Some of it nobody can do for you
Deciding what you charge, who you are wrong for, and what you will state publicly are business decisions. An agency can tell you the page needs a number; only you can decide the number — and refusing to state one is what keeps you out of the answers.
Do it yourself: the audit and the basics
Asking the engines about yourself, fixing contradictory descriptions, and consolidating your naming are an afternoon of work with no specialist knowledge required — the thirty-minute audit finds most of it.
Pay for the work that needs doing repeatedly. Keep the work that requires deciding what your business will say.
Buy: measurement and the restructuring pass
A stable prompt set sampled properly every month is tedious and easy to do inconsistently. Restructuring key pages for passage-level retrieval is a skill that improves with repetition — both are worth buying.
Buy: the corroboration work
Getting described accurately at credible third-party sources takes relationships and persistence. It is the slow lever that decides recommendation, and it is the least likely thing to happen internally alongside other jobs.
How to tell a good supplier
They ask what you refuse to publish and why. They report appearance and description rather than traffic. They tell you which parts you must decide yourself. Anyone promising rankings in AI answers does not understand the medium.
Either way, own the measurement
Keep the prompt set and the results yourself. It is the record of whether anything worked, and it should not leave with a supplier.