9 Best SEO & AEO Agencies for Sales Automation, Judged on "vs" Searches

In a March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, 51% said they now start software research with an AI chatbot more often than with a search engine, up from 29% eleven months earlier. The most common thing they asked those chatbots to do was compare vendors' strengths and weaknesses.

That's the job your comparison pages were built for. Nobody shopping for an outbound tool searches "what is a sales sequence." By the time your buyer opens a search bar or a chat window, they have two or three names in mind and type "[competitor] alternatives," "[tool A] vs [tool B]" or "best cold email software for agencies." The page, or the AI answer, that responds decides the shortlist.

Those results are some of the most contested in software. Every rival wants them, review aggregators sit on top of many, and AI answers now summarize them before anyone clicks. So the question for any SEO or AEO agency on this list is the same: can it win the "vs" result on Google and get your tool named when someone asks an assistant for alternatives? (What AEO is and how it differs from SEO are covered separately.)

Every agency below faced the same three tests, the #1 entry included, plus a separate check for AI-answer evidence. Five pass all three tests, one of them on an undated case. Each entry ends with a straight opinion, who it's for and who should skip it. Proof comes from the last 12 months; anything older or undated is flagged.

TL;DR: the verdict

1. Miraa, for outbound and cold email tools that want "vs" and alternatives pages plus AI-answer work on a fixed monthly price. Its Forge case covers five sales-tech domains, with Salesforge clicks up from 27,750 to 47,493 a quarter.

2. Exceed, for sales-tech companies that want comparison pages, links and AI search run by one team, with the most complete dated case (Crono), including AI Overview mentions from 0 to 66.

3. busyless, for teams that need dozens of competitor pages fast and a messy content library remapped, at $2,500 a month.

The rest: Breaking B2B for category leaders defending head terms and AI search traffic; Grizzle for CRMs needing volume across markets; Discovered Labs if AI answers matter as much as Google; PipeRocket for templated integration and competitor pages; SimpleTiger if a long review record and AI share-of-voice reporting reassure you; ContentMonk for tools selling into a small, countable market.

At a glance

How we chose: three tests and an AEO check

For the broader playbook behind this list, see the sales tech SEO pillar.

None of these agencies was hired or tested. The evidence is each firm's own website, its case studies and testimonials, and review profiles where they exist (as of 15 Oct 2026). The three tests:

1. Named sales-tech client: a sales automation, sales engagement, CRM or sales-workflow client the agency names publicly.

2. Comparison or alternative work for that client: public evidence that it built "vs," "alternatives" or similar comparison pages for that sales-tech client.

3. No paid links: we left out agencies that sell link insertions, niche edits or paid placements, because a sales-tech site full of bought links is a liability.

Then the AEO check, which doesn't eliminate anyone but changes the ranking. We asked whether the agency shows an AI-search result (AI Overview mentions, AI referral traffic, share of voice in ChatGPT or Perplexity, or AI-attributed pipeline) and for whom:

• A result for a sales-tech or sales-workflow client: Exceed (Crono), Breaking B2B (Proposify) and Miraa (an anonymized LinkedIn automation tool).

• A result for clients outside sales tech: SimpleTiger, Discovered Labs, Grizzle, ContentMonk and busyless.

• A described AI workstream with no result: PipeRocket.

A sales-tech AI result matters more than a generic one, because "alternatives" prompts in a crowded category behave differently from a niche B2B query with three vendors.

Pricing is listed where the agency publishes it, but it isn't a test.

Clutch quotes below are the headline line Clutch shows for each review, so they are extracts. Several of these agencies have few or no public reviews.

Test results at a glance

1. Miraa

Miraa runs SEO and AEO for SaaS and AI companies, measuring the work in demos, SQLs and pipeline. Against the three tests, it names sales-tech clients, has published comparison pages for them, and its link building page describes earned links, so it meets all three.

Services

Comparison and alternatives pages are produced under Miraa's standard menu of ten services:

• Product-led SEO: feature, integration and use-case pages that show what the tool does in a sales workflow.

• Content-led SEO: B2B SaaS SEO planning that puts "vs" and "alternatives" topics near the top of the queue.

• Technical SEO: crawling, rendering and indexing fixes.

• On-Page SEO: improving titles, structure and internal links on pages that already rank.

• SEO Site Migration: moving domains or platforms without losing rankings.

• SEO Website Recovery: finding and fixing the cause of a traffic loss.

