How to rebrand your SEO agency for the new world of search

Author: Simon Schnieders

When you run an SEO agency, you're sort of like Taylor Swift—you always need to reinvent yourself.

For years, clients chose my SEO agency, Blue Array, because we focused on search that converts. That hasn’t changed. But what has changed is the way people search, and that means reshaping our message for today’s landscape, where large language models (LLMs) are more popular and site traffic is down.

To adapt, SEO agencies need to be fluid and dig deep into learning everything and anything about LLMs, how to optimize for them, and so much more.

That’s why I felt my agency needed a narrative refresh. To bring this narrative refresh to life, we had to rethink our tagline, introduce new offerings, and focus more holistically on search that converts by meeting audiences in the many new places they’re searching, and guiding them toward meaningful actions.

And that’s what I’ll cover in this article. SEOs are primed to make this pivot, and they have the skills to guarantee success. This isn’t about abandoning our core values—it’s about reframing them for a changing world. If you’ve wondered how to turn your tried-and-true SEO strategy into a comprehensive plan for the modern search landscape, read on.

How to position your agency for the new era of search

I don’t personally prefer the idea of “search everywhere optimization” because it suggests that we need to be everywhere, on every platform, and that’s not the case. In reality, agencies don’t need to spread themselves thin chasing every shiny new channel. 

Rebranding in this new landscape isn’t about chasing breadth, it’s about sharpening focus.

The real opportunity lies in understanding which touchpoints truly influence your audience, and then doubling down on the places that actually drive meaningful results. Here’s how to do that in your own agency.

Dial deeper into your core values

Like I mentioned, at my organic search agency, Blue Array, one of our core values has always been search that converts. That hasn’t changed with the shifting search landscape. 

What are your core values? Now’s a critical time to recommit to them and to determine a compelling framework that ensures that your strategy is truly in line with your north star. For us, that meant adjusting our tagline, which used to be “search engine optimization.” To establish our relevance in today’s search world, we tweaked our tagline to “search that converts” to speak more broadly about conversion, not just SEO. 

Consider going niche

Do you have a specialty? Lean into it. Become the search agency for eCommerce brands or B2B fintech. This will focus your attention in terms of outbounds and give you a clear market to go after. It can also aid in generating lots of relevant case studies and white papers with a clear expertise (something that can also help your probability of showing up in an LLM search). Read more creative ways agencies are managing clients in the age of LLMs.

This has worked well for me in the past. When we started my agency, we were quite unique because we were just a pure-play SEO agency. This was an intentionally uncommon move. At the time, the common wisdom—driven by books like The Marketing Agency Blueprint—was to diversify and become a generalist, offering paid search, paid social, and all those ancillary services.

I thought, if that's the common wisdom, and if I'm uncommon with my wisdom, I'm going to find a niche.

While others were becoming generalist agencies, we went in as specialists. That was our initial niche, and it proved to be incredibly effective. I knew that SEO was one of those things that was very difficult for companies to hire for and retain talent around. So, at the time, there was a business case for a pure-play SEO agency. Timing was very important and understanding what was happening in the market was key.

How to choose your niche

There are macroeconomic factors that can come into play when choosing your niche. When you're first figuring out who you're going to be targeting, you need to make very deliberate strategic moves. But you must choose your niche wisely.

1. Look for market gaps: If there’s an emerging industry, consider if you’re well placed to service it. If you have expert knowledge in a sector with limited marketing support you may be able to get clients better results.

   
   

2. Assess market viability: Look at the size of the market and potential growth. If clients in your chosen niche have limited income, then there’s a limit on how much you can charge. If your niche is under significant market pressures, then clients may be more likely to churn.

   
   

3. Expand strategically: You don't need to stay in your niche forever. Build your business, your name, and your reputation within that area. Then, use that credibility to pivot into broader, more generalist opportunities later on. In the Wix Studio Agency Forecast report, 62% of agencies reported that exploring new market opportunities was a viable growth strategy.

Stand out from the sea of sameness

Good content will always be at the heart of search (and has been a core value for Blue Array since the beginning). Why? Because the only way you can cut through the noise is by investing in content that intercepts the sea of sameness, and you're not going to get that by asking an LLM to generate content (as it will only say what has already been published on the web). Consider activity that drives multiple client touch points and creates unique value like:

• Creating white papers, research, and reports for your target market

• Host your own events and webinars to position your team as thought leaders

• Invest in personal branding for leaders in your team

Photo from Blue Array's LondonSEO XL event

As a search agency in 2025, we need to understand what kind of content our clients should produce and then where that content needs to be placed, whether that's onsite or through earned media.

