A Real Agentic AI Agent Running Your SEO Research — Starting at $500/m
A production agentic AI agent that handles keyword research, competitive analysis, content briefs, and performance tracking on a cron schedule. No prompting required.
9
Scheduled Workflows
40+
Briefs per Month
12+
Asset Types
0
Prompts Required
Scott is a managed autonomous AI agent that runs a complete SEO research operation for your business. He’s a concrete example of agentic AI in production: 9 scheduled workflows per week, 40+ content briefs per month. All on a fixed cron schedule, no human prompting per task. He tracks keywords, reads competitor pages, monitors AI search citations, produces content briefs, and reports on performance, whether you’re in meetings, on vacation, or asleep.
This page shows what Scott actually produces — output formats, schedules, and scoring rubrics. If you want to see it in action, talk to us about Scott. Scott runs on AI workflows and automation infrastructure that we built and operate.
Agentic AI describes systems that can plan, use tools, and complete multi-step tasks autonomously. Scott reads his own context files each day, checks his task queue, selects the right tools for each job, and produces finished deliverables. That is agentic AI in practice. At the scope and consistency Scott operates, he functions as what the industry is starting to call a “digital employee”: an AI that handles a complete knowledge-work function, not isolated tasks.
THE CHALLENGE
The SEO Research Problem You Can’t Staff Around
Hire an Agency
$3K–8K/month
✗ Junior analyst running the same tools you could
✗ Monthly reports arrive late, read generic
✗ Broad industry knowledge, not granular detail
✗ No AI search citation tracking
Hire In-House
$70K–120K/year + tools
✗ Good analysts are hard to find
✗ Bandwidth limits on data processing
✗ Vacation and sick days kill consistency
✗ Knowledge walks out when they leave
Do It Yourself
Your time
✗ You have the tools and maybe a process
✗ Falls to the bottom of the list every week
✗ No systematic tracking over time
✗ Context-switching destroys momentum
These are all reasonable approaches. Each has genuine strengths. The common failure mode is consistency: agencies deliver monthly, in-house hires have bandwidth limits, and DIY gets deprioritized. SEO research compounds over time, and compound gains require sustained effort. That’s the gap Scott fills.
AUTONOMOUS SEO AGENT
Meet Scott — An Agentic AI SEO Research Agent
Scott is an autonomous AI agent that runs a complete SEO research operation on a fixed schedule, producing institutional-quality research without a single prompt from you. He’s not a tool you operate or a person you manage.
Every week, 9 scheduled workflows fire automatically. They pull keyword data, scan the competitive landscape, check whether AI search engines are citing your content, and produce full content briefs that a writer can execute without guesswork. Scott’s cron schedule runs whether you’re on vacation, in meetings, or sleeping. The schedule is the product.
The current market offers three categories of SEO help: tools you operate yourself (Surfer, Clearscope, MarketMuse), agency retainers where AI is used internally but the deliverable is still a human report, and in-house hires. Scott is none of these. He’s a managed autonomous agent, the research layer that runs continuously so humans can focus on strategy and creative decisions. If you’re evaluating whether your organization is ready for this kind of deployment, our AI readiness assessment covers the key questions.
WEEKLY OPERATIONS
The Weekly Cycle — How Scott Operates
Nine autonomous workflows run a complete SEO research operation, from raw data collection through strategic analysis to production-ready content briefs. Every time slot fires on schedule, processes data, and produces output.
Weekly Standup
Status report: published content, brief queue depth, blockers, decisions needed from you.
Data Gathering
Keyword positions & volume from Keywords Everywhere API. Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn scans. Perplexity citation sweep. GSC snapshot. Sitemap check.
Analysis & Planning
Reads raw data, identifies trends, flags anomalies, compiles research report, re-ranks content priority queue.
Brief Writing
Top 2 unbriefed topics get full 160+ line content briefs with SERP analysis, competitive gaps, recommended outlines, SEO metadata.
Brief Writing (continued)
Two more briefs per day from the priority queue. Same quality standards every day.
Ops Check
Silent audit 6x daily: inbox, published content, brief folder integrity, pipeline state. Only notifies you if something needs attention.
Final Briefs
Last 2 briefs of the week. Below-threshold topics deferred automatically.
Weekly Summary
Week-in-review: content published, GSC movements, competitor activity, backlog changes, recommended priorities for next week.
Deep Data Collection
Comprehensive keyword research across all tracked terms. Full GSC pull. Complete site re-index. Perplexity citation audit across 8+ queries.
Competitive Research
SERP analysis for every tracked keyword. Reads actual top-ranking competitor pages. Evidence-based gap tables with URLs and excerpts.
Monthly Strategic Report
Deep keyword trends, competitive landscape shifts, content gap analysis, updated planning priorities for the month ahead.
