Many web design agencies say they do SEO. Ask them what that actually means and you'll get something like "we make sure your pages have good titles and descriptions" or "we'll set up redirects before launch." But that's not SEO strategy... that's a checklist.
And it's how companies lose 60-80% of their organic traffic within weeks of launching a new site.
For established B2B companies, the stakes are too high for surface-level thinking. You've spent years building organic rankings. One poorly managed migration can wipe out search traffic you depend on for pipeline, and recovering it takes months. Meanwhile, there's a second dimension many agencies haven't caught up to at all: AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization. Your buyers are increasingly starting their vendor research in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews—not just traditional search. If your website isn't structured to feed those results, you're invisible during the earliest and most influential phase of the buying cycle.
This list covers agencies worth knowing about if organic search and AI visibility matter to your redesign. They vary in focus, size, and approach—so the right fit depends on your company's specific situation.
Best for: Established B2B companies that need SEO and AEO built into the redesign from day one
Takeoff is a website-first marketing agency for B2B companies with long sales cycles—and their SEO-first approach is the most integrated of any agency on this list. Most agencies treat SEO as something that gets bolted on at the end: install a plugin, write meta descriptions, set up some redirects, call it done. Takeoff treats it as a structural constraint that shapes site architecture, URL strategy, content planning, and internal linking from the first week of the engagement.
The AEO work is built in. As B2B buyers shift research to AI search tools, showing up in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity has become as important as ranking on page one of Google. Takeoff runs a structured three-stage AEO process alongside the redesign. The technical foundation comes first: llm.txt setup, schema markup (Organization, Service, and FAQ), AI bot crawl access, and semantic HTML with trust signals so LLMs can actually read and cite the site. From there, the content strategy is built around the queries that trigger LLM web search—BOFU pages, persona-specific pages, comparison, how-to, and pricing pages that feed AI-generated answers. The third stage focuses on authority: targeting Tier-S citation sources like G2, TechCrunch, and Wikipedia, mapping which citations correspond to which queries, and building backlinks specifically chosen to improve LLM visibility. Most agencies treat AEO as a content formatting exercise. This is a full pipeline.
The SEO process starts before any design work. Takeoff builds a full SEO roadmap at the outset—outlining the strategy for the engagement, mapping competitive gaps, and defining the keyword targets that will drive architecture decisions. The keyword research goes beyond search volume: the focus is on which terms are actually generating qualified pipeline, how the competitive landscape looks for each one, and which bottom-funnel queries are worth building pages around. From there, Takeoff produces content briefs for key pages, so every high-priority page goes into design with a clear brief on what it needs to say and how to structure it to rank.
The migration specifics matter for anyone who's been burned before: Takeoff audits 12-24 months of Search Console and Analytics data before touching design, maps redirects for every URL (not just the main pages), and monitors rankings post-launch to catch and fix issues before they spiral. Their SEO recovery work with MSI Data is a useful proof point—MSI came to them after a previous redesign knocked them from 298 ranking keywords down to 15. Takeoff recovered them in under three months and generated $85K in closed pipeline directly from organic search.
For companies with complex buyer journeys—procurement committees, multiple stakeholders, 6-18 month sales cycles—Takeoff's UX strategy maps how each persona researches and buys, then builds navigation and content paths around that rather than around your org chart.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: WordPress, Webflow, Craft CMS, HubSpot CMS, Drupal
‍Industries served: Insurance, financial services, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, B2B SaaS, commercial real estate
‍Notable clients: Thanx, Duck Creek, Menlo Ventures, Freshpaint, FiscalNote, Amira Learning, Glenmede, ServiceTrade
‍Best fit for: Established B2B companies with complex buyer journeys, multiple product lines, or legacy CMS platforms that need migration. Especially strong if organic search and AI visibility are non-negotiable parts of the brief.
‍Website: takeoffnyc.com
Best for: Large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies with complex digital transformation needs
Huge is a global enterprise digital agency with over 1,000 employees and offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. They offer a broad range of services including search optimization, experience design, data science, and technology strategy—making them a strong option for organizations that need a capable, full-service partner at enterprise scale.
Their clients include some of the most recognized brands in the world, and their experience navigating complex global site architectures and enterprise requirements reflects that.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Enterprise platforms, custom solutions
‍Industries served: Consumer brands, financial services, technology, media, automotive
‍Notable clients: Google, Toyota, Verizon, Netflix
‍Website: hugeinc.com
Best for: B2B SaaS and e-commerce companies focused on content-driven organic growth
Siege Media is an organic growth agency known for SEO-first content marketing, with a client roster that includes Zapier, Zoom, Zendesk, and Figma. They also offer web design services, giving content-focused companies a single partner for both organic strategy and site execution.
