Most guides to choosing an SEO agency are written by SEO agencies, which makes them a particular kind of document: technically accurate, quietly shaped so that the author happens to meet every criterion.
This one is written by an agency too, so apply appropriate scepticism. What follows is the process we would use if we were buying rather than selling, including the questions that are genuinely uncomfortable to be asked.
Why Choosing the Wrong SEO Agency Is Expensive
The cost of 12 months with a bad agency
The invoice is the smaller loss. Twelve months at $3,000 is $36,000, which hurts but is recoverable.
The real cost is the year. Search compounds, which means the work you did not do in year one makes year two harder. Competitors who did the work now have authority that takes longer to overtake than it would have to match. And the opportunity cost of a marketing channel that produced nothing while you were paying for it is rarely counted properly.
How Google penalties from black-hat SEO can take years to recover from
A worse outcome, and more common than people assume. An agency that buys links, spins content or manipulates reviews can produce early results that look impressive, followed by an algorithmic correction that removes years of visibility.
Recovery means identifying and disavowing the links, removing or rewriting the content, and then waiting — often through several core updates — for Google to reassess. Two years is not unusual. This is the outcome the "what will you not do" question is designed to prevent.
Step 1 — Know What You Actually Need Before You Start
Local SEO vs organic SEO vs technical SEO vs content
These are different disciplines and few agencies excel at all of them.
Local SEO is Google Business Profile, reviews, citations and location pages — for businesses with a service area. Organic SEO is content and authority for broader visibility. Technical SEO is site architecture, speed and indexation — usually the constraint on large or old sites. Content is the production engine underneath the last two.
Knowing which you primarily need prevents buying a package built around a different one.
Your budget vs realistic outcomes
Before speaking to anyone, establish what your category plausibly costs. Look at who ranks in your market and consider what their content and authority represents in spend.
If the gap between that and your budget is large, the answer is a narrower target rather than a thinner version of the same campaign.
What "success" looks like for your specific business
Define it before the first call, in your terms. Twenty additional qualified enquiries a month. Fifteen per cent more revenue from organic. Three new commercial clients a quarter.
An agency cannot be held to a goal you have not stated, and a goal expressed as "better rankings" can be satisfied without your business improving at all.
If you want an independent read on your starting position before briefing any agency, we will audit it at no cost and no obligation.
Call +44 20 4572 4940 →Step 2 — Build Your Shortlist
Where to find reputable US SEO agencies
Referrals from businesses in your sector are the strongest signal, because the referrer has seen the commercial outcome. Industry associations and trade bodies are next. Search itself is weaker than it appears — ranking for "SEO agency" proves an agency can market itself, which is a different skill from growing your business.
How to evaluate agency websites as a quality signal
Look at their content rather than their design. Does it demonstrate thinking, or does it restate what everyone else says? Is it current? Does it take positions that could be wrong, which is evidence of genuine expertise rather than safe generality?
An agency whose own site is thin, slow or last updated in 2023 is telling you something about its standards.
G2, Clutch, Google Reviews — what to trust and what to ignore
Treat all of them as directional. Clutch and G2 verify reviews but agencies choose which clients to invite, so you see the top of the distribution. Google reviews are harder to curate but easier to solicit selectively.
What is worth reading is the detail. Reviews describing specific work and specific outcomes are informative. Reviews saying "great team, highly recommend" are not, regardless of how many there are.
Step 3 — Evaluate Their Work
What a strong case study looks like
Four elements: the starting position, what was actually done, over what period, and the commercial result. A case study missing any of these is marketing rather than evidence.
Be particularly wary of percentage growth with no baseline. Traffic up 400 per cent means very little if it went from 50 visits to 250.
How to verify case study claims
You can check more than agencies expect. Look at the client's site — is the content described actually there? Check archived versions to see roughly when things changed. Search the terms the case study claims and see who ranks now.
None of this is conclusive, but a case study that does not survive ten minutes of checking should end the conversation.
Asking for references and what to ask referees
Request two: one current client and one former. The second is more informative and the request itself is revealing.
Ask referees: did results arrive when promised, was communication responsive when things went wrong, did they focus on your business outcomes or their metrics, and what would you change about the engagement?
Step 4 — The Discovery Call
12 questions to ask on the call
- Who does the work day to day, and are they employees?
- How many accounts does that person carry?
- What specifically happens in month one?
- Which keywords would you target for us, and why those rather than the obvious ones?
- Can I see a real client report, redacted?
- Tell me about a campaign that underperformed and what changed as a result.
- What tactics will you not use under any circumstances?
- How do you build links, specifically?
- What do we keep if we leave — content, links, accounts?
