Questions to Ask an SEO Agency Before Hiring Them
Nine questions, each with what a good answer sounds like and what a poor one sounds like. A list of questions on its own is useless if you cannot assess the reply. We are an agency, these are written to be asked of us as well. Our own answers are published across this section.
Ask These Of Us Too
We are an SEO agency publishing a list of questions for vetting SEO agencies. Use it on us. Every question below is one we could fail. At least one of them has a complicated answer where we are concerned.
Why that matters for the list itself. The alternative is obvious.
Questions engineered so that only we pass would be visible to you within about a minute. They would make everything else on this site worth less. A vetting list that flatters its author is an advertisement.
What makes a question worth including. It has to be able to catch us.
The test applied throughout was whether we would have to think before answering. Block two is the clearest example, since we act as a supplier to other agencies and that makes our own answer to the first question longer than a simple yes.
Why each answer is described. Questions alone do not help.
Being told to ask about measurement is useless if you cannot tell a good answer from a fluent one. Every question below carries both, written as things you would actually hear.
How to use the list. Conversation rather than interrogation.
These are not a form to work through. Ask the ones that matter to your situation and listen for whether the answers are specific.
Who Will Actually Do The Work
The person selling to you is frequently not the person delivering. Ask who does the writing, who does the technical work and who you will speak to.
What a good answer sounds like. Names and structure.
Specific people or roles, how they divide the work and who your point of contact will be. A firm that knows its own operation supplies this without hesitating.
What a poor answer sounds like. Reassurance about the team.
Being told the team is excellent, that everybody works together or that it depends on the project. None of those answers the question. The deflection is itself the finding.
If they subcontract. Not disqualifying.
Some firms sell the work and have another firm deliver it. A well run arrangement can beat an agency doing it badly in-house. The objection is to concealment rather than to the model.
Our own answer, which is not simple. Both.
We work directly with clients and we also act as a white label supplier to other agencies. That means some work carrying another firm's name is ours, which is set out in what is white label SEO. If you ask us this question, that is the answer you get.
The follow-up if they subcontract. Three things.
Who you speak to when something is wrong, whether the arrangement is long-standing, then what happens to your account if it ends.
What Will You Do In Month One
A specific answer indicates a process. A vague one indicates a template. This question separates the two without requiring you to understand any of the work.
What a good answer sounds like. Stages, in order.
Getting access to accounts, examining the site, researching what your customers search and producing a plan. Research before production, described in a sequence that makes sense.
What a poor answer sounds like. Deliverables immediately.
A list of what you will receive, else content beginning in week one. Producing before understanding produces the wrong things competently, which is the most expensive kind of wasted month.
The qualification worth knowing. Month one looks like nothing.
The early work is research and planning, so visible output is minimal by design rather than by neglect. An agency saying so is being accurate rather than managing your expectations downwards.
The second half of the question. Month six.
Ask what a typical month looks like half a year in. If it sounds identical to month one, nothing in the arrangement responds to what is learned.
Where our answer is published. Two pages.
The process page describes the sequence generally. The first three months page goes through it month by month.
How Will We Know If It Is Working
The answer should cover what will be measured, against what comparison and by roughly when you could assess it. All three, rather than one of them.
What a good answer sounds like. Commercial and comparative.
Enquiries and the searches that produce them, measured against your position when the work started. Somebody who mentions your business outcomes rather than only search figures is thinking about the right thing.
What a poor answer sounds like. Rankings alone.
Positions for a list of terms, with no connection to enquiries. Rankings move for reasons unconnected to your business. A report of them is not evidence that anything commercial happened.
The other poor answer. Metrics that only rise.
Cumulative totals, impressions or third-party authority scores. These grow while nothing useful occurs. An agency leading with them has chosen figures that flatter.
The follow-up that sharpens it. Ask about a bad month.
Ask what they would tell you if a month went badly. Somebody comfortable with their work answers easily, because they have an explanation and a next step.
Where our answer is published. The reporting page.
How an SEO agency reports on results sets out what a report should contain and which numbers flatter.
What Will You Not Do
An agency with no answer either has no standards or has never considered the question. Both are worth discovering before you sign rather than afterwards.
What a good answer sounds like. Specific refusals.
Named practices they decline, with reasons. Somebody who has thought about where the lines are can describe them immediately, because the question has come up in their own work.
The stronger version. Clients they turn away.
A firm that will say which businesses it declines to work with, plus why, is telling you it applies judgement to whom it sells as well as to what it does.
What a poor answer sounds like. Anything is possible.
Being told they can do whatever you need, else a general statement about only doing things properly with nothing specific attached. That is agreement rather than an answer.
Why total agreement is a warning. Your requests are not all sensible.
You are not a specialist, so some of what you ask for will be misdirected. A firm agreeing with all of it has stopped applying the judgement you are paying for.
What to do with the answer. Test it.
Raise something you half suspect is a bad idea and see whether they say so. Red flags when hiring an SEO agency covers the practices worth declining.
Who Owns The Website And The Accounts
Ask who owns the site, the domain, the content produced and the analytics and profile accounts. The answer should be you, in every case.
What a good answer sounds like. Unambiguous.
That everything belongs to you, that accounts will be registered in your name with them granted access, then that it will be written into the agreement. No hesitation, because there is nothing to weigh.
What a poor answer sounds like. Convenience.
Being told it is simpler if they hold the domain, that the site sits on their platform, else that accounts are easier to manage under their own. Each may be true and each leaves you unable to leave cleanly.
Why this matters at the end. Whoever holds it decides.
