What Is an SEO Agency?
Somebody has told you that you need one, else one has approached you. Before spending anything you would like to know what the thing actually is. This page describes it rather than selling it. We are an agency ourselves, which is stated further down and which you should weigh accordingly.
Who Is Reading This
Almost everybody arriving here is in one of two positions. Somebody has told you that your business needs this, else a firm has contacted you offering it. Either way you are trying to establish what it is before committing money to it.
Why that matters for how this is written. You are not choosing yet.
A page trying to persuade you at this stage is answering a question you have not asked. What is useful now is a plain account of what the thing is, which is what follows.
What you probably already suspect. That some of it is nonsense.
Most people arrive at this subject with a degree of suspicion, frequently because of something they have heard or an approach that felt like a cold call. That suspicion is reasonable and block seven explains why.
What this page will not do. Tell you to buy anything.
Whether you should is a separate question with a genuine answer of no in some situations. It has its own page. This one establishes what the thing is so that question can be answered properly.
Where to go if you already know all this. Straight past it.
If you understand what an agency is and want to get on with choosing one, how to choose an SEO agency is the page you want.
What An Agency Actually Is
A business that does the work of making a website findable in search, on behalf of another business. That is the whole definition and everything else is detail about how, by whom and for how much.
Why the definition sounds thin. Because the label is.
The term covers a single person working from home and a firm of a hundred with account managers and offices. Both call themselves an agency, both are accurately described by that sentence, yet they are entirely different things to buy from.
Which is why the cost question has no simple answer. Different things are being sold.
When people find that quotes for apparently the same work vary enormously, this is usually why. The variation is not mysterious pricing. It is different amounts of different people's time. Our pricing page sets out the bands.
What is common to all of them. They work on something they do not own.
An agency operates on your website, your accounts and your reputation. That arrangement is normal and it produces most of the questions in this cluster, particularly about ownership and access.
The one thing the definition rules out. Control of the results.
Nobody in this trade controls where a site appears. The work influences it. The distinction between influencing and controlling is where most of the industry's bad behaviour lives.
What The Work Actually Consists Of
Six broad areas. Different agencies emphasise different ones, some do only two or three, then a business does not necessarily need all of them.
Understanding what people search. Research.
Establishing what your customers actually type, in their words rather than yours, plus which of those searches are worth pursuing commercially.
Making the site technically sound. The plumbing.
Ensuring pages can be found, reached and understood by a search engine. Frequently the least visible work and occasionally the most important.
Producing content. Usually the largest part.
Writing and structuring the pages that answer what people search for. This is where most of the money in most arrangements goes.
Earning references from other sites. The contested one.
Other websites mentioning and linking to yours. Legitimate approaches exist and so do risky ones, which is why this area produces most of the warnings in this cluster.
Managing the local listings. For businesses serving an area.
Your business profile, the map results and the consistency of your details across the places they appear.
Measuring it. The one to check.
Reporting what was done, what happened and what follows. Frequently the weakest part of an arrangement.
What It Is Not
Four things people reasonably assume and which are not the case. Each of these misunderstandings leads to a disappointed client, so they are worth clearing early.
It is not advertising. Nothing is being bought.
Advertising buys placement directly and stops when the money does. This work earns placement indirectly, takes considerably longer and persists for a while afterwards. They are different purchases with different shapes.
It is not a one-off fix. The site is not broken.
People expect something to be repaired, after which it works. What is actually happening is a continuing effort against competitors who are also working, so the frame is closer to maintenance than to repair.
It does not finish. There is no completed state.
Nothing arrives at a point where the job is done. That is uncomfortable when buying, it is why the ongoing arrangement is the norm. The models page covers the alternatives.
It is not a guarantee of a position. Nobody can promise one.
Anybody guaranteeing a specific ranking is either promising something they cannot deliver or has chosen a phrase nobody searches. This is the clearest single warning sign in the whole subject.
Why Businesses Use One Rather Than Doing It
Three genuine reasons, plus a fourth consideration that points the other way. A business owner deciding this deserves both halves.
Time. The commonest reason and the plainest.
The work is continuous and much of it is unglamorous. A business owner can learn it and frequently does not have the hours, which is a resourcing decision rather than a competence one.
The breadth of skills. It is several jobs.
Writing, technical work, research and analysis are different skills and few individuals hold all of them. That is the strongest argument for a team over any single person.
Tools and data. Less decisive than it sounds.