• AEO/GEO: answer engine optimization for AI-written comparisons and recommendations.

• Content Writing: expert-written content, including comparison and alternative pages.

• Link Building: earned links through outreach and digital PR, not bought placements.

• Agentic SEO/GEO: AI agents used for research, drafting and monitoring.

Pricing

Miraa publishes three plans: Basic Growth is $2,500/month, Growth+ is $3,500/month and Hyper-Growth is $5,000/month.

Reviews

No Clutch or G2 profile found.

Clients

Miraa's sales-tech clients are Salesforge, Leadsforge, Mailforge, Warmforge, Infraforge and Primeforge, all tools for outbound and cold email. Miraa produced comparison and alternatives pages for these clients, including:

• Instantly vs. Salesforge on salesforge.ai (sitemap last modified 30 Sep 2026)

• 8 Best Apollo.io Alternatives in 2026 on mailforge.ai (last modified 1 Sep 2026)

• 5 Best Instantly Alternatives I Tested in 2026 on warmforge.ai (last modified 29 Sep 2026)

Miraa's case studies page now includes a named study for these same clients. It says the five domains (Salesforge, Mailforge, Warmforge, Primeforge and Infraforge) risked competing with each other, so Miraa gave each one its own intent territory: sequencing, mailboxes, domains, warm-up and infrastructure. The content engine was bottom-funnel: competitor reviews, "alternatives" pages and pricing comparisons. Search Console, May–Jul 2026 against Apr–Jun 2025:

• clicks across the five domains rose 117.7% to 75,416 a quarter, and impressions rose 339% to 19.6M

• average position went from 23.5 to 9.4

• Salesforge went from 27,750 to 47,493 clicks a quarter, Mailforge from 4,471 to 12,493, Primeforge from 306 to 7,432 and Warmforge from 768 to 4,441

The study doesn't break out how much of that came from the comparison pages alone. Its other sales study, for an unnamed LinkedIn automation tool, reports more than 200 qualified leads by day 90 and $2M ARR by month 18.

That LinkedIn automation study is also Miraa's clearest AEO evidence in sales tech. It says GEO work "placed the brand in AI search results for 15 high-intent queries by week 8," alongside comparison content and prospecting guides. The client is anonymized, so ask for the query list on a call.

Summary

For an outbound tool, Miraa has the most relevant proof on this list: six named cold-outreach clients, live "vs" and alternatives URLs you can open, and dated Search Console numbers across five domains. Splitting sibling products by intent is also a problem few agencies have solved publicly, and AEO/GEO sits inside the standard plans rather than as an add-on.

The cons: no Clutch or G2 reviews, so all evidence is Miraa's own. Its proof is concentrated in one client family, and its sales-tech AI result is anonymized, so ask for a reference outside Forge. And a team still searching for product-market fit may find even $2,500 a month early.

Choose it for: outbound and cold email tools that want comparison pages and AI-answer work on a fixed monthly price.

Pass if: you're a large CRM needing content across many markets and languages.

2. Exceed

Exceed is a B2B SaaS SEO agency that runs strategy, content, link building and AI search as one programme. It passes all three tests. Its Crono case, an engagement running since December 2024, is the closest match to this list.

Services

Link building runs "through outreach to high-authority sites." The Crono case page (retrieved 15 Oct 2026) says GEO is included in every engagement, and that monthly reports cover demo requests by channel, SQLs, pipeline value, organic CAC against paid, and close rate for organic leads.

The AEO method is described plainly on the same page: content structured "to earn AI citations," GEO citation outreach run "alongside link building," and AI-referred traffic tracked "as a distinct channel." For Crono, Exceed says brand placements in sales and GTM publications did double duty, helping Google rank a young domain and building "the third-party validation LLMs draw from when recommending sales tools."

Pricing

From €5,000 a month on 30-day rolling contracts. The FAQ on the Crono case page says there is no minimum contract beyond that rolling month, and that founders Josef and Eddie lead strategy and quality review while a dedicated link builder handles outreach.

Reviews

No Clutch or G2 profile with reviews turned up, so the evidence rests on the agency's own case study.