- What would you need from us, and what happens if we are slow to provide it?
- How would you know this campaign was failing, and when would you say so?
- What would make you tell us not to hire you?
Red flag answers that reveal bad agencies
Guaranteed rankings. "That's proprietary" in response to how links are built. Claiming no campaign has ever underperformed. Vagueness about who does the work. Pressure to decide before a discount expires. Any resistance to question nine.
What a good agency will ask you
At least as revealing as their answers. A good agency asks about your margins, your customer lifetime value, your capacity to handle more work, which customers you actually want more of, and what you have tried before.
An agency that quotes without asking any of this is selling a package rather than building a strategy.
Step 5 — Evaluate the Proposal
What should be in a good SEO proposal
Specific keywords with reasoning. Named deliverables with quantities. A month-by-month sequence. Explicit inclusions and exclusions. Reporting cadence and what will be reported. Commercial expectations at three, six and twelve months, framed as expectations rather than promises.
Red flags in proposal language
"Comprehensive optimisation" without specifics. "Content creation" without a number. "Link building" without method. Any use of "guaranteed". Deliverables measured in hours rather than outcomes.
Contract terms to negotiate or reject
Negotiate: notice period after the initial term — 30 to 60 days is standard. Reject: initial terms beyond twelve months with no exit, agency ownership of content or accounts, automatic renewal without notice, and any clause preventing you from discussing the engagement publicly.
Local vs National vs International Agency — Which Is Right?
Local matters when your business depends on local relationships, press and sponsorship — an agency embedded in that network opens doors. That is a genuine benefit and narrower than it is usually sold as.
In every other case, sector experience beats proximity. An agency that has ranked a dozen businesses like yours understands your competitive problem better than a generalist nearby. Most SEO relationships run on a monthly call and a shared document regardless of geography.
Be honest about how often you would actually meet in person. If the answer is rarely, you are paying a premium for optionality you will not use.
The First 90 Days: What Should Actually Happen
The onboarding period tells you more about an agency than the sales process did, and it is worth knowing what competent looks like before you are in it.
Weeks one to three should be discovery and audit. Access to analytics and Search Console, a full technical crawl, competitive analysis, and conversations with whoever in your business actually talks to customers. Very little visible output, which is correct — an agency producing content in week one has skipped the thinking.
Weeks three to six should produce a strategy document you can understand and challenge: which terms, why those, which pages, in what order, with what expected outcome and when. This is the deliverable that matters most in the entire engagement, and it is the one most often skipped.
Weeks six to twelve should be execution against that plan, with technical fixes landing first because they gate everything else.
By day ninety you should have a clear diagnosis, an agreed plan, foundational fixes implemented and the content programme running. You should not yet have meaningful ranking movement, and an agency claiming otherwise is either lucky or misrepresenting.
How to Fire an SEO Agency Properly
Worth understanding before you need it, because the exit is where poorly structured relationships cause real damage.
Before giving notice, secure your assets. Confirm you own the Google Analytics property, the Search Console property, the Google Business Profile and the domain registration. Export historical data. Get a list of every link acquired on your behalf and every page created.
Then check for dependencies. Content hosted on agency infrastructure, tracking implemented through an account you do not control, and plugins licensed to the agency all become problems the day the relationship ends.
None of this is adversarial — a professional agency will hand everything over without friction, and the ones that will not are precisely the ones you need to check. The time to verify is before you sign, by asking question nine, rather than during a notice period.
FAQ
What questions should I ask an SEO agency?
Who does the work, what happens in month one, can I see a real report, tell me about a campaign that failed, what tactics will you not use, and what do I keep if I leave. Those six separate credible agencies from the rest faster than anything else.
How do I know if an SEO company is legit?
They ask about your business before quoting, they report on enquiries rather than rankings, they can describe work that underperformed, they state tactical limits, and they let you keep your accounts and content on exit.
What are red flags when hiring an SEO agency?
Guaranteed rankings, secrecy about link building, contracts beyond twelve months without exit, pricing too low to fund real work, no questions about your business, and pressure to sign quickly.
Should I hire a local or remote SEO agency?
Remote is fine for most businesses. Local helps specifically when you need local press, sponsorship or network access. Sector experience matters more than distance in almost every other scenario.
How do I check an SEO agency's track record?
Ask for two references including a former client. Verify case studies by checking whether the described work actually exists on the client's site. Search the terms claimed and see who ranks today.
Want a second opinion before you sign?
We will audit your site and tell you honestly what it needs — including whether the proposal you are holding addresses it. No obligation to work with us.
Call +44 20 4572 4940 to talk it through →