How to Choose an SEO Agency: Questions to Ask and Red Flags to Watch

Choosing an SEO agency is choosing who will make changes to your website, speak for your brand in outreach, and tell you whether the work is working. Google publishes its own advice for this decision, including questions to ask and claims to avoid (Do you need an SEO?). The short version: prefer providers who explain what they will do and why, measure honestly and give you ownership of everything; avoid anyone who guarantees rankings, claims a special relationship with Google, or will not say how they get links.

What Google advises

Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO includes:

• questions to ask candidates, such as “Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?”, “What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?”, “What’s your experience in my industry?” and “Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?”;
• that a good SEO “should ask questions about what makes your business unique, who your competitors are, how search results can help, and how your customers find you”;
• to grant only read access to Search Console at the evaluation stage;
• that an audit should give “realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved”;
• and a warning: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”. Google adds that people should beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a special relationship with Google or advertise priority submission to Google.

Google also notes that it does not evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and that those tools do not have access to Google’s internal ranking data.

An agency evaluation questionnaire

Send the same questions to every candidate and compare the written answers.

Understanding your business

1. What questions do you need answered about our business, customers and competitors before proposing work?
2. What do you think limits our organic visibility today, and what evidence did you use?

Approach

1. What would you do in the first 90 days, and why in that order?
2. Which work will you do yourselves, and which will you subcontract? Who exactly will work on our account?
3. How do you earn links? Give examples of links you have earned for clients and how. (Compare the answer with the tactics that actually earn links.)
4. How do you produce content, who writes it, and how is it fact-checked?
5. How do you handle technical changes: do you implement them, or do our developers?

Measurement and reporting

1. Which metrics will you report, how are they defined, and where do they come from? (See what belongs in a monthly report.)
2. How will you separate the effect of your work from seasonality, algorithm updates and our own marketing?
3. How do you report AI search visibility, and what can and cannot be measured?

Commercial terms

1. What is included in the fee, itemized, and what is excluded?
2. What are the contract length and notice period?
3. Who owns the content, data, accounts and any tools set up for us when the contract ends?

Evidence

1. Can we speak to two current clients with similar needs?
2. Can you show an example report, with client data anonymized?

Red flags

The timing point comes from Google’s SEO Starter Guide: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months”. The link point comes from Google’s link spam policy.

Scoring the answers

Score each candidate on:

• clarity: do the answers explain what will be done and why?
• evidence: are claims about past work verifiable?
• honesty about uncertainty: do they state what they cannot control or guarantee, and does any traffic forecast they offer show its assumptions and a range?
• fit: do they understand your industry and market?
• terms: do you keep ownership and flexibility?

A candidate who answers fewer questions confidently but honestly can be a better choice than one with polished promises.

When an agency is not the right choice

• When the main need is a single project (a migration, an audit), a consultant or project-based firm may fit better than a retainer.
• When the business has continuous, large-scale needs, an in-house hire with specialist support may be more economical.
• When the site’s problems are mainly product, pricing or reputation, SEO work will not fix them.

Comparing three agencies with the questionnaire

Imagine a regional furniture retailer comparing three agencies.

• Agency 1 promises “page one in 90 days”, sells 50 backlinks a month and keeps ownership of the content it writes. Three red flags from the table at once (guaranteed rankings, link packages sold by quantity, owning your content); eliminated.
• Agency 2 asks detailed questions about the product range and customers, proposes a technical audit and a content plan for the top categories, explains it will not buy links, reports Search Console and GA4 metrics with definitions, and leaves all assets with the client.
• Agency 3 has excellent references but subcontracts all content to unnamed writers and cannot say who fact-checks it.
• Decision: Agency 2, with a three-month notice period and quarterly reviews of agreed metrics.

A sound agency relationship is one where you understand what is being done, can verify it, and own the result. The questionnaire is a way of finding out, before you sign, whether that will be true.