How to choose an SEO agency: eight questions before you sign

The difficulty in buying SEO is that you cannot see the result until the money is spent, and in the meantime every quote is equally plausible. Below are the questions that give you answers before you sign, and the signs worth noticing.

What to ask before the quote

1. What did you look at before giving this price? If the answer is “your site and your Search Console”, the quote is about you. If the answer is general, the quote is about somebody else.
2. What is the concrete output of the first month? A document? A list? Changes already made? This separates advice from work.
3. Who puts the changes on the site — you or us? The most common unpleasant surprise: recommendations arrive, but implementing them is a separate project.
4. Who writes the copy, and in which language? On a small market this matters: machine-translated content performs poorly, and repairing it costs more than writing from scratch.
5. Is the link budget inside the price? If yes, what share of it. If no, what order of magnitude is recommended.
6. What do you measure, and when does the first report arrive? And does the report show what was actually done, not only a graph.
7. Who have you already done this for in a similar niche? They may not share exact numbers — that is a client’s data — but they should be able to talk about the field.
8. What happens if we stop? Does the work done stay on the site, or does something disappear along with the service.

Three promises that are a bad sign

“We guarantee first place.” Nobody outside Google controls a position in Google. A guarantee means in practice either a query nobody searches for, or a guarantee not meant to be kept.

“We have a relationship with Google.” No such thing exists. Google partnership exists for buying advertising, not for organic results.

“We will build 50 links a month.” A number of links is not a result. Fifty directory links are worse than two links from real publications, and sometimes actively harmful.

What to look at on the supplier’s own site

A simple, fair check: open the supplier’s own site on your phone. If it loads slowly, if the headings are muddled, if nothing has appeared on the blog for two years — that is a work sample. An SEO agency whose own site is not in order is like a builder with a cracked façade.

A second check: search for the supplier’s name together with their city. If they are not visible in their own town, it is worth asking why.

Large supplier or small

A large agency has more competence and more process; with a small one you usually speak to the person who also does the work. Which side is right depends on whether you need a lot of work at once or precise work over a long period. At the volumes of a small market a small team often works better simply because there are fewer links in the chain.

If you want to start with something that does not require a contract straight away, an SEO audit is a good yardstick: the quality of the audit shows you how this supplier works. What belongs in the monthly work is set out on the SEO service page.