Choosing an SEO agency without getting burnt, then checking what they do

What an SEO agency is for

“SEO agency” is searched 4,400 times a month in the UK, “local seo agency” 720 times and “seo for small business” 390 times. Behind those searches is usually a business owner who wants the website to bring in customers and has no time to work on it.

An SEO agency makes sure your pages are found by people searching for what you sell: it fixes what gets in Google’s way on your site, writes or rewrites the pages that sell, works on your Google Business Profile if your customers are local, and tracks what those visits bring in. The detail of an engagement (audit, keyword map, technical fixes, content, links, reporting) is covered in our guide to SEO consultants.

One reminder before any quote: Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in its search results, and it costs nothing to appear in organic results. An agency is not buying you a place; it is working on your site so that it deserves to be shown.

Agency, freelancer, consultant or do it yourself

Google starts with the question few agencies ask: do you actually need one? Its answer for a small local business: you can probably do much of the work yourself. None of the options below is better in absolute terms; they answer different needs.

• Doing it yourself: a complete Google Business Profile, review requests, one page per service, a tap-to-call number, Search Console. That is the foundation, and it only costs time.
• A freelancer: one point of contact, often specialised (technical, copywriting or local). Check they can handle the number of pages you need and who covers when they are away.
• A consultant: an expert eye for a specific job (audit, migration, traffic drop, training your team), after which you or your web developer carry it out.
• An agency: several skills under one contract (technical, content, local, sometimes paid ads). Ask who actually works on your account, and whether any of it is subcontracted.

The right choice depends on what you are missing: time, technical skill, or a steady output of pages. If your site does not have the basics yet, start there: of the small business websites we analysed in France, 45% have no single H1 saying what the business sells, 39% have no tap-to-call phone or WhatsApp link on the home page and 18% publish no sitemap. No agency should charge you much for what can be fixed in an afternoon.

The questions to ask before you sign

Google recommends interviewing a potential SEO and gives its own list of questions. Here are the most useful ones for a small business, followed by the ones about the contract:

1. 1
   Can you show me examples of your previous work and give me client references I can call?
2. 2
   Do you follow the Google Search Essentials? Do your recommendations cite official Google documentation?
3. 3
   What kind of results do you expect, in what timeframe, and how do you measure success?
4. 4
   What is your experience in my industry, and in my town or region?
5. 5
   Will you share every change you make to my site, with the reasoning behind it?
6. 6
   Who will actually work on my account, and is any of the work subcontracted?
7. 7
   What do you deliver each month: how many pages created or rewritten, which fixes, what report?
8. 8
   What is the minimum term and notice period, and who owns the copy and pages produced if we stop?

The warning signs that should send you elsewhere

Google’s page on hiring an SEO is also a list of warnings. What should stop you:

• a promise of first place or guaranteed rankings: no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google;
• cold emails: Google says to be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue, especially those claiming your site is not listed in the major search engines;
• a claimed “special relationship” with Google, or a “priority submit” service;
• link schemes presented as a method, or submitting your site to “thousands of search engines”;
• being required to link to the agency from your site: Google is clear that you should never have to link to an SEO;
• secrecy: an agency that will not explain what it is doing, or will not show you its reports.

This is not theoretical. Google points out that you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, and that if an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. An SEO with access to your server should be willing to explain every change they make to your site.

What must stay in your name

This is the point most often forgotten, and the most expensive when you part ways. An agency works on your assets; it should never end up owning them.

• The domain name: registered to you or your company, on an account you hold the login for. The agency can manage the settings, not be the registrant.
• Search Console: you are the owner. Google states that an owner has full control over the property, and that you can grant permissions to other users only if you are a property owner. Add the agency as a user; a restricted user has simple view rights on most data.
• Google Business Profile: stay primary owner and invite the agency as a manager. Google explains that the owner has full control over the profile, while the only thing managers cannot do is add or remove users or remove the profile. Everyone uses their own Google Account, so you never share your password.
• Analytics (Google Analytics or another tool): the property is created on your account and the agency is added as a user.
• The website itself: admin access in your name, backups, and the copy and photos produced for you, assigned to you in the contract.

When the contract ends, remove their access everywhere, including any verification file or tag the agency added to your site to verify Search Console ownership.

How to measure the agency’s work

A monthly report should answer one question: is the website bringing in more customers? To check for yourself, open the Performance report in Search Console: by default it shows clicks and impressions for your site in Google Search over the past three months, by query and by page. Compare like-for-like periods, and look at whether searches for your services and your town are growing.

1. 1
   Searches: clicks and impressions on the queries that match what you sell, not just your business name.
2. 2
   Pages: those created or rewritten this month, with their URLs, so you can check they exist and are indexed.
3. 3
   Contacts: calls from the website and the Business Profile, forms sent, quote requests. That is the number that pays the agency.
4. 4
   Changes: the list of what was changed on the site, and why.