How to choose an SEO agency: 10 questions to ask before you sign

An SEO agency should do three things: fix the technical problems that stop Google from seeing or understanding the site, create or improve content that answers what your customers actually search for, and build the site's credibility through links, reviews and mentions elsewhere. Everything else — reports, tools, meetings — exists to show whether those three things are working.

A good indicator is how much of the first call the agency spends asking about your business versus talking about itself. SEO that does not start from what you sell, to whom and at what margin optimises for visitors who will never buy. The work is measured not by the number of keywords on page one, but by the enquiries and sales that come from search.

The first red flag is a guaranteed ranking: “number one on Google in 30 days” or “guaranteed first page”. Google does not sell positions and nobody outside Google can guarantee them. An agency that promises this either does not understand how search works or assumes you do not — and it often targets keywords nobody searches for, so it can easily get them to the top and present that as success.

The second is a promise of hundreds or thousands of links a month. Mass links from unrelated sites, directories and blog networks do not help, and they can lead to a manual action in Search Console that takes months to recover from. The third is secrecy: if the agency will not say exactly what it does on your site because it is a “trade secret”, you have no way to check whether it does anything at all.

Questions for the first call, part one: 1) What exactly would you do on my site in the first three months? 2) Can you show a client in a similar industry and how their enquiries changed, not just their rankings? 3) Who will work on my site, and can I speak with that person? 4) How do you measure success, and which numbers will I receive every month? 5) What do I need to provide — texts, site access, time for approvals?

Part two: 6) Will you change content or code on the site, and who approves it? 7) How do you build links, and can you show examples? 8) What happens to the content and accounts if we stop working together? 9) What is the minimum contract term, and under what conditions can it end early? 10) What do you not do — what is not included in the price? A good agency answers the last question immediately and specifically.

The contract should state the scope of work by month, or at least by quarter: how many pages are optimised, how many texts are written, which technical changes are made. A phrase like “ongoing SEO optimisation” without a task list commits the agency to nothing. It should also state that your accounts — Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Business Profile — are registered to you, with the agency given access as a user.

Check the notice period and what happens to content the agency wrote — it should remain yours. If the agency places links on its own sites or networks, ask what happens to them after termination: if they are removed, a drop in rankings after the contract ends is no coincidence.

An honest monthly report starts with what matters to you as an owner: how many enquiries, calls or sales came from organic search, and how that compares with the same month last year. Only then come impressions, clicks and positions from Search Console, followed by a list of work done and the plan for next month.

Be wary of reports made up entirely of rising ranking charts for dozens of keywords. A position for a query three people search for each month means nothing. Ask for the report to show how often each query is searched, and whether that page produced a single contact.

For an existing site without serious technical problems, the first changes in impressions usually appear within two to three months, and steady growth in enquiries within six to twelve months. A new domain or a highly competitive industry takes longer. If by month three the agency cannot show any movement, not even in impressions, it is time for a serious conversation.

The best sign you chose well is that after a few months you understand what is being done and why. SEO is not magic, and an agency that can explain its work in plain language usually does it properly. If you would like to see how we approach it, visit our SEO page or send us your site address for a short assessment.