Drazen vs an SEO agency retainer
The classic small-business SEO motion is an agency retainer: commonly one to five thousand dollars a month. For a vibe coded product, that spend deserves scrutiny, not because agencies are bad, but because the deliverable usually is: a report of things wrong with your site, which someone still has to implement. Usually you.
The report problem
The typical retainer cycle: the agency audits, produces a document ("40 missing meta descriptions, no sitemap, slow LCP on mobile"), and hands it over. Implementation is your job or billed separately, and for a founder who ships with AI tools, the translation from PDF recommendation to shipped code is precisely the annoying part. Three months later, a progress report tells you what got found, not necessarily what got fixed.
Drazen inverts the deliverable: the output is not a description of the problem, it is the fix itself, written as code, shipped as a pull request, approved by you in one click, verified live by a re-scan. The audit and the implementation are the same motion.
Where each side wins
- Technical findings to shipped fixes: Drazen, same-day versus next-sprint-maybe
- Continuous monitoring: Drazen: daily scans versus a monthly check-in call
- Cost: $99 once plus $12 a month versus a retainer that never stops
- AI search optimisation: Drazen: llms.txt, structured data and AI visibility tracking are native, not an upsell
- Content production at scale: agency wins, if content marketing is genuinely your channel
- Digital PR and link campaigns: agency wins: outreach is a human craft
- Local SEO (maps, citations, reviews): agency or specialist wins today
The pragmatic take
If you are paying a four-figure retainer and the visible output is reports plus occasional tag changes, you are paying agency prices for robot work. Automate that layer for $99 once plus $12 a month, watch what actually moves, and if you later need the genuinely human services, content and PR, buy those specifically instead of bundling them with automatable audits. Start by seeing what an agent finds on your site in 30 seconds, free.
Questions
My agency does implement fixes. Does the comparison change?
Somewhat: implementation-included retainers are the better kind. You are then comparing turnaround (sprint cycles versus same-day), monitoring (monthly versus daily) and price (four figures every month versus $99 once plus $12 a month). For technical SEO, the agent still wins those three.
Can I use Drazen and an agency together?
Yes, and it is a strong pairing: Drazen holds the technical layer permanently clean and monitored, the agency spends its retainer on content and links where humans earn their fee. Agencies get a better-shaped brief too.
What if I cancel Drazen?
Everything already shipped stays in your codebase, it is your code. You lose the monitoring, re-scans and future fixes.
See what your site scores
Drazen scans your site the way Google and ChatGPT see it, shows you everything that is hurting you, and writes the fixes itself. Free, about 30 seconds.
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