How an SEO run works, from gap report to ranking
An AI SEO agent run has a fixed shape, and knowing it tells you more than any feature list. It starts with a keyword gap report: the agent pulls the terms your competitors rank for and you don't, then ranks them by what they're worth to you. That report is 2 credits, and the price shows at the approval gate before the run fires — you approve the cost, then the work happens.
Pick a gap worth closing and the agent writes the page — structured, formatted, ready for your CMS — for 3 credits. Nothing publishes without your approval. And the run isn't finished when the page is live: rankings land back on your board, so you see what each page earned, not just that it shipped.
What a page earns feeds a shared memory. A result backed by a measured outcome becomes a lesson; an untested idea stays a hypothesis. The next gap report starts from what already worked on your site instead of starting from zero. If you want the loop to run itself, one sentence in chat — run the gap report every Monday — becomes a scheduled run that fires with your laptop closed.
An SEO agent does what your tools describe
AI for SEO splits into two jobs: reading data and doing work. SEO tools are genuinely good at the first — a rank tracker tells you you're at position 14, a crawler lists the broken links, a keyword database shows volume. If your tracker works for you, keep it. The data layer was never the problem. The problem is that every row in those dashboards is a task someone still has to do.
That's the real line between a tool and an agent. A tool describes the work and leaves it on your desk. An agent does the work and shows you the result for a decision. The output of a tool is a number; the output of an SEO agent is a drafted page waiting at an approval gate, with the reasoning attached.
Connections work the same honest way. When a run needs your Search Console or your CMS, the agent asks for the account and an OAuth popup opens. The agent never sees a password. You grant exactly what the run needs, when it needs it.
What AI SEO automation actually costs
Most AI SEO automation is priced by monthly tier, which tells you nothing about what one piece of work costs. Moatt prices by run: 1 credit is one standard run, and every run shows its price at the approval gate before anything fires. Talking to the agent is free — you only pay when a run executes.
Plans start at $99 a month for 60 credits; the default Growth plan is $299 for 250; Scale is $799 for 800, and annual gets you 2 months free. The rules protect you at the edges: failed runs refund automatically, unused credits roll over up to 2x your monthly amount, overage bills at 1.25x capped at 3x, and you get alerts at 50, 80 and 100 percent. A 14-day trial with 25 credits lets you run real work before deciding.
- Monitoring sweep — 1 credit
- Keyword gap report — 2 credits
- Page written and formatted — 3 credits
- Citation check across 50 tracked prompts — 2 credits
What stays human
The agent doesn't decide what your company should rank for. Which market you're chasing, which pages carry your money terms, whether a gap is worth closing at all — that's strategy, and it stays yours. The agent brings evidence: the report, the draft, the measured outcome. You make the call.
Judgment stays human too. A gap report can tell you a keyword is winnable. It can't tell you whether ranking for it brings buyers or bargain hunters — that takes knowing your customer, which no agent learns from a crawl. And because every page holds at the approval gate, nothing ships in your name that you haven't read.
When an AI SEO agent is the wrong buy
If you publish one page a quarter and enjoy writing it, you don't need automation — a good writer and a keyword database will do. If your site has a deeper problem, like a product story nobody understands, more pages won't fix it; fix the story first. An agent multiplies execution, and multiplying the wrong plan just gets you to the wrong place faster.
And if you want fully hands-off publishing, Moatt is the wrong shape on purpose. Some products will push content to your site on autopilot. Moatt holds every page at an approval gate, because a page that ships in your name should have been read by you. If that gate sounds like friction, this isn't your tool — and it's better you know before the trial.