How do you start an SEO agency business in 2027?

Startup costs: Low — $1.5K-$6K. Ahrefs or Semrush ($120-$450/mo), Screaming Frog ($260/yr), Surfer or Clearscope ($90-$200/mo), GSC + GA4 free, laptop, LLC. No office.

LLC / contracts / insurance: Single-member LLC. Contracts must include a "no guarantees on rankings" clause — Google penalizes ranking-guarantee language and clients sue when SERPs drop. E&O insurance $500-$1.5K/yr. 90-day minimum engagement clause, monthly invoicing.

Customer acquisition: Cold audit videos sent via Loom + LinkedIn DM is still the highest-converting outbound in 2027 (~3-5% reply rate when the audit is real). Niche down: "SEO for SaaS in $5M-$50M ARR range" or "local SEO for multi-location dental groups." Generalist SEO is dead — AI-overview cannibalization gutted blog-only plays in 2025-26. Wins now come from programmatic + entity SEO + brand mentions in LLM training data.

Revenue model: Retainers $2.5K-$15K/mo (small biz to mid-market). Project audits $1.5K-$5K. Avoid one-off "fix it" jobs unless they convert to retainer.

Year-1 reality: $50K-$140K solo. First 6 months are brutal — SEO has a 4-6 month proof window so churn risk peaks at month 4 before any wins land.

Honest: AI-overview era means traditional rank-tracking matters less. Reposition as "organic visibility" including LLM citations, brand mentions, schema, programmatic — or you'll lose to agencies who already did.