The ranked list at a glance
| Agency | Best for | Headless angle | Starting price (7 Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LoudFace | SEO, AEO and GEO as one program | Program runs on any stack | From $5k/mo, scoped on intro call |
| 2. MADX Digital | SEO and AI search on Contentful | Page on SEO for Contentful | From $2,500/mo; plans from $3,500/mo |
| 3. Naturaily | Headless build plus GEO content | Builds on Storyblok, Sanity, Payload | $1,299 AI-visibility report |
| 4. Pagepro | Fixed-price Next.js and Sanity audits | Sanity partner, Next.js SEO | $2,499 audit; $599/mo monitoring |
| 5. FocusReactive | SEO built into headless builds | Sanity partner, four CMS platforms | Free audit tier; €2,900 Professional |
| 6. Webstacks | Funded B2B tech rebuilds | Sanity partner, composable builds | $50,000 lowest band (Sanity listing) |
| 7. Novalab | Technical SEO retainer for SaaS | Page on SEO for headless CMS | $3,500/mo, or $40,000/yr |
| 8. StudioHawk | Fixes on live headless sites | Headless SEO page | Not published (checked 7 Oct 2026) |
| 9. Reflect Digital | Global brands wanting a UK agency | Headless CMS SEO page | Form budgets from £4k/mo |
| 10. Operation Nation | SaaS startups on Sanity | Sanity partner, SEO and builds | $10,000 lowest band (Sanity listing) |
Prices come from each agency's own site, except Webstacks and Operation Nation, whose budget bands come from their partner listings on sanity.io. Reflect Digital's figure is the lowest monthly budget option on the enquiry form of its headless CMS SEO page, not a quoted price. StudioHawk's price was checked at studiohawk.com.au/seo-services/headless-seo and studiohawk.com.au/seo-services/saas-seo. Four agencies here are listed as Sanity agency partners on Sanity's own site: Pagepro, FocusReactive, Webstacks and Operation Nation.
How we picked
Every agency on this list sells SEO or organic growth as a service. Every one of them also names headless, a headless CMS or Next.js on its own site or its Sanity partner listing. We read each agency's site on 7 October 2026 and used its published pricing, or its Sanity listing's budget bands, where any exist. A headline result on an agency's site does not always come from a headless build, so each entry that cites a result says what its case study describes.
1. LoudFace
LoudFace is the pick for a B2B SaaS team that wants Google rankings and AI-answer citations from a single program, whatever its stack. Its service page says it runs SEO, AEO and GEO as one program, and that the program runs the same on Next.js, Sanity, WordPress or whatever the marketing site is built on. LoudFace's own site uses a Next.js front end and a Sanity back end. Pricing is published too: LoudFace engagements start from $5k/mo, scoped on the intro call.
LoudFace kicks off within 48 hours of signature and then runs a packed week one, with technical fixes such as canonical tags, sitemap, H1s and schema, and LoudFace clients see shipped work inside five days. Earlier proof comes from CodeOp, a coding bootcamp for women in tech, where the LoudFace SEO program lifted organic clicks 49% and impressions 43% between 11 May and 11 September 2024, by Google Search Console totals. That CodeOp case study comes from LoudFace's SEO foundation tier and does not name the site's stack. The Ceipal case study is a move from WordPress to Webflow, in which LoudFace migrated over 150 static pages and 1,082 CMS entries without losing SEO rankings.
Best for: B2B SaaS teams that want SEO, AEO and GEO as one program on any stack. LoudFace's SEO track record includes CodeOp's 49% rise in organic clicks.
2. MADX Digital
Contentful teams that want AI-search placement and SEO bought as a fixed monthly plan should start with MADX Digital. MADX's page on SEO for Contentful covers rendering mode (SSR, SSG, ISR and CSR), sitemaps, canonicals and the SEO fields in the content model, and it quotes a 90-day sprint, monthly retainers or custom work starting from $2,500/mo.
On the MADX pricing page, Authority costs $3,500/mo, Growth $5,500/mo and Scale $9,500/mo on a 12-month term, which saves 30% against rolling monthly billing. A rolling MADX contract carries a three-month minimum. In the MoonPay case study, MADX covers link building and multilingual expansion, and it reports monthly organic visitors rising from 157,588 to 433,317 between July 2023 and May 2026.
Best for: Contentful teams that want SEO and AI-search work on a published plan.
Not the best fit: Teams that will not commit for at least three months, the minimum on a rolling MADX contract.
