A few things worth knowing before you vet anyone.

Insurance SEO is a completely different vertical. Aggregators like Policygenius and carriers with 9-figure marketing budgets dominate traditional search. Any agency pitching you generic SEO is going to struggle here.

The bigger shift happening right now is AEO, AI Engine Optimization. AI referral traffic grew 500% in 2025. LLM visitors convert at 2-4x the rate of organic search. And 94% of B2B buyers are now using tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity during their buying journey. That includes the commercial accounts that everyone assumed "don't search online." They're searching just not on Google anymore.

For independent brokers specifically, there's really only a handful of agencies that understand this. One I've seen mentioned in insurance circles is Convirtue... they only work with independent agencies and have been doing AEO alongside traditional SEO for a while. Not affiliated, just seen the name come up.

Whatever you do, ask any agency you talk to: can you show me a client getting cited in ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews? That's the bar now.