Clients

For Crono, which Exceed labels "Sales Tech," the case study says Crono arrived in December 2024 with about 1,260 monthly clicks and 125 keywords, mostly branded or top-of-funnel. The programme targeted three clusters from day one: competitor alternative pages for buyers evaluating Outreach and Apollo, category comparisons such as "best social selling tools," and pain-point content on fragmented sales stacks and low outbound reply rates. Exceed reports:

• bottom-funnel keywords growing from 29 to 355 (a 1,124% increase on the case page)

• AI Overview mentions from 0 to 66

• AI referral sessions from 5 to 61 per month (a 1,120% increase)

• 254 organic demo form submissions over 14 months

The same page shows example rankings it attributes to the work, including #1 for "Outreach Alternatives." Its homepage also cites "347 SQLs from organic · 12 months" for Crono.

Summary

Exceed has the most complete independent sales-tech story here: a dated Crono case, ranked alternatives pages, AI Overview and AI referral numbers and 254 demo submissions. It's also the only firm that explains how its link outreach and its AI citation work feed each other. Rolling 30-day contracts make it low-risk to try. The gap is outside validation, with no reviews on Clutch or G2.

Choose it for: sales-tech companies that want comparison pages, links and AI search from one team.

Pass if: your budget is under €5,000 a month.

3. busyless

busyless is a small SEO shop led by founder Eugene Suslov. Its Reply.io case, published in July 2026, passes all three tests.

Services

Competitor pages, content remapping, a programmatic SEO engine and outreach. busyless says Reply was paying about $90,000 a year to an agency for 8 to 12 mostly directory links a month, and that it replaced this with 20+ links a month from real SaaS sites through direct outreach.

The site now positions busyless as a fractional head of content, with "AI discovery" as one of the channels it can pick and structured data handled by its production system. Its homepage lists two AI-answer claims, both undated and neither for a sales tool: Awesomic ("+30% visibility, #1 in LLMs") and VoiceOrder ("10 of 15 prompts in 1 month"). We found no AI-answer result for Reply.io.

Pricing

Published: a $2,500 one-off discovery project, or a fractional head of content from $2,500 a month.

Reviews

Clutch lists busyless at 5.0 from 1 review (Oct 8, 2026, Content Writer at a UI/UX design company). Its headline: "Eugene was very responsive to our needs, flexible with our requests, and often went above and beyond what we expected."

Clients

Reply.io. The case page says busyless shipped 30 "Reply vs. Competitor" pages and took monthly organic sessions from 15K to 50K in nine months, with 400+ existing articles remapped. The busyless homepage gives a different summary for the same client (45K monthly visits in 18 months), so ask which period each figure covers. The case quotes Olivia Milton, ex-CMO of Reply.io.

Summary

busyless's Reply.io case shows speed: 30 competitor pages in month one and a 400-article library remapped. But its own homepage and case page give different Reply.io figures, its AI-answer claims are undated and outside sales tech, and it's a small founder-led shop with one Clutch review.

Choose it for: teams that need dozens of competitor pages quickly at $2,500 a month.

Pass if: you need a larger team, consistent single-source numbers, or proven AI-answer wins for a sales tool.

4. Breaking B2B

Sam Dunning runs Breaking B2B, which sells SEO and AEO to B2B SaaS companies. It passes all three tests.

Services

SEO, AEO and link building. Its link-building page says every placement is "earned by manual outreach," with "No PBNs, no link marketplaces, no bulk guest post networks." Those methods include guest posts on niche sites, so ask how each one is sourced.

Pricing

Published: from $4,600 a month on a 12-month term for the Light plan, and $6,000 to $6,500 a month for Silver.

Reviews

Breaking B2B has no reviewed Clutch or G2 profile, so its own case pages carry the proof.

Clients

Its Proposify case, dated April 28, 2026, covers proposal software that sales teams use to close deals. The write-up says Proposify, an eleven-year category leader, had seen head-term rankings drift and AI Overviews take clicks, and had "zero activity on AI search" when the work began.

Breaking B2B reports:

• Proposify reaching #1 in the US for "proposal software" and "quoting software"

• 68% more clicks on comparison pages

• 91% more AI search visitors

• LLM-attributed discovery rising in Proposify's "how did you hear about us" tracking

The AEO piece wasn't a separate project. The case says the same content was "rebuilt to surface in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overview citations, not just classic SERPs." Kyle Racki, Proposify's co-founder and CEO, is quoted: "We have 68% more clicks from competitive pages from prospects comparing vendors or looking to move, and our AI search visitors are up 91%."