3. Naturaily
Pick Naturaily if you want one shop to rebuild the site on a headless CMS and then write for it. The Wrocław-based agency builds on Storyblok, Sanity, Payload and Strapi with Next.js and Nuxt, and its headless page says it works with SaaS, B2B and content-rich brands. Its AI SEO and GEO content service carries fixed USD prices: Naturaily charges $1,299 for an AI-visibility report and $3,299 for an in-depth audit. The Naturaily FAQ says content retainers typically start in the low four figures per month.
Best for: SaaS teams that want a headless build and GEO and SEO content from one shop.
4. Pagepro
Pagepro's best evidence is GPnotebook. For OmniaMed, Pagepro moved the GPnotebook medical platform, which has over 100,000 subpages, to Next.js and Sanity. Pagepro's case study says Next.js gives users and Google bots pre-generated static pages, with server-side rendering where content is dynamic.
That build experience backs a priced SEO line. Pagepro, a Sanity agency partner, publishes three prices for Next.js SEO and AEO work: a $2,499 one-week audit, a $6,500 implementation over four to six weeks, and $599 a month for ongoing monitoring. Pagepro's monitoring tier covers ranking tracking, Search Console alerts and Core Web Vitals tracking. For a Next.js and Sanity team that wants a technical audit at a known price, Pagepro is the straightforward buy.
Best for: Next.js and Sanity teams that want a fixed-price SEO audit and implementation.
5. FocusReactive
FocusReactive is the pick when SEO should ship with the build: its homepage pitches Next.js and headless CMS work engineered for AI SEO. Its headless CMS page says the agency is an official partner of Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful and Payload CMS. On its audit page, FocusReactive lists three Next.js SEO audit tiers: Basic for free, Professional at €2,900, priced in euros, and Premium at a custom price, covering a full audit and ongoing support.
The FocusReactive headless CMS page says it built Arrive's site with Storyblok and Next.js and reports organic traffic up 38% post-launch, with no period stated on its page. The FocusReactive homepage now tags Arrive with Payload CMS.
Best for: Multi-market Sanity or Storyblok builds that want SEO included from the start.
6. Webstacks
Webstacks is the rebuild-scale option. In its case study on Gong, Webstacks describes moving Gong from WordPress to a composable, Sanity-powered platform. The agency calls itself a composable web agency on its about page, and its homepage pitches the work to marketing teams from Series A to IPO. Sanity's partner listing describes Webstacks as a web agency for B2B tech companies and shows budget bands of $50,000 to $100,000 and over $100,000. On SEO, the Webstacks capabilities page covers AEO and GEO, technical SEO, site structure, on-page SEO and localization, while the technologies named in its site navigation include Contentful, Sanity, Storyblok, DatoCMS, Builder.io, HubSpot CMS, Webflow and WordPress.
Best for: Funded B2B SaaS teams rebuilding on a composable stack.
Not the best fit: Budgets under $50,000, the lowest band on Sanity's listing for Webstacks.
7. Novalab
In its case study on PropFirmMatch, Novalab reports 220,000 clicks per 28 days, up from 100,000, and 4,400 top-10 keyword rankings within six months, after technical fixes, content improvements and a toxic backlink cleanup. Novalab is an SEO agency for SaaS teams, and its page on SEO for headless CMS sites covers rendering, routing, metadata and Core Web Vitals.
Novalab prices its Technical & Foundation plan at $3,500 a month on monthly billing or $40,000 a year on yearly billing. On monthly billing, Novalab charges $6,000 a month for its Growth plan and $10,000 a month for its Scale plan.
Best for: SaaS teams that want a technical SEO retainer at a published price.
Not the best fit: Budgets under $40,000 a year, or $3,500 a month on monthly billing, the lowest prices on Novalab's pricing page.
8. StudioHawk
StudioHawk is the call when a live headless site has rendering, sitemap or canonical problems and the team wants an SEO-led fix without a long contract. The Australian agency's headless SEO page lists server-side rendering or pre-rendering, structured data, canonical tags, sitemaps and redirects, and offers no long-term, lock-in contracts. StudioHawk also has a SaaS SEO page and runs US city pages.
Best for: SEO-led fixes for headless rendering, sitemap and canonical problems.
9. Reflect Digital
Reflect Digital suits a global brand that wants a UK agency with an award-winning B2B campaign on its record. Its headless CMS SEO page, filed under its ecommerce section, says it supports global brands with SEO for headless CMS websites. In its case study on Egress, Reflect describes Egress as a leading global data security organisation, and reports a 710% increase in organic traffic since the SEO campaign launched, with no period stated on its page. That Egress campaign combined technical SEO, content, digital PR and international SEO, and won Reflect Digital the Best B2B Campaign at the Drum Search Awards.
