Is it worth hiring an SEO agency?
Yes, if you meet two conditions: (1) your buyers actively research on Google before purchasing, and (2) you can afford to wait 6–12 months before results compound. SEO isn't worth it for businesses selling impulse-purchase B2C at low margins, or for businesses that need customers this quarter. Those should run paid ads. For B2B, professional services, home services, and considered B2C purchases, SEO is usually the single most durable growth channel available.
What the index can tell you about the downside
The entry cost is low enough that the real risk is not price. 430 of the 519 US SEO firms that publish a minimum open at $5,000 or less. What that buys varies enormously: 97 of them price under $100 an hour and 41 price above $200.
Reviews will not rescue the decision either. 512 of the 551 firms carry public client reviews, 12,065 in total, averaging 4.93 out of 5. A field where nearly everyone scores near the ceiling gives you no ranking signal at all.
How to use this
Make the first engagement a paid audit with a defined deliverable rather than an open retainer. It is the cheapest way to find out whether the firm can read your site, and at the bottom of this minimum range it costs less than one month of a bad retainer.
How this was computed. Every figure on this page is counted from The Wall's own directory of approved, US-headquartered, machine-verified-live listings: 3,460 of them in the snapshot captured 2026-09-14. Rates, minimum project sizes, team sizes, founding years and ratings are provider-declared figures published on public profiles. 1,738 of those listings publish a service list, and that field holds at most 4 services per firm, so service counts are counts of what firms name first rather than everything they sell. Percentages of disclosed values exclude listings that publish no figure. Nothing here is modeled or estimated. Sourcing standards: editorial policy.
Why this matters
Google puts this question in People Also Ask for the "seo agency" query, which means buyers are asking it while they shop. The Wall answers it from the directory position: we index 3,460 verified US growth-services vendors across 10 pillars, so the figures above come from those records rather than from a survey.
If you are evaluating vendors in this category, the SEO pillar page carries the full US firm list with rate, team size and headquarters filters.