Guide
How to choose an SEO agency, and the questions that actually sort them.
Most people choose an SEO provider on a sales call and a price, then find out six months later what they bought. This guide is the checking you can do before signing, including the questions Google itself suggests asking, and the answers that should make you walk away.
Why choosing is hard
SEO is a service where the buyer cannot easily see the work. You cannot watch a page being structured or a spam link being disowned. Results take months, and they are affected by things nobody controls, such as Google's own changes and what your rivals do. That makes it easy for a weak provider to sound exactly like a strong one on a first call.
The way through is to judge providers on things you can check: the work they have done before, how specifically they talk about yours, what they will show you each month, and whether you will own what you pay for. None of that needs technical knowledge. It needs the right questions.
Decide what you need before you talk to anyone
What is the problem, in one sentence
Not enough calls, the wrong kind of calls, a drop after a redesign, a listing that vanished, a site nobody can update. Providers are good at different problems.
Which customers and which places
The services that earn most and the towns you want work from. This is what the provider's plan should be built around.
How much time you can give
Someone at the business needs to answer questions, approve pages and ask customers for reviews. A plan that needs more of your time than you have will stall.
What you can spend, and for how long
SEO takes months to show its full effect. A budget that runs out in eight weeks buys an audit, not a result.
What Google says about hiring an SEO
Google publishes its own advice on this in Search Central, in a page called Do you need an SEO. It is worth reading in full, and it is refreshingly direct. It suggests asking a potential SEO a short list of questions: can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories, do you follow the Google Search Essentials, what kind of results do you expect to see and in what timeframe, what is your experience in my industry, country and city, how long have you been in business, and how can I expect to communicate with you, and will you share all changes made.
It also says to be sceptical. No one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim a special relationship with Google or advertise priority submit, that are secretive or will not clearly explain what they intend to do, or that talk about link popularity schemes or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. And it suggests that for an audit, you grant read access to Search Console first, not write access, and check their recommendations against Google's own documentation.
What an SEO provider actually does
Google's same page lists what a professional SEO typically offers: a review of your site's content or structure, technical advice on development such as hosting, redirects and JavaScript, content development, management of online business development campaigns, keyword research, SEO training, and expertise in specific markets and places. It now also lists optimisation for generative AI.
No provider needs to do all of those for you. A local service business usually needs structure, local work, content and reporting, with technical fixes as they come up. The useful question is which of those your provider will do each month, and which they will leave to someone else.
The questions that separate good providers from confident ones
Show me a result, with its source and its dates
Not a testimonial or a logo wall. A number, where it came from, and the period it covers, from a business like yours. Anyone can say they doubled traffic; few can show the Search Console view with the dates.
What would you do first on my site, and why
A good provider has looked at your site before the call, or will ask to. The answer should name something specific about your site, not a generic list of services.
Which searches will you aim at
They should be able to name searches your customers really type, and tell you which page on your site should win each one.
Who will actually do the work
The person on the call, a junior team, or a subcontractor you will never speak to. All can work. You should know which, and who to message when something breaks.
What will I see each month
A work log, dated, item by item, and the numbers with their sources. If the answer is a PDF of charts, ask what it will say about enquiries.
What happens if I leave
You should keep everything: pages, content, the Google accounts, the data, the listing. Anything that disappears when you stop paying was never really yours.
Warning signs that should end the conversation
Guaranteed rankings
Google says no one can guarantee a number one ranking. A guarantee is either a misunderstanding or a sales tactic, and both are bad news.
Secret methods
A provider who cannot explain what they will do is either hiding something risky or does not know. Google specifically warns against the secretive ones.
Links by the hundred, cheaply
Bought links and link schemes break Google's spam policies. They can work briefly and then cost you far more than they gained.
They want to own your accounts
Your Search Console, Analytics and Google listing should be in your name, with the provider added as a user. Never the other way round.
Reports built around impressions
Impressions and traffic without enquiries is a report designed to look good. Ask how they measure what the work produced.
Long lock-in with nothing to show
Some commitment is reasonable because SEO takes time. Twelve months with no visible work log along the way is not.
Red flags hidden in contracts
The provider owns the website
Some contracts say the site or its templates belong to the provider, and you rent them. When you leave, the site goes with them.
Content licensed, not transferred
Pages written for you but licensed back to you only while you pay. You should own everything written for your business outright.
Automatic renewal with long notice
A contract that renews itself for another year unless cancelled months in advance, easy to miss and expensive when you do.
Vague deliverables
Ongoing optimisation and monthly activity with no numbers. If the work is not written down, you cannot check it was done.
Agency, freelancer or consultant
Each can be the right choice. An agency gives you a team and continuity if one person leaves, at the cost of layers between you and the work. A freelancer is usually cheaper and closer to the work, with less cover if they are ill or busy. A consultant is often senior and specialised, good for diagnosing and planning, sometimes lighter on doing.
Price surveys reflect the difference. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 providers, updated in August 2024, agencies averaged $3,209 a month, consultants $3,250 and freelancers $1,348.63. The label matters less than who does the work, how well they know your kind of business, and whether you can see what they did.
