SEO agency
Organic search. The whole surface, not a silo.
Technical, content, authority, local: the SEO work that builds visibility you keep. Since 2026 the same senior team also works the answers AI engines generate, because it is the same ground. Public prices, a published and versioned method, measurement by a third-party tool.
Organic 360: nine surfaces where people look for you
The base: technical health, content, authority. Everything else stands on it.
The generated answers that appear above the links.
Citations inside conversational engines, tracked engine by engine.
The engines gaining ground in the French market, measured separately.
Local pack, geogrid measurement, SoLV zone by zone.
Video visibility on YouTube and inside the results pages themselves.
The traffic that arrives without a query.
Visual search: decor, fashion, food.
Product listings and merchant feeds.
Most agencies sell SEO, local, video and AI visibility as four separate services. Botanik treats them as nine surfaces of one system, worked by one team, from Google's organic results and the AI answers above them to conversational engines, maps, video, Discover, Pinterest and shopping feeds.
The six workstreams of classic SEO
Crawl, indexation, performance, JavaScript rendering. The layer that caps everything else when it is broken.
Topic clusters, search intent, pages that answer, written so AI engines can reuse them.
Editorial links, press outreach, citations. No bulk link buying, ever.
Geogrid, SoLV by zone, local pack, business profiles.
Catalogs, facets, variants, merchant feeds. The SEO closest to revenue.
A five-step protocol, a signed baseline, a monitored switchover.
Classic SEO at Botanik breaks into six workstreams: technical, content, links, local, e-commerce, and site migrations. Each has its own page, its own scope and its own deliverables. A complete program activates three or four of them at once, never all six at the same time.
What organic SEO is, in plain terms
Organic SEO is the work that makes a site visible in the unpaid results of search engines, through three signal families: technical crawlability, content relevance, and earned authority. Unlike paid placements, that visibility does not vanish when the budget stops: it builds slowly and needs upkeep.
The weight of each family is indicative: roughly 25% technical and crawl, 40% content and intent, 35% authority and citations. Those shares vary widely with your sector, your competition and your site's maturity, and no engine publishes its real weightings. Treat them as a reading grid, not a formula.
Two properties define the channel. It is slow: visibility builds over months and has to be maintained. And it compounds: what you earn stays when you stop paying, which is what makes it the acquisition channel with the lowest cost per lead over time, and also the slowest to build. Judge an SEO agency on measured progression against a dated baseline, never on a promised position.
Since 2025 a fourth dimension has been added to the three families: engines display a generated answer before the links, and that answer cites only two or three sources. Organic search no longer stops at the ranking. Working the citation side is the role of GEO, which shares the same base and has its own category page: /en/generative-engine-optimization-agency.
Since 2026, ranking well is not enough. You need to be cited.
A generated answer sits above the links and cites two or three sources. If you are not one of them, your first position goes unseen. Since 2026 the same Botanik team works both terrains: the ranking and the citation, measured engine by engine.
The contrast is simple to state. SEO optimizes to be ranked in a list of ten links; GEO works to be one of the two or three sources cited. SEO's indicator is position and the traffic it generates; GEO's indicator is the citation rate, engine by engine. SEO content aims for the click; GEO content aims for the reuse: it must answer before it is read.
The measurement follows the same discipline as everything else on this site. You get a verdict per engine, Absent, Mentioned or Recommended, not an average across engines. Visibility is measured on up to 5,000 prompts weighted by real demand, and compared against a signed baseline. Same sources to work, different levers: answer structure, entities, freshness.
This page stays deliberately on classic SEO. For the GEO discipline itself, the method and the prices, go to the category page: /en/generative-engine-optimization-agency. For the head-to-head between the acronyms, read /en/aeo-vs-geo-vs-seo. And if you searched for an AI SEO agency, that hybrid brief has its own page at /en/ai-seo-agency.
Five expensive myths about SEO
Volume without intent produces nothing. One page that answers a query exactly beats ten lukewarm pages, and generative engines are even more selective.
The click is free, the work is not. SEO moves cost from media buying to production. The difference: the asset stays when you stop paying.
Performance breaks ties between equivalent pages. It is not a ranking lever on its own. A fast site without content does not rank.
Bulk links get detected and devalued. What counts is the editorial citation in a source that engines, and now AI models, treat as reliable.
AI moves the surface. Some informational queries lose traffic, but generative engines feed on the same sources. The groundwork stays the same; the indicator changes.
Five claims come up in almost every first sales meeting, and each one costs real money when acted on. They cover publishing volume, free traffic, site speed, paid links and the death of SEO. Here is what the data says about each of the five.
How much does an SEO agency cost per month?
Budget €890 to €15,000 per month, depending on your site profile and the competition on your queries. These are the ranges Botanik publishes on its pricing page. Read them with two variables in mind: how contested your queries are, and who actually executes the work.
| Site profile | Monthly budget | Realistic scope | Time to results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small business, local market | €890 to €1,780 | Business profile, local pages, basic technical work. Outside Botanik's scope. | 2 to 4 months |
| SMB, national market | €1,780 to €3,500 | Technical work, regular content production, measured link building. | 4 to 8 months |
| E-commerce or competitive market | €3,500 to €8,000 | Catalog, topic clusters, sustained authority, GEO included. | 6 to 12 months |
| Multi-market or multilingual | €8,000 to €15,000 | Several languages, governance, BI integration. | 9 to 18 months |
Results we can show, with the tool that measured them
Two public case studies anchor Botanik's SEO track record. For Ebay, a product-page SEO mission delivered +95% organic traffic, +38% clicks to products and +22% average order value. For Swile, an SEO acquisition strategy showed results in 3 months; no figures are published for that mission.
