The State of SEO Automation is a planned report on how teams actually use automation for SEO: which tasks, which tools, how much control they hand over, and what's working. It hasn't been run yet, so there are no findings on this page.
If you've ever wondered whether everyone else is further ahead than you, this is the study meant to answer that honestly.
Status
Planned. No data has been collected or published for this study yet. Anything you see quoted elsewhere as coming from this study isn't ours.
The question
Which SEO tasks do in-house teams, agencies, and freelancers automate today, what do they use, how much do they let software do without asking, and what results do they see?
Why it matters
Plenty of industry surveys ask whether people “use AI.” Far fewer ask which tasks are automated, what's kept human, and whether it paid off. Those are the questions that help you plan.
How we plan to run it
- A survey of SEO practitioners across in-house teams, agencies, and freelancers.
- Questions organised around our levels of automation, so answers can be compared.
- Follow-up conversations with a small group to understand the “why” behind the numbers.
- Clear reporting of who answered, since a survey only speaks for the people in it.
What the finished study will include
- The full methodology, including its limits.
- The sample size, and who or what was included.
- Findings, including the unexciting ones.
- Charts.
- Downloadable data, where we can share it.
- Citations for anything we build on.
- Publication and update dates.
Until then
Until the report is out, you can place your own team on the same scale we'll use:
- List your SEO tasks and mark each one as manual, automated, AI-assisted, or agent-run.
- Note which ones still need a person to approve the output.
- Compare that with the levels framework to see where you might go next.
Where to go next
- Levels of SEO automation: the scale the study will use
- What SEO tasks should you automate?
- All research