If you choose one person rather than a team, ask how many clients they take at once and what happens if they are ill or away. A solo provider who keeps their client list small, documents everything in a place you can see, and hands you a plan anyone could pick up, carries less risk than one who holds it all in their head. The documentation is the cover a team would otherwise provide.
How to read an SEO proposal
Look for your business in it
A proposal that could be sent to anyone, with your name swapped in, was. A good one mentions your services, your towns, your rivals and something specific about your current site.
Find the work, not just the outcomes
Increased visibility and more traffic are outcomes. Pages per month, fixes planned, listing work and reporting are work. The proposal should list the work.
Check what is measured
Positions for named searches, pages Google accepts, calls and forms. If enquiries are not measured, the proposal cannot promise to improve them.
Read the exit terms
Notice period, what you keep, how accounts and content are handed back. These tell you how the provider expects the relationship to end.
Look at what is excluded
Writing, development time, links, tools. A cheap proposal is sometimes cheap because the expensive parts are someone else's problem.
Checking references properly
Google suggests asking for client references, and they are worth the effort if you ask the right things. Speak to a client whose business is like yours, not the provider's favourite. Ask what was done in the first three months, how quickly problems were answered, whether the reports made sense, and whether they would hire the provider again. Ask whether anything went wrong and how it was handled; every real engagement has something.
Where a provider cannot name clients, which is common in white-label work, ask for anonymised results with sources and dates instead. I work that way for much of my history, because clients I worked for through other agencies are not mine to name. The case studies on this site describe the work and the numbers without the names where that is the agreement.
White-label agencies, explained
A lot of SEO is done by people you never meet. Many agencies sell under their own name and hand the work to a specialist behind the scenes, known as white-label work. That is not a bad thing in itself; much of my own history is exactly that, running the work for other agencies' clients. It becomes a problem when the agency cannot tell you who does the work, adds nothing but a markup, or loses track of what was done.
The questions above still work. Ask who does the work and how you reach them when something breaks. Ask to see the work log, not a summary of it.
What to own from the first day
Google Search Console
Verified on your own Google account. The provider is added as a user.
Google Analytics
Your property, your account, with the provider added. The history stays with you whoever does the work.
Your Google Business Profile
You as owner, the provider as a manager. Never let anyone else hold ownership of your listing.
Your domain and hosting
Registered and billed in your name, with your login. The single most painful thing to recover from a provider who disappears.
The content and the plan
Every page written for you, and the map of what exists and why, handed over or kept somewhere you can see.
The record of links
Any links built for you and any spam links disowned on your behalf, listed with dates. The next provider needs this to avoid undoing good work or repeating bad.
The first ninety days, and what they should show
A good provider front-loads the work you cannot see. In the first weeks, expect an audit of where you stand, repairs to anything broken, and a written plan: which pages exist, which search each answers, what comes first. By the second month you should see pages being published or improved, each tied to a named search, and a work log you can read. By the third, you should see early movement in the numbers that come first, such as more of your pages accepted by Google, better positions on the easier searches, or a repaired listing showing again.
You may not see a flood of enquiries in ninety days, especially in a competitive market. You should see work, dated and specific, and the first signs it is landing. If you see neither, that is the conversation to have.
Switching providers without losing ground
If you are leaving one provider for another, protect yourself first. Confirm you own the domain, hosting, Search Console, Analytics and your Google listing, and remove the old provider's access only once you have. Ask for a copy of everything they produced: pages, reports, the plan and any list of links they built or disowned.
Then give the new provider time to read what was done before changing it. The worst outcome of a switch is a new provider undoing the parts that were working, such as redirects, because nobody wrote down why they existed.
How I would answer these questions
Since this guide is on my site, here are my own answers. Results with sources and dates are on the case study pages: a Manchester cleaning firm averaging position 6 for its main search across June to August 2026 in Search Console, a Las Vegas injury firm going from 9 to 44 top-three rankings by July 2026 in the Ahrefs rank tracker, and a Las Vegas brokerage whose site grew from 66 to 570 linking sites between March and September 2026. I do the work myself, and messages reach me, not an account manager. You get a portal with the work log and the numbers, read from your own accounts. You own everything: accounts, pages and plan. And I will not guarantee a ranking, because nobody can.
Questions people ask when choosing
Should I choose a local agency
Being local helps less than knowing how your customers search and having done this for businesses like yours. Ask about experience in your city and industry, as Google suggests, rather than where the office is.
Is a big agency safer than a small one
Not necessarily. A big agency has more cover; a small one often means the person you speak to does the work. Judge on who does the work and what you can see.
How many providers should I talk to
Two or three is usually enough if you ask each the same questions. The differences in the answers are what help you choose.
Can I try SEO on a short contract first
Often yes, especially for an audit or a defined project. It is a good way to see how someone works before committing to monthly work.
What if I already hired the wrong one
Make sure you own your accounts and domain, get a copy of everything done, and give the notice the contract requires. Then have someone independent check what state the site is in.
Want a second opinion before you sign?
Send me the proposal you are considering, or the site you want work on. I will tell you plainly what it includes and what it leaves out.