Last month I looked at a site from a company that was paying for “SEO” for a while.
They had fresh blog posts. They had a monthly report. They even had a few rankings they were proud of. They also had the same number of leads. That’s not rare. That’s the default. Because most SEO agencies don’t sell growth. They sell activity. And activity is exactly what automation is about to crush. Good. The industry needs that punch in the face. If you’re a business owner, here’s the only thing you need to know: automation is going to make busywork cheap, fast, and everywhere. So you should stop paying premium money for it.
The real question is this: what are you actually buying?
If you’re buying tasks, you’re about to get a wake up call. If you’re buying outcomes, you’re about to get more for your money than ever.
The first trap: “We published 4 blogs, so SEO is working”
This is the trap that quietly kills budgets.
You pay an agency.
They publish content.
They show charts.
You feel like progress is happening.
But your calendar stays empty.
Here’s why: if your website does not convert, more traffic just gives you more people who do nothing.
Example you’ll recognize right away:
You go from 500 visits a month to 2,000.
Leads go from 3 to 3.
Now you’re not winning. You’re just louder.
That’s not an SEO problem.
That’s a sales problem.
Traditional marketers knew this before the internet was cool: attention is not revenue. Persuasion is revenue.
The second trap: “We use AI for everything” as a magic trick
This one is newer and it’s going to get uglier in 2026.
Some agencies will pitch you like this:
“We use AI, we can publish 30 pages a month, we’ll dominate Google.”
Translation: they’re going to flood your site with content that looks fine but doesn’t sell. You’ll end up with a bloated website, mixed messaging, and leads that don’t match what you actually want.
AI can scale output.
It can also scale mistakes.
More content is not the win.
More qualified leads is the win.
So what gets automated?
Let’s be brutally honest. A lot of what agencies bill for today is about to be commodity work.
Here’s what automation is already taking over, or will very soon:
Keyword research and clustering
Most keyword lists are the same recycled garbage. Automation can build bigger lists faster. That does not mean it built a strategy. It means it produced inventory.
Content briefs and first drafts
Drafts are cheap now. If an agency is selling you “we write content” as the product, you’re paying for something that is becoming less valuable every quarter.
Basic technical SEO checklists
Broken links, duplicate titles, missing meta, basic schema drafts, internal link suggestions, crawl issue detection. Machines catch this stuff better than humans because they don’t get tired and they don’t miss things.
Reporting theatre
Rankings, traffic, visibility, colourful graphs, zero decisions. That whole monthly PDF ritual should be automated. If you’re paying someone to manually assemble a report, you’re paying for the wrong thing.
If your agency’s invoice is mostly tied to those items, you’re not buying expertise. You’re buying labour.
And labour is getting cheaper.
What does not get automated (this is where grown up marketing lives)
Automation replaces busywork.
It does not replace judgement.
It does not replace the ability to make a buyer feel safe.
It does not replace the ability to package an offer that people actually want.
It does not replace conversion thinking.
This is where traditional marketing beats tool nerds every time.
Here’s the short list that still matters in 2026:
Offer design
What you sell, how you package it, how you price it, and why anyone should choose you. AI can brainstorm. It can’t pick the offer that fits your margins, your market, your sales process, and your constraints.
Positioning and messaging
The words that make the right person think “this is for me” and the wrong person self-select out. If you get this wrong, SEO just sends you more bad fits.
Conversion engineering
What to remove. What to simplify. What to prove. What to test. How to handle objections on the page so the buyer stops hesitating.
Measurement tied to revenue
Not rankings. Not traffic. Not vague “visibility.” Real tracking that tells you what turned into calls, quote requests, booked appointments, and sales.
Prioritization
What to fix first when you have limited budget, limited dev time, and limited patience. This is where amateurs panic and pros win.
That’s the part a lot of “digital-first” marketers never learned. They learned tools. They learned tactics. They learned how to sound smart.
Real marketing is sales psychology.
Old school rules still run the game.
Where we fit in (and why this is good news)
Here’s the line you should remember:
Task-based agencies get replaced.
Outcome-based lead engine builders get stronger.
HellMedia is not built on doing SEO chores. We’re traditional marketers first, which means we care about what makes someone buy. We just happen to be lethal with digital execution, and now we use automation to move faster.
Automation doesn’t replace us.
It replaces the busywork so we can focus on what actually moves revenue.
A quick mini case story (the kind you can steal)
A Canadian service business comes in. They want “SEO”.
Their site looks fine at a glance, but it has these problems:
The offer is generic.
The proof is weak.
The next step is unclear.
Tracking is half-broken.
The service page reads like a brochure.
Most agencies would start with blogs and backlinks because it’s easy to sell and easy to report.
We do the opposite:
We fix the money pages first.
We clarify the offer.
We add proof.
We make the CTA obvious.
We make the intake frictionless.
We fix tracking so we know what’s working.
Then we scale SEO.
Same traffic can produce more leads when the site stops leaking.
That’s the difference between “SEO output” and a lead engine.
The 2026 decision framework (use this to judge your agency)
If your SEO partner does most of these, you’re funding busywork:
They sell blog volume as the product
They show rankings and traffic but avoid leads and pipeline
They never touch your offer or your landing pages
They never talk about conversion
They never fix tracking
They can’t explain what to do next in plain language
If your SEO partner does these, you’re in better hands:
They start with the pages that convert
They improve your offer and messaging before scaling content
They treat content like sales enablement, not “SEO homework”
They run a simple testing plan for headlines, CTAs, and layouts
They report decisions, not charts
They tie work to leads you actually want
The new standard for SEO in 2026
If you want a simple picture of what serious SEO looks like now, it’s this:
Step 1: Fix conversion before you chase traffic
Service pages, landing pages, proof, CTA, tracking. Make the site sell first.
Step 2: Build content that answers buying questions
Not “what is SEO” content.
Real buyer content like:
How much does this cost?
How long does it take?
What’s the process?
What should I do first?
What’s the difference between SEO and ads for my business?
Step 3: Use automation for speed, not for volume spam
Automation handles research, drafts, monitoring, and reporting. Humans handle judgement, persuasion, and priorities.
Step 4: Reporting that tells you what to fix next
Simple. Direct. Useful.
Here’s what changed.
Here’s what broke.
Here’s what we’re doing next.
Here’s what it will impact.
That’s how you get compounding results without burning money.
The uncomfortable truth
A lot of business owners are going to keep paying for SEO deliverables because it feels safer than demanding outcomes.
That comfort costs you real money. If you’re still buying “blogs per month,” you’re not investing in growth. You’re buying motion.
And motion is cheap now.
If you want the blunt version for your business, do this
Email me your URL and tell me what you sell.
I’ll reply with the 3 changes that will move leads first.
Email only. Fast. No fluff.
JF