How to Choose an SEO Agency
Most guides to choosing an SEO agency are written by agencies telling you to pick them. This one is a framework for the decision itself — the questions worth asking, and what a good answer actually sounds like.
Ask how they measure success
A good agency talks about your business goals and revenue, not just rankings and traffic. If the entire pitch is about how many keywords will move to page one, ask what that’s actually worth to your business — a page one ranking for a term nobody searches is worthless, and a good agency should already be thinking in those terms.
Ask who actually does the work
Many agencies sell a strategy call with senior staff, then hand execution to whoever’s available. Ask directly who will be doing the month-to-month work, and whether you’ll have access to them or only to an account manager relaying updates.
Ask what “guaranteed results” actually means
Nobody can guarantee a specific ranking — Google’s algorithm isn’t controlled by any agency. If a firm guarantees page one for a specific term, ask exactly what happens if that doesn’t happen, and read the contract before assuming you know the answer.
Ask about the contract length
Long lock-in contracts, especially 12 months with no exit, shift the risk entirely onto you. A firm confident in its results should be comfortable with a shorter initial commitment, or at minimum a genuine, usable exit clause.
Ask what’s actually included each month
“Ongoing optimisation” is not a scope of work. Ask specifically what will be delivered — how many pages, what technical work, what reporting — and compare that against the price, not just the headline number.
Ask how they’ll report progress
Reporting should tie back to enquiries or revenue, not just traffic and rankings. If a report only ever shows you numbers going up without connecting them to your business outcomes, that’s a sign the agency itself isn’t tracking the thing that actually matters.
Ask if they’ll tell you if it’s not a fit
A good agency will say upfront if your market doesn’t have enough search demand, or if your business needs faster results than SEO can realistically deliver. If every conversation ends in “yes, we can do this,” that’s worth being sceptical of.
We turn away clients who aren’t the right fit for SEO — read our What You Should Pay for SEO page for how we price the ones we do take on, or get a free audit to find out where you stand.
