How to Choose an SEO Agency: 21 Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Most guides to picking an agency are agencies describing themselves. These 21 questions are built to fail a bad one, with the answer you want and the answer that ends the meeting.
Nearly every guide to how to choose an SEO agency is written by an agency, which means the list of things to look for is a self portrait. We are an SEO agency too. So rather than describe what a good one looks like, here are the questions that make a bad one uncomfortable, with what a decent answer sounds like and what should end the conversation.
Ask them in a live call, not by email. The hesitation is half the information.
About the work itself
1. What would you do in the first ninety days on my site specifically, in order? You want a short ordered list that refers to things on your actual site. A described process with no reference to your business means they have not looked.
2. Which of the three kinds of work is my bottleneck: content, technical or authority? You want one answer with a reason. All three equally is what people say when they have not checked.
3. Who writes the content, and is any of it generated by AI? You want a straight answer either way, plus how it is checked and who adds the subject knowledge. Evasion here is the single most common place this goes wrong in 2026, because Google has an explicit policy on content produced at scale with no added value, and enforcement against it is real.
4. Will you name the specific websites you would place links on, in writing? You want some version of yes, or an honest explanation of how placements are earned. A refusal to name anything usually means a network you would not want to be in.
5. How do you decide which page to build next? You want a method connected to your revenue. Volume estimates alone means you will get pages that attract readers who will never buy.
6. How do you handle a migration, a redesign or a platform change? You want them to have an opinion before it happens. This is the single most common way sites lose traffic overnight.
About the people
7. Who actually does the work, and how many other accounts do they have? You want names, roles and a number. A specialist carrying fifteen accounts is not giving you a day a month.
8. Is any of this outsourced or white labelled, and to whom? You want a direct answer. There is nothing inherently wrong with subcontracting, and plenty wrong with you not being told, because the quality and the data handling are no longer in the hands of the people you hired.
9. Who will I deal with week to week, and are they the person doing the work? You want to know whether your questions reach a practitioner or a relay.
10. How much of my time will you need, and from whom? You want a real figure in hours. Nobody who has done this successfully says none.
About evidence
11. Show me a client of my size in a comparable market, with their Search Console. You want screenshots or a live screen share, not a slide with a percentage on it.
12. Show me a client whose traffic went down, and tell me what you did about it. This is the best question on the list. Everybody has one. An agency that claims otherwise is either new or lying, and the answer tells you how they behave when things go wrong, which is the only thing that really matters.
13. What is your average client tenure, and what is your churn? You want a number and no flinching. Very short tenure in a field that takes a year to work tells you something.
14. Who was the last client to leave, and why? You want a candid, unflattering answer. A perfect record is not a thing that exists.
15. Which of your own pages rank, and for what? Not disqualifying on its own, since plenty of good agencies neglect their own marketing. But if they cannot show you anything at all, ask what they would say if you did the same.
About money and the contract
16. What exactly ships each month, and what costs extra? You want deliverables with numbers attached, not areas of focus. Four pages and a technical sprint is a deliverable. Ongoing optimisation is not.
17. If I leave, what do I keep? You want: every page, every link, every account, every document. Get it in writing. Content that disappears from your site when you cancel is a hostage arrangement, and it happens.
18. What are the exit terms, and is there a performance condition? You want a notice period you can live with. A twelve month lock in with no performance milestone is the agency transferring all the risk to you.
19. Will all the accounts be in my name with me as owner? Search Console, analytics, the Google Business Profile, the domain, the hosting. The answer should be yes without discussion. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong.
The two questions that separate everybody
20. Under what circumstances would you tell me not to hire you? You want a real answer: budget too small for the market, no search demand, a site that cannot convert, a payback window too short. An agency that cannot name a single situation where it is the wrong choice will not tell you when it stops being the right one either.
21. What should I expect to be disappointed by in month three? You want them to tell you that traffic will probably look flat while impressions rise, and to explain why. An agency that promises you will be delighted at month three has either not read its own data or is managing you rather than your site.
The AI question, and the trap inside it
Ask how they are handling AI search, and then listen for the specific thing that should worry you: a guarantee. Nobody can guarantee that an assistant will name your business, because the output is probabilistic and no one controls it.
A good answer is unglamorous. It sounds like: the pages that get cited are overwhelmingly pages that already rank, so the work is largely the same work, and here is how we would measure whether your brand gets named over time. A bad answer sells a separate product at a separate price for the same job with a new name.
What a proposal should actually contain
Four things. If any is missing, ask for it before you compare prices, because without them you cannot.
- What they found wrong on your site, specifically, with examples.
- What ships in the first ninety days, with quantities and a sequence.
- How success will be measured, including what will not have moved yet and by when.
- What they need from you, in hours and in decisions.
Three proposals that all say ongoing optimisation at different prices cannot be compared. Three that each name the first ninety days can.
Published survey figures vary widely and the variation is informative. Ahrefs surveyed 439 providers in 2024 and found an average monthly retainer around 2,900 US dollars, with freelancers roughly half that. SE Ranking surveyed 260 providers in December 2024 and found most charging under a thousand. The lower figure usually buys one person doing part of the job. That can be the right purchase if you know which part you need.
A commitment is reasonable, because the work does not pay back in a quarter. A lock in with no performance review and no exit is not the same thing. Push for a notice period from month four onward, reviewed against leading indicators rather than revenue.
Not reliably. Larger agencies have more capacity and more process, and your account is more likely to be run by someone junior carrying a lot of clients. Ask question seven and judge the answer rather than the letterhead.
Get owner access to your own accounts today, whatever else happens. Then read the notice clause, ask for a written list of what shipped in the last three months, and get an independent opinion on it. That costs an afternoon and often pays for itself immediately.
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