How to choose an SEO agency: questions to ask before you hire

Hiring an SEO agency or consultant is hard to judge from the outside: the work is partly technical, results take months, and every proposal promises growth. A short list of good questions makes the difference clear quickly.

Before you talk to anyone

Write down three things:

• What you want from search: more enquiries, more sales, recovering lost traffic, a successful site migration.
• What you can give the agency: access to your site, a developer's time, someone who can write or approve content.
• Your budget range and timescale. SEO usually needs several months before results are clear.

These answers let you compare proposals on the same terms.

Questions worth asking

"What would you look at first on our site, and why?"

A good agency can name specific things after a short look: pages that are not indexed, a slow template, a gap against competitors. Generic answers ("we'll optimise your keywords") suggest a generic service.

"How will we measure progress?"

Look for measures tied to your goal (enquiries, sales, visibility for the pages that matter), reported regularly and explained in plain language. See How to report SEO results to clients for what good reporting looks like.

"How do you get links?"

This one separates careful agencies from risky ones. Good answers involve content and relationships worth linking to, digital PR and fixing broken links. Buying links or placing them on networks of sites is against Google's spam policies and can cost you rankings. See How to earn backlinks without buying them.

"Who will actually do the work?"

Ask who you will deal with each month and who does the technical and content work. Some agencies pass work to other providers; that can be fine, but you should know.

"What do you need from us?"

Most SEO work needs changes on your site. An agency that cannot say what it needs from your team, and when, will struggle to deliver.

"Can we speak to a current client?"

References from clients in a similar situation tell you more than case studies on a website.

Warning signs

• Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls search results; Google's own guidance tells site owners to be wary of anyone who guarantees them.
• Secret methods they will not explain.
• Long contracts with no way out before you have seen any work.
• Reports with no connection to your goals: pages of rankings for terms nobody searches.

Where to find candidates

Ask people you trust, look at who writes and speaks well about SEO in your field, and browse the SEOgenz business directory, where every listing is reviewed by a moderator. Agencies listed there also show their services, location and how to contact them.

Hiring for a role inside your team instead? Post it on the SEOgenz jobs board.