Summary

Breaking B2B's Proposify case is dated, named and specific about both comparison-page clicks and AI search visitors, and it measures LLM discovery the low-tech way, by asking customers. It requires a 12-month term at $4,600 a month or more, and its link methods include niche guest posts, so ask how each is sourced.

Choose it for: category leaders losing ground on head terms, to rivals' comparison pages and to AI Overviews.

Pass if: you can't commit to a 12-month contract.

5. Grizzle

Grizzle is a London B2B organic growth agency that has worked with Pipedrive since 2016.

Services

Bottom-funnel content, landing pages for in-market buyers, and digital PR. Its PR pages describe pitching journalists and the Grizzle Network, which is earned coverage.

Its homepage now leads with "Content, SEO, and GEO systems," and its PR pitch is partly an AEO pitch: original research and mentions in the blogs, listicles and publications that AI Overviews and LLMs cite. It produced Pipedrive's "State of Sales" report end to end and pitched it to journalists, but it doesn't report an AI-visibility result for Pipedrive. Its one AI number is for Tipalti, a payables company, which it says reached a 52% visibility score in Profound, with no date.

Pricing

Grizzle doesn't list prices; the content credit system suggests scope is set per client.

Reviews

Grizzle's Clutch profile has no reviews yet.

Clients

Grizzle's Pipedrive case, labeled "Sales Tech," describes a relationship that began in 2016 and a content programme of over 30 articles a month. The page gives no dates for its results, so we don't repeat them here. On 18 Mar 2026, a Grizzle hiring post on X named Pipedrive and Semrush as clients.

The case also describes a content credit system that splits effort between rewrites and light edits. Ask how that would apply to your library.

Summary

Grizzle's nine-year Pipedrive relationship is the longest client tenure on this list, and its research-led PR is the kind of third-party coverage AI answers draw on. Its results are undated, its case shows no comparison pages and its only AI number is for a non-sales client, so it passes only our first test.

Choose it for: CRMs and larger sales platforms that need content volume and research-led PR across markets.

Pass if: winning "vs" searches is the main goal.

6. Discovered Labs

Discovered Labs is an AEO agency for B2B companies. For sales tools, the relevant part is its focus on the third-party sources AI answers cite.

Services

SEO and AI search. Its process includes earning "the third-party sources Google ranks and AI cites," such as review sites and Reddit.

Pricing

Published: from €6,995/month on a 6-month term.

Reviews

Clutch lists 4.9 from 4 reviews. AdvisoryAI's Head of Marketing (Aug 20, 2026) gave it the headline "Discovered Labs' project management is superb."

Clients

Its site carries a testimonial from Liam Collins, Head of Performance at Instantly, a cold email platform, and a 10 Sep 2026 podcast post on X lists Instantly as a client. We didn't find comparison or alternative work, or a published AI result, for Instantly or any other sales-tech client.

incident.io's AI share of voice rose 62% in four months, as co-founder Liam Dunne wrote on X on 25 Aug 2026. incident.io isn't a sales-tech company, but the post shows the agency reports AI share of voice next to meetings booked (up 22% in the same period).

Summary

Discovered Labs is the AI-first pick, with share-of-voice reporting next to meetings booked. For sales tech specifically, it has an Instantly relationship but no comparison work or AI result we could find for it.

Choose it for: outbound tools that care about ChatGPT and Perplexity as much as Google.

Pass if: you need proven "vs" page wins in sales tech.

7. PipeRocket

PipeRocket is a B2B SaaS agency that builds "comparison, alternative, integration pages at scale."

Services

Its BOFU offer targets buyers "already evaluating solutions," starting in month one. The site describes its links as editorial backlinks from SaaS publications.

On AI search, its fintech page describes a GEO and AEO workstream: question-form headings with a direct answer under each, comparison tables, schema, and monthly reporting on which prompts surface a client in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude. It specifically mentions writing for "best alternative to X" prompts. We found no published AI result.

Pricing

Its fintech page says retainers start at $3,000 a month, with a 3-month minimum.

Reviews

Clutch shows 4.7 from 18 reviews (14 verified). Its newest review headline (Jul 25, 2026, Head of Digital Marketing at LatentView Analytics): "PipeRocket Digital is very results-oriented and driven to make things happen."

Clients

We found no named sales-tech client. A PipeRocket founder previously worked at SaaS Labs, a dialer company, but SaaS Labs isn't presented as a client. Storylane is a named client, and its results (2.5X and 82% more demos) came from campaign work, not comparison SEO.