DELIVERABLES
Agentic AI Examples: What Scott Produces Each Week
These are real output formats with sanitized data. Every artifact follows a consistent template, ensuring the same quality whether it’s week 1 or week 52.
📋
Content Briefs
Production-ready briefs at 160+ lines. SERP analysis, competitive gaps, recommended outlines, internal linking, SEO metadata, and writer notes.
Daily
📊
Keyword Position Tracker
Tracks positions, volume, CPC, and 12-month trends for 20+ keywords with weekly snapshots and movement context.
Weekly
🔍
Competitive Gap Analysis
Per-keyword gap tables built from reading actual competitor pages. Every finding includes URL, query, and excerpt.
Monthly
📰
Weekly Research Reports
Five-section report: keyword intelligence, web signals, Perplexity citation sweep, emerging trends, and recommendations.
Weekly
📈
GSC Performance Snapshots
Google Search Console data in 28-day and 90-day windows. Impressions, clicks, CTR, position per page with movement tracking.
Weekly
📑
Backlog & Priority Queue
Scored and ranked topic queue. Topics enter from research, exit when briefed. Re-ranks weekly as new data arrives.
Continuous
🔬
Deep Keyword Research
Comprehensive keyword analysis by content pillar with scored recommendations, pillar mapping, and related clusters.
Monthly
🗺️
Competitor Landscape Map
Direct competitor mapping by pillar. Traffic estimates, content strategy analysis, uncontested gaps, crossover threats.
Monthly
🏗️
Site Inventory & Sitemap
Tracks every page by type and pillar. Monitors growth and flags new/removed pages from sitemap changes.
Weekly
🌱
Research Seeds
Dynamic research directions guiding keyword queries, web scans, and Perplexity sweeps. Updated on new trend signals.
Weekly
🤖
AI Search Citation Tracking
Monitors Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews citations. 8+ queries per sweep. Flags replacement opportunities.
Weekly
📣
Standup & Summary Reports
Monday standup and Friday summary. Published content, queue depth, GSC movements, competitor activity, recommendations.
Weekly
AGENTIC AI IN PRODUCTION
A Real-World Agentic AI Example: Scott in Action
Most agentic AI coverage describes enterprise deployments: things like claims processing or fraud detection at large companies. Scott is different. He is a deployed, production agentic AI agent running for a real mid-market business, and his work is visible.
Here is what Scott does, concretely:
| Activity | Frequency | Tool Used | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keyword research | Weekly (Monday) | Keywords Everywhere API, GSC | Updated keyword tracker |
| SERP analysis | Weekly (Monday) | Brave Search API | Research report |
| AI search visibility tracking | Weekly | LLM Refs (9 engines) | GEO report |
| Competitor monitoring | Weekly | Firecrawl | Competitor change alerts |
| Content briefs | Daily (Mon–Fri) | All of the above | 2 briefs/day, ~40/month |
| Weekly learning digest | Wednesday | RSS feeds, Tavily | Practitioner insight summary |
| Monthly deep analysis | Monthly | All sources | Strategic planning report |
No human prompts Scott for each task. He reads his own context files (mission brief, worklog, data files), decides what to do, uses his tools, and files the output. That is what an agentic AI agent does.
What makes Scott a production example: his briefs directly drive content published on this site. The articles you read here were written from briefs Scott produced. That is a closed loop, an agentic AI agent whose work product reaches real audiences and drives real business outcomes. If you want to see how we prioritize which AI projects to tackle first, that framework came from the same research pipeline.
INTEGRATIONS
Tools and Integrations
🔑
Keywords Everywhere API
Real-time search volume, CPC, competition scores, 12-month trends, and related keyword expansion.
📊
Google Search Console
Position tracking, impression counts, click data, and CTR analysis in 28-day and 90-day windows.
🤖
Perplexity AI
Citation tracking across AI search. Tests 8+ queries per sweep to monitor your content as a source.
🔍
Web Search (Brave)
SERP position analysis, featured snippet detection, People Also Ask monitoring, competitive signals.
🌐
Web Research (Tavily)
Deep web research across Reddit, Substack, LinkedIn, and industry sources for emerging trends.
🕷️
Site Crawler (Firecrawl)
Automated sitemap crawling, competitor page reading, bulk extraction, site structure analysis.
🧠
Semantic Search (QMD)
Searches past research, briefs, and published content to prevent duplication and find cross-references.
📄
Web Fetch
Reads actual competitor pages, extracting structure, word count, topic coverage, and content gaps.
Works With Your Communication Stack
Scott can deliver briefs and notifications wherever your team works: Slack, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, or email. No new tools to adopt, no workflow disruption.
CONTENT PIPELINE
The Content Pipeline — From Seed to Published
Every topic moves through a structured lifecycle with quality gates, scoring, and a single human approval checkpoint.
