What questions should you ask before hiring an SEO company?

Ask seven questions: what results the company can prove in your industry, how it reports, where its links come from, what problem it has diagnosed and fixed, how it handles algorithm updates, what the contract and ownership terms are, and what it would prioritize on your site first. Specific, checkable answers pass. Two answers end the conversation on their own.

Before You Ask: Do You Need an Ongoing Agency?

Check the format of the purchase first. A one-time problem, such as a site migration or a manual action, is better scoped as a fixed project than bought as a retainer. A very small budget may buy more as a one-time audit that your own team implements. Compare costs and fit across the models in the typical pricing model of an SEO company.

1. Can You Show Proof of Results in My Industry?

This question tests whether the results can be checked. A strong answer gives two or three examples in your industry or a close one, each with the starting position, the current position and the timeframe, plus a way to verify it: dated Search Console screenshots, a named site, or a client who will take a reference call. “We’ve helped lots of clients grow traffic” is a deflection.

Judge the timeframes against ranking-age data. In Ahrefs’ study of how long pages take to rank, only 1.74% of a random sample of newly published pages reached the top 10 within a year, and the average page in position 1 was five years old, up from two years in 2017. That sample includes pages nobody optimized, so it does not cap what a campaign can do; it does mean that a case study claiming fast page-one results for a hard term should show the evidence behind them.

2. How Will You Report, and Will I Get Direct Access to the Data?

This question tests whether you will see the work. A strong answer sounds like: “You get owner access to Google Analytics and Search Console from day one, a monthly report that ties rankings and traffic to leads, and a monthly call.” A deflection sounds like: “We send a branded PDF every month.”

The reason to push here comes from the agency side. Clark Boyd’s Search Engine Journal column on why clients fire their SEO agencies (July 6, 2017) draws on his years at agencies, not on a survey, and lists five reasons without ranking them. His third reason carries the heading “We’re Not Sure What We’re Getting for Our Money” and his advice to agencies is to walk the client through the statement of work and confirm any change to the plan in writing. Ask the company whether it will do both for you. What a monthly report should contain is listed in the reporting to expect from a professional SEO company.

3. What Links Do You Build, and Where Do They Come From?

This question tests risk. A strong answer describes the tactics (digital PR, outreach to relevant sites, contributed articles, resource pages), names three sites, with URLs, where the company earned links for a client in the past 90 days (or, where a client agreement rules that out, the type of each site and the rel value of each link), and says whether any of them were paid. Two answers point to private blog networks or paid link schemes: “we have a network” and a guaranteed number of links per month. Earned links depend on other sites’ decisions, so a guaranteed count is a different promise from a committed amount of outreach. The red flags to watch for when selecting an SEO company shows how those and other warning signs surface in a sales process.

4. Can You Walk Me Through a Problem You Diagnosed and Fixed?

This question tests diagnostic depth. Ask for a specific case close to your situation: rankings lost after a migration, a manual action, a core update that hit a client. A strong answer names the data used, the root cause and what changed afterward. “We did a full audit and fixed the issues” is a deflection, because it describes no diagnosis.

5. Which Tools Do You Use, and How Do You Respond to Algorithm Updates?

This question tests method. Ask which tools the company uses and why those, how it builds keyword research for a new client (by search intent and topic clusters, or as a list sorted by volume), and how it monitors updates. A strong answer describes a process: watching volatility, checking which pages and queries moved, comparing them with the update’s timing, and testing a fix on a sample before rolling it out. An answer that only lists tool names leaves the method unexplained. A full response process, step by step, appears in how an SEO company handles Google algorithm updates.

6. What Are the Contract Terms, and What Do I Keep If I Leave?

This question tests how easily you can leave. A strong answer states the minimum term, the notice period in days, and puts in writing that content, keyword research and reporting history stay with you, with Search Console, Google Analytics and your Business Profile in your own name. “Our clients never want to leave” is a deflection. A long lock-in carries extra weight in SEO because results take months to show: on a 12-month contract, a client who is unhappy in month three stays bound for nine more months. For terms that suit a small budget, check how to choose an SEO company for a small business.

7. What Would You Prioritize on My Site in the First 90 Days, and Who Makes the Changes?

This question tests whether the company has looked at your site at all. A strong answer names something specific (a technical issue, a content gap, a link gap against named competitors) and explains why it comes first. A templated answer reads the same for every client.

Add the second half of the question: will the company make changes on the site itself, or hand recommendations to your developers? Clark Boyd’s column lists “We Can’t Implement Your Recommendations” among its five reasons and describes technical recommendations left unimplemented in a development queue. If your developers will make the changes, ask how the agency will track which recommendations went live.

How to Weigh the Answers

Of the seven questions, two answers end the conversation on their own: a link answer built on a “network” or a guaranteed number of links per month, and a refusal to leave your Search Console, analytics accounts and content with you if you go. For the other questions, judge the pattern across all seven. An agency that answers with named tools, dated examples and stated tradeoffs is a different hire from one that answers with confidence you cannot verify, and the vetting conversation is the first sample you get of how it will work with you.