Honest Answers to the Questions VPs of Ecommerce Actually Ask Us

HERO BLOCK

Sub-headline

Before you hire any SEO or AI search agency for your B2B distribution catalog, you should know what you are getting and what you are not. The questions below are the ones we hear on almost every fit call, written up in plain English with no marketing hedge. If your question is not here, book a 30-minute fit call and we will answer it on the call.

SECTION 1: About Lobit

Who is Lobit and what do you actually do?

Lobit is an SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) agency built for one buyer: mid-market B2B industrial and specialty-distribution ecommerce operators running $5M to $50M online with 5,000 to 50,000+ SKUs on Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or NetSuite SuiteCommerce. We do technical SEO for large catalogs, content programmes for procurement-driven buyers, GEO so ChatGPT and Perplexity cite you, link building, schema work, and we put a money-back guarantee on every retainer.

Where are you based?

Lobit is headquartered in Croatia, in the European Union. We work in English with US, UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand clients, and we hold morning hours overlapping US East Coast and afternoon hours overlapping UK and Western EU. We are not a low-cost offshore shop. We are a EUR-based specialist with a US-quality output and a price point that respects that we do not pay Manhattan rent.

Who is Neven Lovrekovic?

Founder of Lobit. Won the Croatian SEO Championship outright. Shipped over 150 ecommerce SEO projects in the last eight years. He personally leads every account at Lobit, end to end. There is no "junior on your account behind the scenes" arrangement here.

How many clients do you take on at a time?

We are capped at 12 active retainer clients. That cap is structural, not marketing flavour. When we are full, we keep a waitlist and we say so.

SECTION 2: Pricing and engagement

How much does it cost?

Retainers run $3,500 to $8,000 per month depending on catalog size, market scope and how much technical lift the platform needs. Project work (AI Search Visibility Audit, technical SEO audit, content sprints, GEO sprints) is priced separately and starts at $1,950. Full pricing breakdown is on the pricing page.

Why are you cheaper than US Tier-1 agencies?

We charge from a Croatian EUR cost base, which is roughly 30 to 45% lower than the cost of running a Manhattan or San Francisco agency at the same quality tier. We are not undercutting US agencies to look cheap. We are pricing fairly against our cost base. The work product is the same or better.

Do you charge a setup fee?

There is a one-time onboarding fee on retainers ($1,500 to $3,500 depending on catalog complexity) covering the initial 30-day deep audit, baselines and roadmap. After that you pay the monthly retainer only.

What is the minimum contract length?

Three months. We do not lock you into a year. If after three months we have not earned the renewal, you walk away with no penalty. Most of our retainers run 18 to 36 months, but that is because the work compounds, not because we wrote it into the contract.

How does the money-back guarantee work?

For retainer clients: if at the end of the first 90 days we have not delivered the agreed milestones (audit, technical fixes shipped, content plan, GEO roadmap, baseline lift on tracked KPIs), you can ask for a 100% refund of the retainer paid in those 90 days. We refund within 7 business days, no hard conversation required. Details on the money-back guarantee page.

Do you do performance-based or revenue-share pricing?

No, and we would push back if you suggested it. Performance pricing in SEO incentivises the wrong behaviour (rank gaming over compounding authority, head terms over long tail). A fixed retainer plus a real money-back guarantee aligns incentives better. We are happy to explain why on a call.

SECTION 3: Who you are and who you are not for

Are you the right agency for a DTC consumer brand?

Probably not. We do not chase DTC beauty, supplements, fashion, pet or general consumer ecommerce. The SERP for those categories is owned by US specialists who got there first, and we would not be doing you a favour by competing for your business. If a DTC brand calls us, we usually refer them out.

Are you the right agency for a SaaS company?

No. B2B SaaS SEO is owned by First Page Sage, Foundation Marketing, Grow & Convert, Animalz alumni, and Powered by Search. Hire one of them.

Are you the right agency for a marketplace?

Marketplaces are a different beast (search infrastructure, internal taxonomy, supply-side SEO). We do not specialise in them. We will tell you so on the first call.

Are you the right agency for a $200M+ distributor?