Their approach is content-led: building topic authority through long-form content and link acquisition, with web design supporting that strategy. They've also developed a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) practice specifically for AI search visibility.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: WordPress (primary)
‍Industries served: B2B SaaS, e-commerce, fintech
‍Notable clients: Zapier, Zoom, Zendesk, Figma, Asana
‍Website: siegemedia.com
Best for: Global enterprise brands with integrated needs across design, technology, and search marketing
AKQA is a WPP-owned design and innovation agency with over 6,000 employees in 50 countries. Their services include search marketing alongside design, technology, CRM, and e-commerce—giving global brands a capable partner for multi-channel digital work at significant scale.
They've earned consistent recognition as one of the top global digital agencies, and their track record spans some of the world's most recognized consumer and enterprise brands.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Enterprise platforms, custom solutions
‍Industries served: Consumer brands, automotive, sports, technology, hospitality
‍Notable clients: Nike, Audi, Starbucks, Verizon, Delta
‍Website: akqa.com
Best for: Enterprise brands undergoing brand transformation alongside digital strategy
R/GA is an independent design and innovation company—recently acquired by Truelink Capital—with over 40 years of experience in brand design, product experience, and digital strategy. Their service model covers Brand Design, Product & Experience Design, Campaign & Content Design, and CRM, and in 2024 they launched an AI SEO tool for brands, reflecting their engagement with the shift toward AI-powered search.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Enterprise platforms and custom solutions
‍Industries served: Consumer brands, technology, telecommunications, sports
‍Notable clients: Nike, Samsung, Verizon
‍Website: rga.com
Best for: Well-funded tech startups and SaaS companies that prioritize premium UI/UX design
Clay is a San Francisco-based UI/UX and branding agency with a strong portfolio of high-profile tech clients. Their design work is highly regarded in the SaaS and enterprise software space, and they bring together product strategy, interface design, and development under one roof. For web projects, Clay integrates SEO considerations into their process as part of site delivery.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Custom builds and various CMS platforms depending on project
‍Industries served: SaaS, fintech, enterprise software, consumer tech
‍Notable clients: Slack, Coinbase, Google, Stripe, Amazon
‍Website: clay.global
Best for: Enterprise companies launching complex digital products and platforms
Work & Co is a digital product agency focused on the strategy, design, and development of digital experiences: websites, mobile apps, e-commerce platforms, and AI tools. They've built a reputation for working on some of the most technically complex digital products in existence, partnering with organizations that need product-level thinking applied to their digital presence.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Custom platforms, various CMS depending on project
‍Industries served: Consumer brands, entertainment, enterprise technology, nonprofits
‍Notable clients: Apple, Google, Disney, Nike, MTA, Obama Foundation
‍Website: work.co
Best for: Startups and growth-stage companies looking for high-quality visual design
Halo Lab is a design agency working with startups and growing businesses across SaaS, e-commerce, and tech. Their work is design-forward and their portfolio demonstrates consistent execution across a range of brand and web projects.
What makes them different:
CMS capabilities: Webflow, WordPress, and others depending on project
‍Industries served: SaaS, e-commerce, startups, small businesses
‍Website: halo-lab.com
The agencies above vary widely in size, focus, and how deeply SEO and AEO are integrated into their process. Here's how to match your situation to the right fit.
If protecting existing rankings is non-negotiable, your first question to any agency should be: "Walk me through your SEO migration process." A strong answer covers a pre-launch audit of your current traffic and rankings, redirect mapping for every URL, and post-launch monitoring with a defined window. If you've had traffic drop after a previous redesign, ask to see how they've handled migration for a client with a similar-sized site.
If you need to show up in AI search, ask specifically: "How do you structure content and schema for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews?" Look for answers that include content hierarchy, heading structure, and schema markup—not just a passing reference to "keeping up with Google."
If you're an enterprise with a large budget, agencies like Huge and AKQA have the scale and service breadth to handle complex, multi-channel engagements. Make sure you're clear about what kind of search work you need so you can evaluate how central it is to their process.
"Walk me through your SEO migration process." You want to hear: pre-launch traffic audit, redirect mapping for every URL, keyword baseline documentation, and post-launch rank monitoring. SEO handled as an end-of-project task is a risk.
"How do you approach AEO and AI search?" Look for intentional content and schema planning built into the redesign—not just awareness that AI search exists.
"What happens if rankings drop after launch?" Good agencies build in a post-launch monitoring window and a clear process for diagnosing and fixing issues.
"Can you show me a project where rankings held or improved after launch?" Agencies confident in their SEO migration process won't hesitate to show you data.
Organic search and AI visibility aren't features you can add to a website after it's built—they need to be designed in from the start. The agencies on this list each bring something different to the table, whether that's enterprise scale, content-led SEO, design excellence, or product engineering.
If you're an established B2B company that needs SEO and AEO integrated into the redesign itself—not treated as a separate workstream or an afterthought—Takeoff is built specifically for that. Their process starts with your existing traffic and rankings and keeps them intact (and growing) through the migration and beyond.
The right agency is the one whose process matches what you actually need. Ask the questions, look at the evidence, and make sure whoever you work with can show you how they handle the organic search piece before you sign.
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Request a Quote or email lenny@takeoffnyc.com to start the conversation.
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