Revisit your offerings

Use this shift in landscape to consider new services that meet today’s client needs. For example, at Blue Array, we deepened our offerings around reputation management. If you’re interested in learning more, I outlined an intriguing case study about the US real estate industry in this post.

We’re also getting more into brand monitoring, where you can track real time mentions of your brand. At Blue Array, one of our offerings is a verticalized service called Ignite, which is specifically tailored to startups and scale-ups. We offer a vastly reduced day rate and a specific timescale that supports the needs of that audience. It offers great value for new businesses and allows us to speak to the next generation of CMOs. It's a strategic investment in future relationships and a brilliant way to build a pipeline of future, larger opportunities. This service came about because we identified a need within our client base and evolved our offering. 

Is there an arm of your business that has shown promise but is underdeveloped, or could be repackaged into a bespoke offering? Now might be the perfect time to invest more there.

Then, actually deliver results

A rebrand will only take you so far without a mindset shift. Search isn’t just about rankings anymore; it’s about understanding the signals models use to define authority and changing the way you work to meet the search needs of today. Here’s how to switch up your day-to-day.

Explore new platforms

Once we had a new tagline, we needed a new framework to determine that everything we set out to do for our clients aligned with search that converts. My trifecta to stress-test a high-converting search strategy is:

• What is the source of traffic that’s converting for you and your competitors?

• Where do people go after they visit your site?

• What platforms are influencing LLMs’ recommendations?

In order to optimize for conversion in this shifting landscape, you need to understand the upstream and downstream of competitors' websites in order to attribute last click conversion as well as understand where people go after they visit these sites. Maybe you know that your core demo is on TikTok and you invest in search there. What other platforms are they searching on? What other touchpoints impact their buying decisions?

You also need to know who is schooling the most popular LLMs. For example: Wikipedia is a very influential source of information for modern LLMs—it’s free to use and highly structured, making it the perfect hub for both training and citations. LinkedIn is another source I see LLMs pulling from for thought leadership. These platforms, while they may not be a hub for your target audience, might become the sources for queries that your core customer searches in an LLM.

Think like an LLM

Let’s try an example: When you query a model about “best” something, what does “best” mean to the model? To some degree, it’s the collective consciousness of the web because that’s what it’s trained upon. But if “best” means that I have a high volume of glowing reviews, I need to know where the models are pulling from. Is it G2? Is it Yelp? Open up an LLM and drop a query for “best” running shoes, smart watch, or anything else in your category and see what sources your model cites. Once you know which sources the model trusts, you know exactly where to focus your efforts.

Rethink your reporting

Traditional keyword tracking is breaking down in the age of probabilistic models. With deterministic models like Google of old, reporting to stakeholders was more straightforward. Rankings were less of a moving target once established, so you could track keywords, measure impressions, and know exactly how visible you were for a given query. 

Reporting in 2025 has completely changed. Typically when we’re reporting today, we’re generating hundreds of thousands of queries to try and understand the probability that a client will be mentioned in an AI-generated search. Because with a probabilistic model, you can only have probabilities of appearing.

Wix's AI Visibility Overview provides a look at your site's visibility and brand perception across LLMs

The problem is that many SEO tools are still stuck in the old paradigm. They think you should still be tracking keywords or prompts, and then your visibility for those prompts. That makes no sense with probabilistic models because its output is going to change based on things like a user’s geography, previous chat history, or even running the same prompt twice. It’s a brand new world for reporting on SEO in 2025 (and many of us are figuring it out as we go), but there are some great tools to help you sort out your data storytelling approach.

Evolve and deliver

Rebranding your SEO services for the new world of search isn’t about chasing every shiny new platform or rewriting your entire playbook. It’s about staying rooted in what’s always mattered, while being willing to evolve how you tell that story and deliver on it. 

Reinvention doesn’t happen in a single moment. It happens in the space between reflection and action, between knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. Just like my agency’s own narrative refresh, this moment is an opportunity to get sharper about your values, bolder in your positioning, and more creative in how you meet clients where they are. 

Reinvention isn’t optional in SEO—it’s survival. And if you approach it with clarity and conviction, it can also be the most exciting chapter yet.

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Simon Schnieders, Founder of Blue Array

Simon Schnieders is the Founder of Blue Array, the UK’s largest specialist organic search agency. With a background in leading SEO at Zoopla, MailOnline, and Yell, he’s a recognized authority in the industry. Simon frequently speaks at major search conferences and contributes thought leadership on SEO/GEO strategy. Linkedin