You can hire us, but at $200M+ you are likely better served by a larger agency with more execution arms (paid media in-house, dev team in-house, multi-country operations). We do brilliant work for $5M to $50M distributors because we are sized correctly for that bracket.

Are you the right agency for a startup pre-$1M?

We will be honest. Hire a freelancer at this stage, or do it in-house. The retainer economics do not work for you yet.

Are you the right agency for a B2B distributor doing $5M to $50M online?

Yes. This is exactly who we built Lobit for. Every page on this website was written for your exact situation.

SECTION 4: Technical scope

What platforms do you work with?

Shopify Plus is the most common in our book. We also work fluently on BigCommerce (Enterprise and Pro), Adobe Commerce (Magento Open Source and Commerce Cloud), Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware), NetSuite SuiteCommerce, and custom React, Next.js, Hydrogen and Vue storefronts. We have working knowledge of Sana Commerce, Oro Commerce, Spryker and Optimizely B2B for distributors who replatformed away from a legacy ERP-coupled stack.

Do you do technical SEO audits?

Yes. The technical SEO audit is part of every onboarding (30-day deep audit) and is also available standalone for $4,800 to $9,500 depending on catalog size. Scope includes crawl architecture, faceted navigation and parameter handling, JavaScript rendering and prerender, canonical and hreflang, schema and structured data, internal linking, log file analysis, server response times, Core Web Vitals, mobile rendering, robots.txt, sitemap hygiene and crawl budget allocation.

Do you handle faceted navigation for large catalogs?

Yes. Faceted navigation done wrong is the single most common technical problem we find on B2B distributor catalogs. The default Shopify Plus or Magento facet implementation routinely generates 20,000 to 100,000 indexable parameter URLs that cannibalise crawl budget and dilute ranking signals. We fix this through a combination of selective indexation, parameter handling, canonical strategy, internal link gating and (occasionally) noindex with follow on the long tail of low-value combinations. The framework is detailed in our faceted navigation playbook.

Do you handle JavaScript rendering issues?

Yes. We audit JavaScript rendering on PDP and PLP, identify what Googlebot can and cannot render, recommend SSR, SSG or dynamic rendering depending on the stack, and work with your dev team or our partner devs to implement. We have shipped this on Hydrogen, Next.js, React storefronts on Magento headless, and custom Vue builds.

Do you handle structured data and schema?

Yes. Product, Offer, Brand, Organization, Breadcrumb, FAQPage, Article, HowTo, Review, AggregateRating and the increasingly important hasMerchantReturnPolicy, shippingDetails and additionalProperty. We also handle gtin, mpn, brand fields that are required for Google Merchant Center and Shopping ads.

Do you do GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?

Yes. GEO is the second moat layer for Lobit alongside the industrial-distribution niche specialism. Full scope on the GEO service page and the AI Search Visibility Audit page.

What is llms.txt and do you implement it?

llms.txt is an emerging convention (analogous to robots.txt) that tells AI engines and agents what content on your site they can index and cite. We implement and maintain it for retainer clients. It is one of the cheapest, fastest GEO wins available right now.

Do you write content?

Yes. We write category pages, comparison pages, specification guides, compatibility guides, regulatory and compliance guides, supplier-versus-supplier comparison content, and procurement-team-targeted explainer content. We write to procurement, plant managers, lab managers, EHS directors and operations leads, not to marketers. The voice is technical, specific and useful. We do not pump out "10 tips for buying gloves" blog posts.

Do you build links?

Yes, through digital PR, industry publication placements, supplier and manufacturer link reclamation, podcast appearances and association directory inclusion. We do not buy links from PBNs and we do not exchange guest posts at scale. Our link building is slow, expensive and durable.

Do you handle international SEO?

Yes. We handle hreflang, country-specific subfolders or subdomains, ccTLD strategy, multilingual content (English variants for US, UK, CA, AU, NZ as the priority languages), and country-specific schema (currency, shipping, returns). We can also coordinate with translation partners for ES, FR, DE and IT when needed.

Do you handle eProcurement, punch-out and ERP-coupled catalogs?

