Sauron vs hiring it out
Sauron vs hiring an SEO agency
A retainer is a bigger bet than most stores' whole marketing budget, so plenty of stores using Sauron were never choosing between the two. This page is for the ones who are — and for anyone already paying one and wondering what they'd actually lose. It's an honest comparison, including the cases where the agency is the right answer.
What a retainer actually covers
Month to month, an SEO retainer is spent on a fairly predictable list. Here it is, with what Sauron does itself marked against each line — and then the work it doesn't do, which is the reason good agencies exist.
- Keyword research, page by page Real Google volumes, ranked by fit as well as demand Done for you
- Product titles & meta descriptions Written, quality-gated, then published Done for you
- Collection titles, meta & body copy The same pipeline as products, out of the same allowance Done for you
- Finding & building missing category pages Catalog gap scan, gated on real demand and on what Google actually ranks Done for you
- Blog topics & articles Mined from your own catalog, published on the days you pick Done for you
- Image alt text AI vision describes what is actually in the photo Done for you
- Structured data Generated and kept in step with the page Done for you
- Internal linking Parents down to subcategories, products across to collections Done for you
- Spotting decay & refreshing copy Search Console position watched, slipped pages re-queued Done for you
- AI search visibility ChatGPT and AI Overviews mentions tracked — Growth and up Done for you
- Backlinks Editorial exchanges with complementary stores. Not outreach, not PR In part
- Reporting Your own Search Console data in the app, not a written-up deck In part
- Strategy, positioning & priorities Deciding what your store should be known for is judgement, not throughput
- Migrations & replatforms One-off and high-risk, with rankings on the line
- Digital PR & campaign link-building Press pickups and outreach are a craft, not a workflow
- Technical rebuilds Architecture surgery and heavy Core Web Vitals work need engineers
- Multi-market & enterprise programs Coordinating teams, markets and languages is a management problem
Sauron doesn't bid for this work. An automation pitch that claims the whole list is selling you something.
Side by side
Agency arrangements vary widely, so this page doesn't put a number on yours — the calculator below takes your own retainer. Sauron plan details on the pricing page.
The bit you're actually paying for, every month
Strip out the calls and the decks and a retainer's recurring hours go on one loop: audit the pages you already have, decide which search each one should target, rewrite them, repeat next month. That loop is the whole of what Sauron does continuously — and the interesting case isn't bad copy, it's copy that reads perfectly well and is aimed at a term almost nobody types.
- Reads what's live on Shopify now
- Researches the term with the most real demand
- Rewrites for it, then checks before publishing
If you leave, you keep the work
Sauron doesn't hold your content hostage in a dashboard. It writes into Shopify's own fields, so what it has published is already yours — uninstall it and the pages stay exactly where they are.
- Every rewritten product title & meta description Written into Shopify's own SEO fields, not stored in our app
- Every rewritten collection title, meta & body Same fields, same ownership
- Every collection page it built A real Shopify collection, with its products already in it
- Every article it published A real Shopify blog article on your domain
- Every image alt text it wrote Attached to your Shopify media
- The research, the rank tracking and the dashboards — those live in the app, not on your store
- Structured data, which is rendered by the app rather than baked into your theme
- Any further work, obviously: the pages stop being kept up to date
Worth knowing before you decide, not after. A comparison that only lists the wins isn't a comparison.
When you actually should hire an agency
Sauron automates the recurring work. These four jobs aren't recurring work, and an automation pitch that pretends otherwise is selling you something.
A migration or replatform
Moving domains or platforms with rankings at stake is one-off, high-risk work that deserves a specialist watching it end to end.
Digital PR and campaign link-building
Sauron's backlink network exchanges editorial links between complementary stores. If you need press pickups and campaign outreach, that's an agency craft.
A technical rebuild
Site architecture surgery, heavy Core Web Vitals work or a custom storefront needs engineers, not an automation layer.
Enterprise or international programs
Coordinating SEO across many markets, languages and teams is a management problem. Tools help; they don't run the program.
Fair questions
Can Sauron fully replace an agency?
For the recurring work — research, collections, product and collection copy, schema, internal links, content — yes, that is exactly what it automates, and the map above lists it line by line. The strategic side (migrations, PR, technical rebuilds) it doesn't pretend to do.
Can I use Sauron alongside an agency?
Yes. Some stores keep an agency for strategy or PR and let Sauron do the recurring implementation. Every change Sauron publishes is logged and reviewable, so an agency can audit its work in the app.
Why is Sauron so much cheaper?
Agencies sell hours, and the recurring work is hours-intensive: research, rewriting, internal reviews. Sauron automates that work, so the price reflects software economics, not billable time.
Our copy is already decent. Is there anything left to do?
Usually, yes — and it's rarely the writing. The common problem is a page that reads well but is aimed at a term almost nobody searches, or at a term the page next to it is also chasing. Sauron researches the best-fitting term for each page against real volumes and rewrites towards it, so good copy stops competing with itself. A title can be the right length and still be pointed at the wrong search.
What if the copy doesn't sound like us?
You set a brand voice, including words to avoid, and every draft is written against it and scored before it can publish. Nothing has to go live unattended — you can review each change. And if you rewrite a title yourself in Shopify, Sauron leaves that page alone from then on rather than overwriting you.
Will Google penalise AI-written copy?
Google's stated position is that it judges content by whether it's helpful, not by how it was produced — what it acts against is bulk low-quality pages made purely to rank. That's the reason for the quality gate: every draft is grounded in your actual product facts, checked for length, repetition and hollow phrasing, and blocked if it fails. We won't promise you're immune to a future policy change, and nobody honestly can.
What happens to the work if I cancel?
The published work stays, because it was written into your Shopify records rather than held in our app — the titles, descriptions, collections, articles and alt text are yours. What stops is the ongoing work and the dashboards. There's a fuller breakdown above, including the parts that don't survive.
See what it does with your catalog
Free trial, billed through Shopify, cancel any time. If we haven't built what we promised in 90 days, every penny back — and you keep the pages.