Best for: Global brands that want a UK-based SEO agency for a headless site.
10. Operation Nation
Operation Nation is built for Web3, SaaS and tech startups that want SEO, content strategy and a Sanity build from one team. Its site navigation lists SEO and GEO alongside headless websites with Sanity, and its Sanity partner listing describes marketing and ecommerce sites built on Sanity and Next.js. Sanity's listing for Operation Nation shows budget bands of $10,000 to $50,000 and $50,000 to $100,000.
Best for: SaaS startups on Sanity and Next.js that want SEO and the build together.
Not the best fit: Budgets under $10,000, the lowest band on Sanity's listing for Operation Nation.
What changes for SEO on a headless site
A headless CMS stores content and delivers it by API to a separate front end. The front end decides what Google sees. These are the areas a headless SEO agency has to cover, each linked to the Google, Next.js, Sanity or web.dev documentation it rests on.
| Area | What to know |
|---|---|
| Rendering | Google processes JavaScript pages in three phases: crawling, rendering and indexing, and its JavaScript SEO basics call server-side rendering or pre-rendering still a great idea. Its page on dynamic rendering says dynamic rendering was a workaround and not a long-term solution. |
| Static regeneration | Incremental Static Regeneration in Next.js updates static content without rebuilding the entire site. |
| Metadata held in the CMS | Next.js sets titles and descriptions through the metadata object or the generateMetadata function. The CMS schema has to hold those fields. |
| Canonicals | Google documents rel=canonical and other methods for consolidating duplicate URLs. |
| Sitemaps | One sitemap file holds up to 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs, according to Google's sitemap guide. Next.js generates a sitemap from a sitemap file in the app. |
| Redirects | Google's site-move guide says to map old URLs to new ones. Permanent redirects do not lose PageRank, and rankings fluctuate temporarily during a move, according to the same guide. A Next.js redirect with permanent set to true returns status 308. |
| Structured data | Google recommends JSON-LD where the setup allows. The Next.js JSON-LD guide recommends rendering it as a script tag in the layout or page file. |
| Drafts and previews | Next.js Draft Mode lets editors see draft content. Sanity documents a published perspective that excludes unpublished changes from query results. A page that must not be indexed takes a robots noindex tag. |
| Images | The next/image component takes width and height so the browser reserves space and avoids layout shift. |
| Core Web Vitals | Good thresholds are LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP of 200 milliseconds or less and CLS of 0.1 or less. |
| Hreflang | Google uses hreflang to understand localized variants. It does not use hreflang to detect a page's language. |
Related reading: how to choose a B2B SaaS SEO and AEO agency, the best B2B SaaS SEO agencies, the LoudFace SEO and AEO service and the LoudFace pricing page.
10 questions to ask a headless SEO agency
| # | Question | A strong answer | A red flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How will Google see our pages: SSR, SSG or ISR, and which routes run client-side? | Names the rendering mode per template and shows rendered HTML. | Says dynamic rendering is the long-term fix, or does not know. |
| 2 | Where do titles, descriptions, canonicals and noindex live in our CMS schema? | An SEO object per document type, mapped to generateMetadata. | Says a plugin handles it. |
| 3 | How is the sitemap generated, and how fast does a new page appear in it? | Generated from published CMS documents and split past 50,000 URLs. | A static, hand-made file. |
| 4 | What is your redirect and URL-mapping process for a migration? | A one-to-one map, permanent redirects, Search Console monitoring and a warning that rankings fluctuate. | Promises zero ranking movement. |
| 5 | How do you stop drafts and preview routes from being indexed? | Secret preview routes, the published perspective in production and noindex where needed. | Has never checked. |
| 6 | Where does structured data come from? | JSON-LD generated from CMS fields in the page component. | Hand-pasted script blocks per page. |
| 7 | Which Core Web Vitals numbers will you report, and from what data? | LCP, INP and CLS from field data against Google's thresholds. | Only a lab Lighthouse score. |
| 8 | Do you write and ship content, or only fix the technical layer? | A named owner for both. | SEO treated as a launch checklist. |
| 9 | Can you show a headless client result with a period and a source? | A named client, a number and dates. | A promise with no past result behind it. |
| 10 | Who edits after handoff, and will marketers need a developer? | An editor-safe schema and a preview workflow. | Every change becomes a developer ticket. |
Hire the agency that answers questions 1, 2 and 4 with your own templates and URLs on screen and backs them with a dated client result, and pass on any agency that answers in generalities.
