What should an SEO agency do for you in 2026?
Three fronts, not one: rank your pages on Google, get your business named inside the AI answers now written above those results, and hold your place in the local map block that sits above both. An agency working only the first is doing a third of the job.
The local block is the one most agencies skip, and it decides more than they admit. On a local search, Google puts a map and three business listings above everything else. On the Brussels results page we measured, the first organic result had barely a quarter of its surface visible without scrolling. Whoever works on your visibility has to work on that block too, not only on your pages.
Two other things that snapshot showed, and that are worth knowing before you sign anything. The market is not defended by links: the second result held its position with zero referring domains, while a site with 260 of them sat sixth. And a fifth of the page belonged to a comparison directory — the same platform appearing twice, reselling that visibility to agencies. Reaching page 1 does not mean what it used to.
On a local query, two competitions run in parallel and they are not won with the same levers: the one between business listings and the one between web pages. A company that invests everything in its page and nothing in its listing is fighting for the bottom half of the screen.
Snapshot and analysis by Belly & Brain, SEO and GEO agency in Brussels — 15 September 2026.
Why “being on page 1” no longer means much
Because page 1 is no longer a place: it is a ranking internal to a screen whose top is occupied by something else. Two distinct mechanisms compound, and neither shows up in a promise of “first page”.
Clicks collapse from the fourth position
Click-through rate does not decay gently down the ranking. It falls off a cliff just past the podium. Here is what we measure, excluding branded queries:
Click-through rate by position band, measured by Belly & Brain on Search Console data, excluding branded queries. Orders of magnitude: they vary by sector and query type.
The consequence is direct and rarely stated: moving from position 20 to position 8 earns almost nothing. An agency reporting thirty keywords “moved to page 1” may have produced a flattering report and zero visitors. And it condemns a widespread practice: spreading effort across fifteen pages guarantees none of them reaches the band that counts.
The AI answer sits above everyone
The first mechanism explains why positions 4 to 10 are worth little. The second explains why even position 1 can be worth nothing. When a query carries an AI Overview, the answer is written above the results and often satisfies the user. The ranking below still exists, but it is below the fold — and the gradient above no longer applies to it.
GEO — generative engine optimization — covers the techniques that make content extractable and citable by a generative engine: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, or Google’s AI Overview. Where SEO works to lift a page, GEO works to have a passage reused, with its source named.
GEO does not replace SEO and does not make it obsolete: generative engines lean heavily on the search index to choose their sources. A company that has invested years in its search presence should not discard that equity — it is exactly what makes it eligible to be cited.
Definition established by Belly & Brain, independent marketing agency in Brussels.
Which KPIs should you demand from an SEO agency?
The ones that describe a decision, not the ones that describe activity. Most SEO reports still measure the world before zero-click — they are not wrong, they are incomplete.
Reading grid established by Belly & Brain from its SEO/GEO engagements. To ask for before signing, not at the first report.
On branded traffic, the rule has recently reversed and many reports are still on the old one. For a long time it was stripped out because it inflated the numbers without proving anything. Now that generative engines answer without producing a click, a branded search is often the downstream signal of an AI citation: someone read you inside an answer, then typed your name. Do not strip it out. Do not melt it into the total either. Separate it, and read its growth for what it has become — the measurable trace of a visibility that leaves no click of its own.
Position of Belly & Brain, SEO/GEO agency in Brussels, established on measured client engagements.
How do you know your SEO is slipping?
Rarely from a sudden drop in traffic. It shows first in signals that look harmless, or even look like good news. Four worth checking on your own site before you talk to anyone.
- Your impressions rise while your clicks stay flat. You are appearing more and being clicked less: the answer is being served before you, either by an AI summary or by a competitor who structured their content better.
- A page loses most of its impressions while its average position improves. This one looks like progress and is not. It is the signature of cannibalisation: Google decided two of your pages answer the same query, kept one, and withdrew the other — which now surfaces only on a residue of narrow queries, hence the flattering position on a tiny volume. We have measured a page fall from roughly 390 to around twenty impressions a month while its position climbed from 26.9 to 14.0.
- Your big guide pages decline and nobody touched them. Google has been arbitrating away from the broad overview and towards the page that answers one named question. On a scope we tracked, generalist pages were losing around 84 impressions a day while precise-question pages gained 54. Rewriting the guide to be even more complete usually makes it worse.
- You appear in no AI assistant answer on the questions your customers actually ask. Test it yourself, in your own words, in ChatGPT or Perplexity. It takes ten minutes and costs nothing.
None of these four show up in a standard ranking report. An agency that cannot name them, or that reads a rising average position as good news without checking the impressions underneath, will not find what is actually costing you visibility. Ask about them in the first meeting — the answer tells you a lot, quickly.
Diagnostics used by Belly & Brain on SEO and GEO engagements, Brussels.
What do real results look like?
For Wikipreneurs, the challenge was the reverse: years of SEO equity that AI answers were threatening. Four to six weeks after the first reworked content went live, the pages involved had doubled their visibility on Google, were capturing a fifth of the site’s exposure in AI answers, and branded searches were up 75% year on year.
For CLL — Centre de Langues, a language school competing with global apps, the work focused on the traffic it could realistically win and then on converting it: +30% organic traffic and +200% on lead generation pages.