We do not implement OCI, cXML or punch-out catalogs (that is a dev-shop project), but we work with your dev team to make sure punch-out catalogs do not break public-side SEO. Many distributors run into ranking drops after a punch-out implementation because the public catalog gets de-prioritised. We have a specific framework for protecting public SEO in this scenario.

SECTION 5: GEO and AI search

Is GEO really a thing or is it hype?

AI Overviews now appear on about 14% of US shopping queries and incidence is higher on B2B technical queries. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude are answering before the click. If your category is not represented in those answers, you are losing market share that your dashboards will not see for another 6 to 18 months. Not hype.

How is GEO different from SEO?

SEO optimises for the ranked list of links. GEO optimises for being cited as a source inside the AI engine's answer. Different mechanics: GEO weights entity coverage, passage-level optimization, citation-worthy data, schema completeness and llms.txt accessibility more than classical SEO does. It also responds to different signals (recent updates, content freshness, structured comparison content). We treat them as complementary, not substitutes.

Will GEO replace SEO?

No, both will coexist for at least the next 5 to 10 years. AI answers handle informational and comparison queries well; classical search still handles transactional, navigational and long-tail SKU queries. We optimise for both.

How do you measure GEO performance?

We track citation share across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude on a defined query universe (typically 250 to 1,000 queries depending on catalog scope), monthly. We track citation count, citation rank, source URL diversity, and the share of citations on competitor and marketplace pages. Reported monthly in a clean dashboard.

SECTION 6: Timeline and results

How quickly will I see organic traffic lift?

Honest answer: meaningful, measurable lift on a mid-market B2B distributor catalog typically appears in months 3 to 6 if the technical foundation needed work, and months 6 to 12 if it did not. Compounding gains continue through months 12 to 24. Anyone promising 30-day organic lift on a 30,000-SKU catalog is selling you something else.

How quickly will I see AI engine citations?

Schema, llms.txt and technical fixes can reflect inside 14 to 30 days. Content-driven citation lift typically needs 60 to 120 days to be consistent across engines.

What is realistic ROI?

Across our case studies in industrial distribution, the typical pattern is 1.5x to 3x organic revenue inside 12 to 18 months, with the gains compounding through year two and three. ROI on the retainer is usually positive by month 6 to 9 for distributors doing over $10M online.

What if my organic traffic is down because of an algorithm update?

We diagnose first. About a third of "we lost traffic after the latest Google update" calls trace back to a Helpful Content System impact, a third to technical regressions from a replatform or a CDN change, and a third to genuine SERP composition shift (AI Overviews and Amazon Business taking real estate). The fix depends on which one. We tell you which before quoting a recovery roadmap.

SECTION 7: Working with us

Who will be on my account?

Neven leads every account directly. Depending on scope you will also work with our technical SEO lead, our content lead and a project manager. Same team for the life of the engagement.

What does a typical week look like?

Weekly Slack channel async updates, a 30 to 45 minute video call every other week, monthly written report with KPIs, quarterly strategic review with leadership.

Do you sign NDAs?

Yes, mutual NDA on every engagement. We do not name clients in case studies without written permission and we do not reuse client data.

Do you have references?

Yes, on the consultation call we share two or three named client references from comparable industrial-distribution accounts (under NDA you can speak to them directly).

What if I want to bring SEO in-house eventually?

That is fine and we have helped clients do it. We will document everything and train your in-house hire during the handover period. We are not building a hostage situation.

Can we white-label your work?

No. Lobit does not white-label.

Do you do paid media, email or social?

No, we are SEO and GEO only. We work alongside your paid media, lifecycle and ABM partners and coordinate where the channels overlap. Specialists outperform generalists, including us.

SECTION 8: Risk and trust

Why should I trust a Croatian agency over a US one?

Honest answer: do not trust the country. Trust the work. Read our case studies, look at the AI Search Visibility Audit deliverable, ask for two named references, and start with a $1,950 audit before signing a retainer. If after that the work does not stand up, walk. If it does, country of origin matters less than founder-led delivery, technical depth and the money-back guarantee.

What happens if Neven gets hit by a bus?