Nothing about ownership affects a happy engagement. All of it affects an unhappy one, which is why it gets agreed without attention and discovered under pressure.
The single most useful arrangement. Accounts in your name.
Analytics and profile accounts registered to your business with the agency added as a user, rather than the reverse. That one arrangement prevents most exit problems.
Where our answer is published. The contract page.
What is a typical SEO agency contract carries the four things we commit to, of which this is one.
Can I Speak To A Client In A Similar Business
Speaking to somebody who has actually worked with them tells you more than any case study. It is also the question where a fair answer may be a partial one.
What a good answer sounds like. Yes, with a caveat.
Agreement to arrange it, possibly with an explanation of who they cannot name. Willingness matters more than the number of references produced.
The legitimate limit. Confidentiality is real.
Some clients do not wish to be named, some sectors are sensitive about it, then firms working as suppliers to other agencies cannot name those relationships at all. An agency unable to name every client is not necessarily concealing anything.
What a poor answer sounds like. No references at all.
Complete inability to produce anybody, else repeated deferral. Every established firm has somebody willing to speak. None available is a signal.
The stronger version of the question. One you choose.
Ask whether you can speak to a client they did not hand-pick. Reluctance there is more informative than the reference would have been.
What to ask the reference. Two things.
How long they have been with them, then what happened when something went wrong. How to check an SEO agency track record covers the rest.
What Happens If It Does Not Work
Nearly every buyer asks what happens if it succeeds and almost none asks the other one. The answer reveals how a firm thinks about accountability.
What a good answer sounds like. Diagnosis before remedy.
An explanation of how they would work out why, what they would change and at what point they would tell you the approach was wrong. That describes a firm that has been in the situation and thought about it.
The best version. Naming when they would say stop.
A firm willing to say it would tell you to spend the money elsewhere, in defined circumstances, has told you something no assurance can.
What a poor answer sounds like. It will work.
Confidence substituted for an answer. That is not reassurance, it is a refusal to consider the case. Every campaign has months where things go backwards.
The other poor answer. No answer at all.
Genuine puzzlement at the question means it has not arisen, else that it has and nothing was done. Either way you have learned something.
What we are not saying. That anybody should guarantee anything.
This question is about how a firm responds to failure rather than about remedies or refunds. An agency promising your money back is making a different and less credible claim.
How Do You Charge And What Is Not Included
Ask both halves. The first is always answered and the second is where the real scope lives.
What a good answer sounds like. The exclusions volunteered.
A clear fee structure plus an unprompted account of what falls outside it and how that would be handled. Somebody comfortable with their pricing raises the exclusions themselves.
What a poor answer sounds like. Everything is included.
A quote with no exclusions has not stated them rather than having none. That is where underdelivery becomes deniable later.
What should not be charged. Two things.
A setup fee, plus anything for access to your own data or reports. Those are yours. A business should expect that from anybody.
Listen for the payment model. Particularly performance.
Paying purely on results sounds fairest and creates an incentive to chase whatever moves fastest rather than what matters commercially. Ask how they avoid that.
Where our answer is published. With figures.
Our rates are stated on how much does an SEO agency charge rather than given on request, so you can compare before speaking to anybody.
What Do You Need From Me
An agency asking nothing of you is not planning to understand your business. This question inverts the meeting and the response is unusually revealing.
What a good answer sounds like. Commercial questions.
Which services are profitable, which work you want more of, what you would rather not take, what you can realistically serve and what happens to an enquiry when it arrives. None can be researched.
Why those specifically. Only you hold them.
An agency can find out what people search. It cannot find out which of your services actually makes money. Without that it aims at whatever looks easiest to achieve.
What a poor answer sounds like. Access and a logo.
Being asked only for account access and brand materials. That is enough to start producing and not enough to produce the right things.
The other poor answer. Nothing at all.
A firm that needs nothing from you has a package rather than a plan. The package was decided before your name came up.
What it also tells you. How much work you are taking on.
A good answer means you have obligations too. Knowing that at the start prevents the commonest cause of stalled work, which is an agency waiting on a client.
How Would You Answer These
We publish our own answers to all nine across this section. You can read them before speaking to us and then check whether what we say in a conversation matches what we wrote down.
Where each one sits. Findable rather than implied.
Who does the work is on the white label page. Measurement is on the reporting page. Ownership is on the contract page with the four commitments. Charging is on the pricing page with our actual figures. References are on the track record page.
Why that is a stronger claim than a promise. It is checkable.
Anybody can assert that they answer questions candidly. Publishing the answers in advance means a discrepancy between the page and the meeting is visible to you rather than to nobody.
The one where our answer is awkward. Stated anyway.
We supply other agencies as a white label partner, so the first question on this page does not have a simple answer for us. Leaving that off the list would have made the list better for us and worse for you.
What we would ask in return. Use them elsewhere.
Put these to whoever else you are considering, then give their answers the same weight as ours. A reader who works through this list and chooses somebody else has used the page correctly.
Where to go next. The rest of the vetting.
The questions come first, then the proposal and the track record are used to check what you were told. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
Nine questions.
Our answers are
already published.
Read them before you speak to us, then check whether what we say in a conversation matches what we wrote down. Put the same nine to whoever else you are considering and give their answers the same weight as ours.
What we commit to in writing:
Local £350 a month fixed. National £1,550 a month. Published rather than quoted on request.
Every guide.
One practice.
What an agency is, whether to buy at all, which model suits you, how to vet one, what things cost, what should be in a contract and how to work with them afterwards.