Summary

PipeRocket builds comparison and integration pages at scale, which suits a product with dozens of integrations, and it says it writes them for "alternative" prompts in AI tools. On public evidence it has no named sales-tech client and no AI result, and it passes only the no-paid-links test.

Choose it for: sales tools with many integrations or competitors, where templated pages make sense.

Pass if: you want hand-written comparisons with a human verdict on each.

8. SimpleTiger

SimpleTiger is a long-running SaaS SEO agency with a "Sales & CRM" vertical.

Services

Link building is manual outreach and digital PR. Its Invoca programme combined a technical audit, page-to-keyword mapping, monthly content, a GEO track for ChatGPT and Perplexity, and its own AI-search visibility tracking.

Pricing

Not published. Its pricing FAQ pegs packages to roughly 5% of revenue or funding at your stage, so ask what that means for your ARR.

Reviews

Its 32 Clutch reviews average 4.9 out of 5. The most recent headlines, as of 15 Oct 2026, praise process more than outcomes. On Feb 5, 2026, a Business Director at an EMR company wrote, "They are very organized and employ project management tools to ensure alignment and visibility." On Dec 23, 2025, the Co-Founder of Blueprint Solutions LLC said, "SimpleTiger LLC has a very well-planned execution strategy."

On 14 Jul 2026, SimpleTiger posted on X that it had won a Spring 2026 Clutch Global Award.

Clients

Its closest case is Invoca, an AI platform for marketing and contact-center teams, which sits next to sales tech. The Invoca case study reports a 41:1 ROI over 10 months, $3M+ in revenue from AI and organic search in 2025, and over $500,000 in new pipeline from AI search. It also reports a 22.5% share of voice in AI search, which it says leads Invoca's category. It also has older Bidsketch (proposal software) and LeadPost (lead generation) cases.

Summary

SimpleTiger has the deepest review record here and the strongest AI-pipeline number on the list, in its Invoca case. But none of its cases shows comparison work for a sales-tech client, and pricing isn't published.

Choose it for: revenue-tech companies that want an established agency with plenty of reviews and AI share-of-voice reporting.

Pass if: you need someone who has already won "vs" searches in sales tech.

9. ContentMonk

ContentMonk started as a content agency and now also sells AEO and SEO software. Its case pages still label the lemlist and Expandi work as agency engagements, and lemlist is about as close to the center of this list as a client gets.

Services

Per its case pages: content, SEO, conversion work and, for Expandi, a community programme. On AI search, its software tracks prompts daily "across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews," and its case studies page leads with "700K+ answers mentioning our customers."

Pricing

Agency fees aren't published. Its software plans are $99, $199 and $449 a month, with custom enterprise pricing.

Reviews

We found no Clutch or G2 agency profile with reviews for ContentMonk.

Clients

The lemlist case describes a cold outreach tool that went from zero to $8M ARR in 16 months, with more than $4M of that attributed to content and SEO. The work started at the bottom of the funnel: "comparisons, alternatives, and the specific jobs a sales team needs done that week," with CRO on pages once they ranked. That passes our comparison test. The catch is timing: the page says its numbers were "verified September 3, 2026," but it doesn't say when the 16 months ran, so ask.

The Expandi case, for a LinkedIn automation tool, reports $3M+ in pipeline in six months and 4,000+ of a roughly 6,000-person market of lead gen agency owners joining a private community. It shows no comparison pages.

Its AI-answer results are all outside sales tech: GoBolt (logistics) at 27% AI visibility after three months, and a Hunch CMO quote on its pricing page about going from no AI mentions to "around 25% of conversations in less than 2 months." Neither the lemlist nor the Expandi case reports AI-answer numbers.

Summary

ContentMonk has the most famous cold outreach growth story on this list, built on exactly the comparison and alternatives pages buyers search. But the lemlist case is undated, its AI results are for other industries, and the business now leans toward software, so confirm who would actually run your account.

Choose it for: sales tools selling into a small, countable market that want content tied to conversion.

Pass if: you need recent, dated proof in sales tech, or a public agency price.

Published price floors

Six of the nine put an agency price on their site (retrieved or re-checked 15 Oct 2026):

If you need a comparison programme under $5,000 a month, Miraa, busyless, PipeRocket and Breaking B2B publish prices in that range. Exceed and Discovered Labs start higher. Check what's in scope for AI search at each price: Exceed and Miraa include it in the base plan.