Topic Scoring Rubric
Every potential topic is evaluated against five weighted dimensions. Only topics scoring 70+ get a brief.
| Factor | Weight | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Search Volume Signal | 25% | Autocomplete presence, People Also Ask, SERP competition density |
| Business Alignment | 25% | Direct service mapping, ideal customer attraction, conversion likelihood |
| Competitive Gap | 20% | Weak, outdated, or missing competitor content vs. strong existing coverage |
| AI Search Opportunity | 15% | Whether Perplexity or ChatGPT currently cite weak sources you could replace |
| Timeliness | 15% | Trending topics, news hooks, urgency signals vs. pure evergreen |
What a Brief Looks Like
Each brief runs 160+ lines. Here’s a condensed example showing the key sections. The topics and keywords here will be customized to you or your client’s website:
METHODOLOGY
How Scott Thinks
🔗
Cluster-First
Thinks in groups of 3–5 related pieces, not individual pages. Every brief identifies cluster siblings and creates backlog entries for companion content.
🏆
Quality Over Volume
Word count recommendations based on what top-ranking competitors actually wrote, not arbitrary targets. Comprehensive coverage beats filler.
🤖
AI Search Ready
Optimizes for Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google AI Overviews alongside traditional SERP. Briefs include instructions for making content quotable by AI.
📎
Evidence-Based
Every competitive finding includes a URL, search query, and excerpt. No unsupported claims. Data sources are labeled with their origin.
📊
CTR-Aware
Monitors click-through rates alongside positions. Flags pages where impressions are high but clicks are low. Recommends meta description and title fixes.
📡
Trend-Responsive
Research seeds update based on signals from Reddit, LinkedIn, and industry sources. New trends enter the research pipeline within the same week.
COMPARISON
How Scott Compares
Agencies bring cross-client pattern recognition and human judgment from years of experience. In-house hires develop deep institutional knowledge. The comparison below is honest about where Scott fits and where humans add value that an autonomous agent cannot replicate.
SEO Agency
$3K–8K/month
✓ Cross-client pattern recognition
✓ High-level strategic advice
~ 2–4 briefs/month
✗ No AI search citation tracking
✗ Generic report templates
~ 1–2 month ramp-up
Scott (Managed Agent)
$1k-3K/month
✓ Cross-client pattern recognition
✓ High-level strategic advice
✓ 9 scheduled workflows, weekly + monthly
✓ 40+ briefs/month at 160+ lines
✓ Reads 5+ competitor pages per brief
✓ AI search citation tracking built in
✓ 5-dimension topic scoring
✓ Same quality every week, no variance
In-House Hire
$5K–10K/month
✓ Deep institutional knowledge
✓ Cross-department collaboration
✓ Creative strategic thinking
~ 4–6 briefs/month max
✗ Vacation/sick day coverage gaps
~ 2–3 month ramp-up
Scott is the research layer that makes humans more effective. He handles the high-volume, high-consistency work, producing research assets that an in-house strategist or agency partner can use to make better decisions faster. He’s not a replacement for human judgment. He’s the research infrastructure that frees humans for the strategic and creative work that only humans can do.
THE TEAM
Part of a Larger Team
Scott is one agent in a coordinated team. His briefs feed directly into a writing agent that produces first drafts, runs self-review against brand voice rules, generates images through art direction, and publishes to WordPress. The entire pipeline from research seed to published content runs autonomously with human approval checkpoints at key stages.
This is a production system that Fountain City built and operates for our own content, and that we offer as a managed autonomous AI agent service. You get the research layer. The full content pipeline from research through publishing exists behind it.
HOW ENGAGEMENT WORKS
Setup, Training & Scale
Initial Setup & Training
There’s a one-time setup fee to configure Scott for your site, business context, and content goals. The first month focuses on setup plus training and quality assurance. We calibrate his output until you’re 100% satisfied with research and brief quality. No long-term contracts after that. Month-to-month, cancel anytime.
Scales With Your Needs
Scott’s baseline is 2 briefs per day, but there’s no upper limit. If you’re managing multiple brands, client portfolios, or a high-volume content operation, Scott can scale to 100+ briefs per day. Higher volume means more API costs and management overhead above the baseline, but your cost per brief drops as volume increases. We’ll right-size the operation to match your actual content needs.
QUESTIONS
Frequently Asked Questions
We Have Passionate Customers Who Have Benefited From Our Partnership
Fountain City has been very good at providing the desired results without a lot of hand-holding.
They always have our best interests at heart and come to the table with excellent suggestions based on their experience.
Fountain City offers an excellent personal touch and is very approachable while being very professional still.
Fountain City’s results, honesty and attention to detail stand out. They’re very realistic as well.
I’m always confident they’ll take the lead to ensure that the project runs smoothly and in the manner that I expected.
Results and relationships matter to this team, and it makes for a pleasant and productive experience.
GET STARTED
Put Your SEO Research on a Schedule
Scott runs on a schedule. The same institutional-quality research ships whether it’s Monday morning or the first of the month.