Fair question. We hold full project documentation in a shared knowledge base accessible to the client at any time, and our technical lead and content lead can continue execution. The agency does not depend on a single point of failure for delivery. That said, if Neven is permanently unavailable, the client has a 30-day notice exit with refund pro-rated against months not delivered.

What if our strategies diverge mid-engagement?

We talk about it on the next call. If we cannot agree on the direction after one good-faith conversation, we end the engagement on 30 days notice, no penalty. Neither of us is locked in.

Can I see a sample audit?

Yes. On a fit call we walk through a redacted, anonymised AI Search Visibility Audit so you see exactly what you would receive.

SECTION 9: Quick comparison answers

How are you different from OuterBox, Siege Media, Searchbloom, WebFX?

Full comparison on our comparison page. Short version: smaller, founder-led, capped at 12 clients, EUR cost base passed to client, money-back guarantee, GEO-first, and we specialise in B2B industrial distribution instead of doing every vertical.

How are you different from StudioHawk, Megantic, Prosperity Media in APAC?

We focus exclusively on B2B industrial and specialty-distributor ecommerce; APAC players run broader ecommerce books. If your geographic centre of gravity is Australia or New Zealand only, talk to them too and compare.

How are you different from hiring in-house?

A senior in-house ecommerce SEO hire costs $120K to $180K base in the US, plus benefits, plus tools, plus the lead time to hire. A Lobit retainer is $42K to $96K per year and you get a specialist team from day one. The math usually favours an agency until you are over $100M in online revenue.

How are you different from a freelancer?

A good freelancer is cheaper than us and worse on technical SEO at scale. A bad freelancer is cheaper than us and produces unrankable content. The risk profile of a freelancer engagement is wider in both directions. We sit in the middle band of price and at the top band of consistency.

SECTION 10: Sales objections answered directly

"Our in-house team can do this."

Sometimes true. If your in-house team has shipped a working faceted navigation strategy on a 30,000-SKU catalog, has implemented llms.txt and schema across the catalog, runs monthly AI citation tests, and has time left over for content, you do not need us. If they are doing one of those things and not the others, we accelerate the rest.

"We tried an SEO agency before and it did not work."

We hear this almost weekly. Usually the previous agency was either a generalist (so they did not understand large catalogs), or they were lead generators who handed you to a junior, or the contract was performance-based and incentivised wrong behaviour. The case study on our case studies page named "the second-time client" is exactly this scenario.

"Why should we pay for SEO when we already rank?"

Because the SERP composition is changing under you (AI Overviews, more aggressive Amazon Business retail-search behaviour, Google Shopping expansion, new entrant catalogs in your category) and standing still is losing share. Run the AI Search Visibility Audit and check.

"We have an in-house developer; we just need content."

We can do content-only retainers, but we will tell you on the call that the technical foundation usually determines whether content moves the needle. We will not take a content-only engagement if the diagnostic tells us the catalog has fundamental technical drag.

"Can you guarantee a specific ranking?"

No, and any agency that does is lying. We can guarantee deliverables, milestones and a money-back commitment on the work, which is what an honest agency offers.

SECTION 11: Compliance and security

Are you GDPR compliant?

Yes. We are based in the EU and we are compliant by jurisdiction. We sign DPAs on request.

Do you handle PII?

We do not need or want access to PII. We work on catalog, content, schema and link data, and we work inside read-only analytics and Search Console accounts.

Where is your data stored?

EU-based infrastructure (Hetzner, OVH, Cloudflare EU). We can route to US-region storage for client data if requested.

Will you sign our security questionnaire?

Yes. Send it through after the engagement letter is in motion and we will return it inside 5 business days.

SECTION 12: Ready to talk?

If the answer to a question you care about is missing here, book a 30-minute fit call. We will answer it on the call without a sales script. No demo, no slide deck, just a conversation.

Primary CTA

Book a 30-minute fit call → [calendar embed]

Secondary CTA

Or order the AI Search Visibility Audit (from $1,950) → [link to audit page]

P.S. Alfred, your AI copywriter, told us to put real answers on this page instead of marketing fluff. The buyers we want to work with respect honesty more than they respect spin. If a question on this page made you decide we are not the right fit, that is a good outcome, both ways.

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