Agencies hold subscriptions and accumulated experience of what tends to work. Useful, though not the transformative advantage it is sometimes presented as.
And the reason not to. Some businesses genuinely should not.
A small local business with time available can get a long way alone. Some businesses should not be buying this at all. That case is argued properly in is it worth paying an SEO company, including the situations where the answer is no.
The Range Of What Gets Called An Agency
The same term covers arrangements that behave completely differently. Knowing which you are speaking to matters more than most of the questions people think to ask.
A sole trader. One person, no overheads.
Frequently excellent value and frequently very good at the work. The exposure is capacity, illness, holidays and having nobody to check their thinking.
A small specialist team. A handful of people.
Enough range to cover the different skills, small enough that the people who sold to you are likely the people doing the work. Most of this trade sits here.
A larger firm with account managers. A layer in between.
The person you speak to manages the relationship while others deliver. That is not a criticism. It does change what a first meeting tells you about the work.
A firm that subcontracts. The one to ask about.
Some agencies sell the work and have another firm deliver it entirely, invisibly. That arrangement is common and legitimate when disclosed. It has its own page, because we participate in it.
Why this decides so much. It is the first question worth asking.
Which of these you are dealing with tells you more about what you will receive than any list of services does. Our delivery models page works through it properly.
Where The Bad Reputation Comes From
This industry has a poor reputation and it is largely earned. If you arrived here suspicious, you arrived sensibly. Pretending otherwise would be the first misleading thing on this page.
Promises nobody could keep. The oldest problem.
Guaranteed positions, promises of a specific volume of enquiries and timescales stated as certainties. All of those are still sold. None of them is deliverable.
Contracts that trap. The quiet damage.
Long minimum terms, automatic renewals and arrangements where the business does not own its own website. Businesses discover these at the point they want to leave, which is the worst possible moment.
Work nobody could inspect. The structural problem.
A client generally cannot tell whether the work was done well, done badly or done at all. That information gap is what makes the trade vulnerable to people who take advantage of it.
Cold approaches claiming faults. The everyday version.
Unsolicited messages claiming problems with your site, sent by somebody who has not looked at it. Almost everybody with a website receives these and they set the tone for the whole trade.
What follows from all that. The burden sits with the seller.
A business is right to want the work explained, inspected and evidenced. Anybody in this trade objecting to that is objecting to a reasonable response to their own industry's record.
This Cluster Is Written By An Agency
We are an SEO agency. This entire guide to hiring one is published by a business that would like to be hired. You should weigh everything in it with that in mind.
Why we are saying it here. You would find out anyway.
A reader discovering it later reasonably wonders what else was left unsaid. Stating it in the first guide costs nothing and removes that question.
What our interest actually is. Worth naming precisely.
We benefit if you conclude that hiring an agency is sensible. We benefit further if you conclude we are a reasonable one. Every page here should be read knowing that.
What we have done about it. Written it to be used against us.
The vetting questions are ones we would have to answer properly. The warning signs include things we could be guilty of. The budget page tells you to do the free work yourself first. If this guide only ever pointed at us, it would be worthless to you.
What that means practically. Test us with it.
Take the questions to us and to whoever else you are considering. A reader following this advice may reasonably conclude somebody else suits them better. The guide is written to survive that.
Where this comes up again. Twice more.
On the choosing page and on the questions page, because those are the two places where the conflict most affects what you are reading.
What This Cluster Covers
Six groups, arranged by where a reader actually is rather than by subject. Most people need one or two of them rather than all six.
Understanding. This page.
What the thing is, before deciding anything about it.
Deciding whether to buy at all. The sceptical stage.
Whether it is worth paying for, what a small business can sensibly spend and what to do instead when the answer is no.
Choosing how to buy it. The models.
Agency, consultant, freelancer or in-house, plus whether to buy ongoing work or a defined project.
Vetting whoever you are considering. The largest group.
The questions to ask, the warning signs, how to read a proposal and how to check a track record. This is the part most worth your time.
The commercial terms. Pricing and contracts.
What things cost, what should be in an agreement and what a monthly arrangement should contain.
Working with them afterwards. The part nobody reads first.
Briefing, the early months, judging whether it is working and when to change. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
Ask us the
same questions
you ask them.
We are one of the options rather than the conclusion of this guide. If the arithmetic does not work for your business, else you would get further doing the free things yourself first, we would rather tell you that than take the work.
What we commit to in writing:
Our prices are published rather than quoted on request, so you can compare us against anybody else before speaking to us.
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.
