The right questions to ask an SEO company focus on what they’ll actually do, how they’ll measure it, who owns your accounts and what happens if you leave. Whether hiring an SEO company is worth the investment depends less on SEO itself and more on which company you pick, so the vetting conversation is where the value is decided. Below are 12 questions to ask before you sign, what a good answer sounds like and the answers that should make you walk away.
Google publishes its own advice on hiring an SEO, and it recommends asking providers about their methods, their experience and how they communicate. The questions below put that advice into practical terms for a small business.
Questions to Ask an SEO Company About the Work
1. “What would you do in the first 90 days, specifically?”
Good answer: a short, concrete plan that starts with an audit of your site and Google Business Profile, then lists the types of fixes and content they expect to work on, while admitting the details depend on what the audit finds.
Red flag: a vague promise to “optimize everything” or a plan that looks identical to what they’d tell any business.
2. “Which of our existing pages would you improve first, and why?”
A company that has looked at your site before the meeting can usually point to a few pages with obvious potential, such as a thin service page or a page already sitting on page two. If they haven’t looked, that tells you something about how much attention you’ll get as a client.
3. “How do you earn links and mentions?”
Good answer: local partnerships, community involvement, suppliers, associations, useful content people want to reference and digital PR. It takes time and the volume is modest.
Red flag: buying links, private blog networks, “guaranteed” link packages or large monthly link counts from unrelated sites. Google’s spam policies specifically address link schemes, and the risk lands on your site, not the agency’s.
4. “Who writes the content, and do we approve it before it goes live?”
You want writers who interview you or work from your input, and a review step before anything is published. Mass-produced content that nobody at your company has read is a risk to your reputation and to your rankings.
Questions About Results and Reporting
5. “What results can we realistically expect, and when?”
Good answer: a range, with honest caveats about your competition and starting point, and a focus on leads rather than only rankings. Our month-by-month SEO timeline shows what realistic looks like.
Red flag: any guarantee of a number-one ranking. Google states plainly that no one can guarantee a top position.
6. “What will your monthly report show?”
Ask to see a sample report with the client’s name removed. It should list work completed, leads from search and your Business Profile, and the plan for next month. If it’s mostly charts of traffic and “keywords ranked,” it’s built to look busy, not to prove value.
7. “How will we know if this isn’t working?”
This question separates confident agencies from defensive ones. A good provider will name the signals they watch, such as indexing, impressions for target topics and lead volume, and tell you at what point they’d change course.
Questions About Ownership and Access
8. “Who owns our Google Business Profile, Analytics, Search Console and website?”
The only good answer: you do. The agency should be added as a manager or user, never as the only owner. Lost access to a Business Profile or Analytics account after leaving an agency is a common and avoidable problem.
9. “What happens to the content and changes if we cancel?”
Pages written for your site, improvements made to it and listings created in your name should stay with you. Be cautious with arrangements where the agency hosts pages or tracking numbers that disappear when you leave, unless you clearly understand and accept that trade-off.
10. “What is the contract length and how do we cancel?”
SEO needs months to show results, so a minimum commitment can be reasonable. What you want to understand is the notice period, what’s delivered during it and whether there are fees for leaving. Get it in writing.
Questions About Fit
11. “Who will actually work on our account, and how often will we talk?”
Some agencies sell with a senior person and hand the work to someone you never meet. Ask who does the work, who you contact with questions and how quickly they typically respond.
12. “Can we speak with a current client?”
A reference from a business similar in size to yours tells you more than a polished case study. Ask the reference how communication works day to day and whether the reports match what they see in their own lead flow.
What to Prepare Before the Call
You’ll get better answers if you bring a few things to the first meeting. Prepared clients also make it easier to tell which providers listen and which ones are reciting a script.
- Your goals in plain terms: more calls for a particular service, more customers in a specific part of town, or more booked appointments in a slow season.
- Your best and worst customers: the jobs you want more of and the ones you’d rather avoid. Good SEO targets the searches that lead to the first kind.
- Your current numbers: roughly how many calls and form leads you get each month, and where you think they come from.
- Access details: whether you can log in to your website, Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics today. If you can’t, sorting that out comes first regardless of who you hire.
- Past experience: what previous SEO work was done and why it ended. A good provider will ask about this anyway.
Pay attention to the questions they ask you in return. A provider that asks about your margins, service area and capacity is thinking about your business. One that only asks about budget is thinking about theirs.
Red Flags That Should End the Conversation
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed traffic numbers.
- Secret or “proprietary” methods they won’t explain.
- Pressure to sign today for a special rate.
- Unsolicited emails claiming to have found serious problems with your site, followed by a sales pitch.
- No access for you to your own accounts.
- Promises focused on the number of pages or links rather than leads.
How to Compare Proposals Side by Side
If you’re talking with two or three companies, put their answers in a simple table with a row for each question above. Then score each one on three things:
- Specificity: did they talk about your site, or SEO in general?
- Transparency: could they explain their methods and reporting in plain language?
- Ownership: will you keep control of every account and asset?
The company that scores well on all three is usually the right choice, even if it isn’t the one with the boldest promises.
Is Hiring an SEO Company Worth the Investment?
It’s worth it when the company does real, visible work, reports on leads rather than vanity numbers and leaves you owning your accounts. It isn’t worth it when you can’t tell what you’re paying for. Use the 12 questions to find out which kind you’re talking to. If you’re still deciding whether SEO fits your business at all, read is SEO worth it for your business, and if you’re weighing an agency against doing it yourself or hiring staff, see our comparison of in-house SEO vs. an agency vs. DIY.
We’re happy to answer every one of these questions about our own work. Start with an overview of our SEO services.