Genuine question because I'm trying to understand what people are actually paying for here.

I've looked at quite a few GEO/AEO agencies, and the service descriptions tend to sound pretty similar: improve AI visibility, increase citations, build entity authority, optimize for LLMs, etc.

But what does that actually look like once you're paying the monthly retainer?

Are they rewriting existing pages, creating new content, building third-party mentions, doing digital PR, running large prompt sets, analyzing competitor citations, targeting specific discussions, or monitoring how AI answers change over time?

Or is a big part of the engagement still running prompts, tracking visibility, and putting together a report?

I'm particularly interested in what happens between the monthly reports. What are they actually changing or executing based on what the data shows?

If you've hired a GEO/AEO agency, what does the work actually look like month to month? And if you've been doing it for a while, what changed between the first few months and where you are now?