If you're evaluating, here's where sales-tech pitches fall apart

Every agency pitching a sales-tech company will say it does comparison pages, and now most will say it does AI search too. The red flags are in how they do them and what they can prove:

No ranked "vs" URL to show you. Ask for a "vs" or "alternatives" page they ranked for a named sales-tech client. Exceed's Crono case and busyless's Reply.io case are the clearest answers on this list. If an agency can only show blog posts, it hasn't fought for these results.

Undated results. Some cases (Grizzle's Pipedrive results, ContentMonk's lemlist case) give no dates. Ask when the work ran and when the numbers were measured, since a 2021 win says little about today's results pages or AI answers.

Two numbers for the same client. busyless's case page and homepage give different Reply.io figures. That can be innocent, but ask which period each figure covers.

Links with no method. Ask for the outreach method in writing. Breaking B2B says "No PBNs, no link marketplaces"; busyless says it replaced a $90K-a-year directory-link agency with direct outreach. A sales-tech site full of bought links is a liability your competitors will happily report.

Unfair competitor claims. A comparison page that invents a competitor's weakness can rank briefly, then become a legal letter or a lost deal when a prospect checks. It can also end up repeated in an AI answer under your name. Ask who fact-checks competitor claims and how often pages are updated.

Templates with no human pass. For programmatic shops like PipeRocket, ask what is templated, what is written, and who reviews each page before it goes live.

AI reporting with no definition. Exceed reports AI Overview mentions and AI referral sessions; SimpleTiger and Discovered Labs report share of voice; Breaking B2B uses customer-reported discovery. Get the metric definition and the prompt list before you sign, or "AI visibility" can mean anything.

AI wins from another category. An AI share-of-voice gain for a logistics or incident-management tool is real work, but "Instantly alternatives" is a far more crowded prompt. Ask for a sales-tech example, or at least one from a category with ten-plus competitors.

Five questions for every call:

1. Show me a comparison URL you ranked for a sales-tech client, with dates.

2. How are the links behind it earned?

3. Who writes competitor claims, and who verifies them?

4. How often do you refresh comparison pages when a competitor changes pricing or features?

5. Which "[competitor] alternatives" prompts will you track in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, and what do they say about us today?

What a comparison page that wins looks like

You'll judge agencies better if you know what a strong "vs" or "alternatives" page contains. The best ones in sales tech tend to share these traits:

• An honest verdict near the top. Buyers want to know who each tool suits. A page that says "choose the competitor if you need X" is more believable, and more likely to be quoted by an AI answer, than one that claims you win on every row.

• Specifics a buyer can check. Seat pricing, sending limits, integrations, deliverability features and contract terms, each with a date. Vague rows ("better support") get ignored.

• Screenshots or workflow detail. A short walkthrough of how a sequence is built in each tool helps a buyer picture the switch.

• Migration help. For alternatives pages, explain what moving over involves: importing contacts, rebuilding sequences, warming new mailboxes. That content serves buyers who are ready to leave.

• Internal links into the funnel. Each comparison page should link to the relevant feature, pricing and integration pages, and to a free trial or demo.

• A refresh date. Sales tools change pricing and features constantly. A visible "last updated" date, backed by real updates, keeps the page credible.

Ask each agency to walk you through one of its comparison pages against this list. You'll learn quickly whether it builds pages buyers trust or pages that only target a keyword.

Keeping competitor pages fair

Comparison content in sales tech gets read closely, by prospects, by competitors and sometimes by their lawyers. A few house rules keep it working for you:

• Source every claim about a competitor. Link to their pricing or docs, or note the date you checked. If you can't source it, cut it.

• Compare like with like. Put your mid-tier plan next to their mid-tier plan, not your best plan against their cheapest.

• Say where they win. A page that admits a competitor is better for a certain use case earns more trust than one that claims a clean sweep.

• Update on a schedule. Set a review date for every comparison page, and update it sooner when a competitor changes pricing or ships a major feature.

• Avoid trademark misuse. Using a competitor's name to describe a comparison is normal. Implying a partnership or endorsement isn't.

Any agency writing these pages for you should follow similar rules without being asked. If it doesn't have a process for checking competitor facts, that work falls on you.

How sales tools get named in AI answers for "alternatives" prompts

Ask ChatGPT for "the best alternatives to Apollo for a five-person SDR team" and you'll get a short list, a sentence on each tool and maybe a few citations. If your tool isn't in that list, you've lost a buyer who never visited a results page.

