourself or outsource, the first step is always the same: measure where you stand now. Read about the free AI visibility check: then you know which questions you are missing and can make a well-founded choice.

Does the choice have to go through your leadership team? See AI visibility on the leadership agenda for reasoning that holds up there.