Numbers come with their measuring tool, because a figure without a method is an opinion. Every engagement opens with a baseline signed before the first action, measured by a third-party tool, and monthly reporting compares against that baseline. Partial results are published at the same rank as met targets: that is what makes the other lines credible.
The same logic reaches the invoice. 15 to 25% of Botanik's fees are indexed on an indicator written into the contract, measured by a third-party tool against the signed baseline, with a quarterly calculation window from the fourth month. We are paid, in part, according to whether it is true.
Local SEO: your position changes street by street
Average position means nothing in local search: Google does not answer the same thing from one neighborhood to the next. Botanik measures point by point on a geogrid and computes your SoLV, across 62 cities with a dedicated page each.
SoLV is the share of your local zone where you appear in the top three results, measured point by point across a geographic grid instead of as a single average position. It is the indicator every Botanik local mission tracks, city by city.
The measurement runs on a geogrid: your position sampled at each point of a grid laid over your zone, because results shift block by block. Your real grid is measured during the audit, never assumed.
Local work carries a written guarantee: +30% visibility on your zone, or the variable share of our fees is not due. Three conditions make it enforceable: the indicator is fixed in the contract at the start, a third-party tool does the measuring, and the measurement window is 1 month. All three met and the threshold missed: the variable share is waived.
How we work: four steps, one named deliverable each
Botanik's engagement runs in four steps, each closing on a named deliverable. The method behind it, the Oracle method v2.3, updated July 2026, is published in full and versioned: you can read the corpus, the scoring and the limits at /en/oracle-method before you ever talk to us.
- 0101 · MeasureA complete baseline on both terrains: positions and traffic on the search side, a verdict per AI engine on the other.Deliverable : A dated reference report
- 0202 · StructureTechnical work, content and structured data: everything engines and AI models need to be able to read.Deliverable : Workstreams prioritized by impact
- 0303 · PlaceAuthority building, editorial links, presence in the sources generative engines reuse.Deliverable : A quarterly citation plan
- 0404 · ProveMonthly reporting compared against the baseline, no jargon, tied to leads and revenue.Deliverable : A monthly report against the baseline
How much does organic SEO cost in France?
Expect €1,780 to €8,000 per month for a national program run by senior consultants, and up to €15,000 for multi-market or multilingual setups. Below €1,780 the realistic scope is local or basic technical work: legitimate for a small business, insufficient in a competitive market. Botanik's prices are public: the Oracle audit from €2,670 one-shot, ongoing work from €1,780 a month. The full market grid is at /en/what-a-geo-agency-costs.
How long before SEO shows results?
Three to six months for clear effects on a competitive market, six to twelve for a durable position. Technical and local gains land faster, in four to eight weeks. Every engagement starts with a signed baseline, so progress is observed, not asserted.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO works your ranking in a results page of ten links. GEO works your presence in the generated answer above it, which cites only two or three sources. They share most of the same sources: good SEO is the prerequisite, but it no longer guarantees a citation. The full comparison lives at /en/aeo-vs-geo-vs-seo.
Do juniors or subcontractors ever touch my account?
No. 100% senior consultants, zero juniors: your file is never handed to a junior or subcontracted. The person you meet at scoping executes through the last report, and your contact does not change mid-mission.
What do I keep if I stop?
After six months you keep everything: your content, your access, your measurement data, your documentation. No penalty, no lock-in to a closed proprietary tool. The engagement is six months because engines, classic and AI, take 3 to 4 months to re-crawl, re-cite and re-rank; below that, you pay to sow without ever harvesting.
Does SEO still work now that AI answers exist?
Yes. AI queries grew +494% between 2023 and 2026, and 48% of French people use generative AI in 2026. Yet Google still logs 84 billion visits a month against 5.5 billion for ChatGPT. Generative engines feed on well-ranked, trusted pages, so the SEO base matters more, not less. What changes is the indicator: position alone no longer predicts visibility, so you also measure the citation rate, engine by engine.
Should we hire in-house or use an agency?
An in-house consultant becomes the better option once production exceeds two or three permanent workstreams, provided they get technical and editorial support. Below that, an agency costs less than a full-time position and brings a multi-sector view. Many clients combine both: one internal owner, our team on expertise and measurement.
Do you cover my market?
Sixty-two cities have a dedicated page, with the zone's local competitors and its geogrid, plus six international markets. If your demand is national, geography does not change the workstreams: same method, same base, same measurement. The first 30 minutes with a consultant are free, and you talk to the person who would execute, not a salesperson.
Case studies, measured results
How Pennylane strengthened its SEO presence on key accounting and financial queries
With Botanik, Pennylane structured a comprehensive SEO strategy combining technical optimization, educational content, and semantic targeting to strengthen its position in the financial management tools ecosystem.
Franck Neuenschwander · founder, author of the Oracle method
The method you just read, Organic Inference™, is mine: published, versioned, with its limits in writing. Fourteen years on the advertiser side, and the only agency I have ever worked at is the one I run: if you want to discuss it, you discuss it with me, not with a salesperson.
Thirty minutes with a consultant
Not a salesperson. We tell you which lever fits your case, and if none does, we say that too.
Are you absent, mentioned or recommended?