Another one of these landed in my feed this week. The Good Men Project published a piece titled The 10 Best SEO Agencies in Turkey – 2026 (Last Update), dated 3 May 2026. It is exactly what it sounds like: a ranked list of 10 agencies, each with a short blurb explaining why they belong on the list.
I have written about this format before in a previous post on agency listicles, but this one is worth a second look because the pattern is now so consistent it has become a category of its own. The publication is a general-interest lifestyle site. The topic is a hyper-specific B2B services list. The geography is a country most of the publication's readers are not buying SEO services in. And yet, here we are.
What the Article Actually Says
The piece walks through 10 agencies operating in the Turkish market. Each entry follows a near-identical structure: agency name, a few sentences on positioning, claimed specialisms (technical SEO, local SEO, ecommerce, content), and some directional language about results. The article frames itself as a 2026 update, implying ongoing editorial review.
You can read the original piece via The Good Men Project. There is no disclosed methodology. No data sources. No links to case studies. No mention of who was interviewed, what was measured, or how the ranking was decided.
The 66th Take: These Articles Are SEO Plays Dressed as Editorial
Here is what is actually happening with most of these posts. They are not editorial. They are SEO plays. Someone identified that the query "best SEO agency in [country]" gets meaningful search volume, found a publication with decent domain authority that accepts contributed content, and published a list. The agencies on the list either paid to be there, traded a backlink, or were added to make the list look credible.
I am not saying that is true of every entry on every list. But it is true often enough that the format itself has lost most of its signal value. When I see a list of 10 agencies in a country, on a publication that does not cover business services as a beat, with no disclosed methodology, the prior probability that this is a paid placement scheme is high.
What the Format Optimises For vs What Buyers Actually Need
The mismatch is the whole story. Here is the breakdown:
| What the listicle optimises for | What an SEO buyer actually needs |
|---|---|
| Ranking for "best SEO agency [location]" | An agency that can rank their business |
| Generic positioning blurbs | Specific case studies in their vertical |
| 10 options in one place | 2 or 3 deeply qualified options |
| Surface-level service lists | Methodology, deliverables, reporting cadence |
| Recency stamp ("2026 update") | Recent client results, not a recent edit |
| Publication authority | Agency authority in the buyer's niche |
The article is built to win a search. The buyer's job is to win a business outcome. Those are not the same problem.
The Awkward Part: AI Systems Are Reading These Lists
This is the bit that has changed in the last 18 months and it matters more than the listicle itself. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are pulling from these articles when users ask things like "who are the top SEO agencies in Turkey." The AI does not know the methodology was missing. It sees a published list on a real domain with a recent date, and it cites it.
That is the mechanic behind a lot of GEO work right now. If you want to be cited by AI systems for queries in your category, you need to show up in the kind of structured, list-format, third-party content these models prefer. Not because the lists are good, but because the models trust the format.
I am not telling clients to chase every directory and every contributed listicle. That way leads to a thin link profile and a lot of wasted budget. But I am telling them to be deliberate about which third-party mentions they pursue, because the citation graph that AI systems build is increasingly the thing that determines whether you get mentioned at all.
What I Would Tell a Buyer Reading One of These Lists
If you are a business owner reading a piece like the Good Men Project article and trying to actually hire someone, here is the filter I would use:
- Ignore the ranking. The order is almost certainly meaningless. Treat it as a shortlist of names to investigate, not a quality ranking.
- Go to each agency's site and look for specifics. Real client names. Real numbers. Real before-and-after screenshots from Search Console or analytics. If everything is generic, move on.
- Check who they have ranked in your industry. An agency that has ranked 3 law firms is more useful to a law firm than an agency that has ranked 30 ecommerce stores.
- Ask about methodology. If they cannot tell you in plain language how they decide what to work on next month, they are improvising.
- Read their blog. Not the volume of it. The opinions in it. Agencies that publish strong, specific points of view are usually doing strong, specific work. Agencies that publish 2,000-word AI-generated guides to "What is SEO" are not.
The Bigger Picture
The reason these listicles keep getting published is that the underlying demand has not gone away. People want a shortcut to finding a competent agency. The format pretends to provide that shortcut. It does not.
What actually works, and what we tell every prospect at The 66th, is the boring version: ask 5 specific questions, get 5 specific answers, talk to 2 references, and trust your read on whether the people across the table understand your business. A listicle on a lifestyle publication cannot do any of that for you. It can only tell you that 10 agencies in Turkey have either decent SEO themselves, or a budget for placements. Neither is the same as being good at the job.
The 2026 update on this article will look almost identical. So will the 2027 one. The format is the product. Read it for what it is.