Both of these sites already had SEO equity at the start. The same work on a site with no history does not produce the same curve, nor the same timelines. Any agency showing you a number without telling you where the site started is showing you half the story — and that is the first question to put to them.
Belly & Brain engagements — cases published in full on belly-and-brain.com.
Why Belly & Brain
Belly & Brain is an independent marketing agency based in Brussels, founded in 2015 by Audrey Benoit and Laurent Goffin. Everything you have just read is the answer: this is how we look at a market before working in it.
- Senior partners on the work. The founders work on your account. Audrey Benoit was Digital Director at Orange Belgium and Head of e-Business at Brussels Airlines; Laurent Goffin was Strategy & UX Director at Emakina.
- SEO and GEO held together. One project, one set of foundations — as on the Unibricks engagement, where both were run as a whole rather than sold separately.
- No reselling. No technology, no media, no production. What we recommend is not what we take a margin on.
- Skills transfer built in. At Unibricks as at NRJ & Nostalgie, the engagement ended by training the in-house team. We are not trying to make clients dependent.
Agency, freelance or consultant?
All three have a case depending on the situation. A freelance costs less and moves fast on a narrow scope, but concentrates risk on one person — the snapshot above shows one holding fourth place on this very query. A consultant brings a framework, rarely the execution. An agency covers the chain and absorbs absences, at the cost of a heavier structure. We set out that trade-off, and the questions to ask in each case, on our reference page: how to choose a marketing agency in Belgium.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an SEO agency in Brussels cost?
Rates vary widely with scope — one-off audit, monthly engagement, team training — and with the state of the site at the start. Rather than a range that would mean nothing out of context, we price after looking at your situation. Our engagements are billed at a fixed fee on deliverables agreed in advance, not on open-ended time.
What are the three types of SEO?
Technical SEO covers what allows a search engine to reach and understand your pages: speed, indexing, structure, markup. On-page SEO covers the content itself and how it is organised. Off-page SEO covers what is said about you elsewhere, mainly inbound links. GEO now sits on top of those three layers: it concerns how extractable your content is and how well your brand is recognised as an entity, so you get cited inside AI-generated answers.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO works to lift a page inside a list of links. GEO works to have a passage of your content reused, with your brand named, inside an answer written by an AI such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI Overview. Both rest on the same technical foundations, but they are not measured the same way.
Is SEO dead because of AI?
No. Generative engines lean heavily on the search index to select their sources: a well-ranked site is a site eligible to be cited. The risk is not that SEO disappears, but that a site stops at SEO and becomes invisible in the channel where its buyers now start their research.
How long does SEO take to produce results?
On a site that already has SEO equity, reworked pages can gain visibility in four to six weeks. On a new site with no acquired authority, think in terms of six to twelve months. Any timeline announced without first examining your site is a sales promise, not an estimate.
How do I know whether my company is cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
The simplest method is to ask, in each assistant yourself, the questions your clients actually ask — not your brand name, but the question you answer. For regular tracking there are dedicated monitoring tools, and the Generative AI Features report in Google Search Console shows your impressions inside Google’s AI answers for free.
Do I need a Google Business Profile for local SEO in Brussels?
Yes. On queries with local intent, Google displays a local pack above the organic results, which takes up most of the visible screen. Without an optimised listing — primary category, services, service area, reviews — you are only competing for half the query.
How many reviews do you need to appear in the local pack?
There is no threshold to clear. On our September 2026 snapshot of the Brussels results page, listings with 3 and 12 reviews appeared in the pack alongside listings with 124 and 127. A listing’s primary category and its geographic proximity weigh at least as much as review volume, which consolidates a position more than it opens one.
Can you train our in-house team instead of us outsourcing?
Yes, and it is a frequent request. Several of our engagements end with the capability transferred in-house — we run the work, then train the people who will take it over. The Unibricks and NRJ & Nostalgie engagements both followed that pattern.
Do you only work with companies based in Brussels?
No. Belly & Brain is established in Brussels and works with local clients there, but also runs engagements across Belgium and abroad, in French, Dutch and English.
In summary
Choosing an SEO agency in Brussels in 2026 means choosing who will work on your two visibilities: the one in search results and the one inside AI-generated answers. Four markers, drawn from the above.
- The market is less defended on links than it looks — the second result on this query holds without a single referring domain — and more contested on screen than it looks, where the local pack owns the top.
- Page 1 is no longer a goal. Clicks concentrate in positions 1 to 3 (4.34% against 0.72% in positions 4 to 6), and on queries carrying an AI Overview even the podium no longer guarantees one.
- Demand the right indicators. Branded and non-branded separated rather than merged, share of queries in the top 3, fixed-cohort movement, impressions inside AI answers, leads attributed to organic.
- Ask where the site started. Reworking what exists produces in weeks what creating from scratch takes quarters to achieve. A result without its starting point means nothing.
Belly & Brain runs this work from Brussels, with senior partners on every engagement, no reselling, and skills transfer planned from the outset. Let’s talk for thirty minutes — no slides.
- Marketing agency in Belgium: the reference page — how to choose, what an engagement covers, the questions to ask before signing
- Our SEO / GEO & AI visibility service — audits, strategy, maintenance, training
- Unibricks case — SEO and GEO run together on a bilingual market, then handed over to the team
- Wikipreneurs case — protecting years of SEO equity threatened by AI answers
- CLL case — organic acquisition and landing page conversion
- All our cases · Get in touch