The same G2 survey shows how much weight that list carries. Comparing vendors was the top use of AI chatbots in software research (41%), 69% of buyers said they picked a different vendor than planned because of chatbot guidance, and a third bought from a vendor they hadn't heard of before. And 45% said citations from software review sites were the signal that most made them trust an AI recommendation.

So how do you get named? Based on what the agencies above say they do, and what their cases show, it comes down to four kinds of source:

1. Your own comparison pages. A crawlable "vs" or "alternatives" page with a plain verdict ("pick us if you need X, pick them if you need Y") is easy for a model to quote. Exceed's Crono pages ranked #1 for "Outreach Alternatives" and its AI Overview mentions went from 0 to 66 in the same programme.

2. Review sites. G2, Capterra and similar profiles get cited often, and they need current pricing and plan names. Discovered Labs explicitly targets "the third-party sources Google ranks and AI cites," review sites included.

3. Third-party listicles and trade press. "Best cold email tools" roundups on other sites feed AI answers. Exceed used placements in sales and GTM publications; Grizzle runs research-led PR aimed at the listicles AI tools cite.

4. Video and community threads. In Grizzle's own study of 873 searches, YouTube was cited in AI Overviews for 75.1% of 542 bottom-funnel software keywords such as "best CRM software," while the 71 brand channels it tracked appeared just 3% of the time.

Then keep your facts consistent across all four. If a review profile still shows last year's seat price, an AI answer may repeat it next to your competitor's current one, and you'll look more expensive than you are.

Measure it, too, with three numbers: whether you're named for a fixed set of alternatives prompts, AI referral sessions in analytics, and a "how did you hear about us" field on your demo form, which is how Proposify confirmed rising LLM discovery. Our guide to measuring AI search visibility covers the setup, and Miraa's AEO service page describes how it runs the work.

Audit your own comparison coverage first

Before any agency call, spend an hour mapping where you stand. It turns a sales pitch into a working session.

1. List the five to ten tools you lose deals to. Your CRM's closed-lost reasons and your sales team will know them.

2. Search "[competitor] alternatives" and "[you] vs [competitor]" for each. Note who ranks: you, the competitor, a review aggregator or an affiliate listicle.

3. Check whether you have a page for each pairing. Many sales-tech companies have comparison pages for two or three rivals and nothing for the rest.

4. Read your existing pages as a buyer would. Are prices current? Is the verdict honest? Do they link to a trial?

5. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the same questions. Note whether you're named, which sources are cited and whether your pricing is right.

Bring that sheet to every call and ask: which of these gaps would you close first, and why? An agency that has done this work before will pick the pairings with the most buyer intent and the weakest current results, on Google and in AI answers. One that hasn't will talk about domain authority.

How to choose: start with your situation

If you're an early-stage outbound or cold email tool that needs a handful of high-intent comparison pages on a budget, pick Miraa or busyless. Choose Miraa for a fixed plan with links and AI work included; choose busyless if you also need a big content library remapped.

If you're growth-stage with many competitors and want one team for pages, links and AI search, pick Exceed.

If you have dozens of integrations and need pages at scale, pick PipeRocket, and insist on a human review pass.

If you're a category leader whose head terms are slipping and AI Overviews are taking clicks, pick Breaking B2B.

If you're an established CRM competing across markets and languages, pick Grizzle.

If AI answers already drive your discovery, pick Discovered Labs or SimpleTiger, or Exceed if you also need comparison pages.

If you sell into a small market you can count, and want content that converts rather than just ranks, look at ContentMonk, and ask for a dated case.

On AEO, weigh it the same way for every candidate: a named sales-tech AI result beats a result from another category, which beats a described workstream. And make the agency show you today's answers for your top alternatives prompts before you sign.

The one question to ask first

In sales automation, the searches that pay are the ones where a buyer types a competitor's name, into Google or into a chat window. Before you hire anyone, ask them for a "vs" or "alternatives" page they've ranked for a sales-tech client, how they got the links behind it, and whether that client now shows up when someone asks an AI assistant for alternatives.

Related reading

• Sales tech SEO playbook

• What is AEO?

• AEO vs SEO

• Comparison and alternatives pages

• How to measure AI search visibility

• B2B SaaS SEO agencies

• AEO agencies for B2B SaaS

• AEO agencies for agentic AI companies