SEO is one of the few services where you cannot inspect the product before buying, cannot easily verify it afterwards, and where the worst providers are indistinguishable from the best for about four months. These are the questions that separate them, and what a good answer sounds like. We are an agency, so read this as advice you can also use on us.
1. Can you show me the first month plan before I pay?
Good answer: yes, here is what the first month looks like, and here is what we will need from you.
A real plan is specific: a crawl, a list of fixes, a keyword-to-page map, profile work. It is not “on-page optimisation, off-page optimisation, content strategy”, which is a list of categories, not a plan. If they cannot describe month one before taking money, they have not looked at your site.
2. What do you guarantee?
Good answer: nothing about rankings.
Anyone guaranteeing a position is either excluding every term that matters, or counting on you not checking. The ranking systems belong to Google; nobody can promise an outcome they do not control. What an agency can commit to is the work, the reporting, and telling you when something is not working.
“Guaranteed first page or your money back” usually means first page for a phrase nobody searches for.
3. Where will the links come from?
Good answer: a slow, specific description of real sites and real reasons.
Ask for examples of links they built for another client. If the answer involves a number per month, a package, a network, or a price per link, you are buying something that will need cleaning up later. Links that work are a by-product of something worth linking to, which is why they are slow and why nobody can promise fifty of them in April.
4. Who is actually doing the work?
Good answer: a name, and that person is on the call.
Many agencies sell with senior people and deliver with junior ones or subcontractors. That is not automatically wrong, but you should know. Ask who writes your monthly report and whether you can speak to them directly.
5. What will you need from me, and how much of my time?
Good answer: a specific list and an honest number of hours.
Anyone saying “nothing, we handle everything” is about to publish content about your business written by someone who has never spoken to you. Good search work needs access, approvals, and someone who can answer questions about what customers actually ask. Usually two to four hours a month. If they do not want your input, they are not planning to produce anything that needs it.
6. How do you report, and what is in it?
Good answer: one page in plain language, with positions next to enquiries.
Ask to see a sample report with another client’s name removed. Watch for a dashboard export with no commentary — that is a screenshot, not a report. Rankings alone are a vanity metric; the number that matters is enquiries, and a real report puts them side by side so you can judge whether the work is paying.
Ask the follow-up: what does the report say in a month where nothing worked? If a report can only show good news, it is marketing.
7. Is there a lock-in, and what is the notice period?
Good answer: month to month, or a short initial term with a clear reason.
Twelve-month lock-ins exist because search work takes time to show results, which is a fair argument. But a lock-in also removes the agency’s need to keep earning the fee. If there is a minimum term, ask what happens at month three if you are unhappy — and get that answer in writing.
8. Who owns the accounts and the content?
Good answer: you do, in your name, from day one.
Analytics, Search Console, the business profile, the domain and any ad accounts should be registered to you, with the agency added as a user. If the agency creates them under its own account, leaving means starting over — losing years of historical data. This is the single most common way clients get trapped, and it is entirely avoidable by asking at the start.
Same question for content: if they write it, do you keep it if you leave?
9. Will you touch my website directly, and how is that recorded?
Good answer: on a staging copy where possible, with a record of every change.
Agencies with admin access routinely install plugins, change titles and edit templates. None of that is wrong, but you should be able to see what changed and when, so that when something breaks in July you know what happened in June.
10. What will you do about the previous agency’s work?
Good answer: audit it first, then tell you what is salvageable.
If you have had SEO before, some of what exists may be helping and some may be a liability. An agency that starts producing new content without looking at what is already there is building on an unknown foundation. Ask them to tell you what they found before they propose anything.
11. What is your opinion of my site right now?
Good answer: something specific, including something positive.
This is a test of whether they looked. A specific observation — “your service pages have no internal links pointing at them” — means they opened the site. “Your site needs a lot of work” means they opened the quote template. And if nothing at all about your site is currently fine, you are talking to a sales process.
12. What would make you tell me not to hire you?
Good answer: a real scenario.
Honest answers exist: the budget is too small to do the job properly, the market is too competitive for the timeline, the product has a problem that search cannot fix, or the site needs rebuilding before promoting. An agency that cannot name a single situation where it would decline the work will take any work, including yours when it should not have.
Three answers that should end the conversation
- “We have a special relationship with Google.” Nobody does. There is no such relationship to have.
- “We will submit your site to 500 directories.” This stopped being useful more than a decade ago and can now be actively harmful.
- “Sign today for this price.” Urgency on a service that takes months to show results is a sales tactic, not a business reason.
Before you pay anyone
Get a written scope that lists what happens in month one, who does it, what you own, what is reported and how you leave. If an agency will not put that on paper, the paper is not the problem.
If you would like a second opinion on a proposal you have received — from us or from anyone else — send it over with your URL. We will tell you in writing what we think is reasonable in it and what we would question, within two working days. There is no charge and no obligation.
Written by WebbotX — a website design, development and search studio in Najafgarh, New Delhi. We take six clients at a time, which means the person who audits your site is the one who builds it.