The Questions You Should Ask an SEO Agency Before You Sign Anything

Hiring an SEO agency shouldn’t feel like a leap of faith, but for many businesses, it does. You’re told to trust the process, wait a few months, and watch the rankings climb. Then six months later, traffic might be up, but leads aren’t, and no one can clearly explain why.

The problem usually isn’t SEO itself. It’s that most businesses ask the wrong questions at the beginning.

If you want to avoid vague reports, vanity metrics, and long contracts that don’t move the needle, here are the questions that actually matter — and why.

1. Start With Business Goals, Not Rankings

The first thing to ask an SEO agency is how they define success for your business. Not for SEO in general, but for you. A serious agency should want to understand how you make money, what a qualified lead looks like, and which services or products matter most.

If the conversation immediately jumps to keywords and rankings without discussing revenue, conversions, or customer intent, that’s a red flag. SEO exists to support business outcomes, not just search visibility. Google itself emphasizes this connection between content, user intent, and value in its Search Essentials documentation.

A good follow-up question is how SEO work will connect to measurable outcomes like form submissions, phone calls, demo requests, or sales. If the answer is vague, expect vague results.

2. Stop Chasing “Vanity Metrics”

The most common trap in SEO is focusing on “Total Impressions” or “Total Traffic.” While these numbers look good in a slide deck, they can be incredibly misleading.

The Example: Imagine your agency writes a blog post titled “Top 10 Inspirational Quotes for Mondays.” It goes viral and brings in 10,000 visitors. Your traffic chart spikes! But if you sell enterprise software, those 10,000 people aren’t buying. They are just reading quotes.

What to ask instead:

• What percentage of this traffic is coming from non-branded keywords? (People who didn’t already know your name).
• Which specific URLs are driving the most conversions, not just clicks?
• Will they track conversions from organic search using Google Analytics or GA4?
• Will they explain why numbers changed, not just that they did?

You can cross-check what meaningful SEO metrics look like by reviewing guidance from trusted industry sources like Moz.

3. Understand Their Actual SEO Process

One of the most important questions you can ask is simply, “What will you actually do each month?”

A legitimate SEO agency should be able to explain its process in plain language. That usually includes an initial audit, technical fixes, content improvements, keyword research, and ongoing optimization. If the explanation sounds like a collection of buzzwords or proprietary secrets, that’s a concern.

Ask your agency about your “Striking Distance” keywords. These are keywords where you are currently ranking on Page 2 (positions 11–20).

Moving a keyword from position 12 to position 3 can result in a massive increase in Click-Through Rate (CTR), often as much as 10x the traffic.

Practical Example: If you are a boutique hotel ranking #14 for “luxury stay in Savannah,” ask your agency: “What is the specific technical or content plan to move this page into the Top 5 this month?”

SEO isn’t magic. It’s systematic work. Agencies that do good work are usually happy to explain it clearly.

4. Dig Into Technical SEO Early

Technical SEO is where many campaigns quietly fail. If your site has crawling issues, slow page speeds, poor mobile performance, or indexing problems, content and links won’t help much.

Ask how the agency handles technical SEO and whether it’s included in the scope of work. Will they audit site speed? Identify indexing errors?

Fix internal linking issues?

Coordinate with developers if needed?

Google has been very clear about the importance of page experience, mobile usability, and site performance, which you can confirm directly from Google’s Page Experience documentation.

If an agency avoids technical discussions entirely, they may be skipping one of the most critical parts of SEO.

5. Get Specific About Keyword and Content Strategy

Keyword strategy isn’t about ranking for the highest-volume terms anymore. It’s about understanding search intent and choosing keywords that attract the right users.

Ask how keywords are selected and how they’re mapped to content. For example, will they create new content, improve existing pages, or consolidate overlapping articles? How do they decide what to prioritize first?

Many agencies take credit for growth that they didn’t actually create. If you run a TV ad or an email campaign, people will search for your company name on Google. This is called Branded Traffic.

If your agency says “Traffic is up 20%,” but 19% of that is people searching for your specific brand name, the agency didn’t do that—your other marketing did.

The Pro Tip: Demand that your reports segment traffic. You want to see growth in Categorical Keywords (e.g., “Best Website Development in Madison, WI”) rather than just your company name (“Tacetra.com”).

The same applies to content creation. Find out who writes the content, how expertise is demonstrated, and how accuracy is ensured. Google’s emphasis on experience, expertise, and trustworthiness makes this more important than ever, as outlined in its guidance on helpful content.

6. Be Direct About Link Building

Link building is still part of SEO, but it’s also one of the easiest areas to abuse. Ask how links are earned, not just how many are built.

Backlinks (other sites linking to yours) are the “votes of confidence” in the eyes of Google. But not all votes are equal. One link from a reputable industry publication like Forbes or TechCrunch is worth more than 1,000 links from random, “spammy” blogs.

If an agency talks about buying links, using private networks, or guaranteeing a certain number of backlinks per month, that’s risky. Sustainable link building usually involves outreach, digital PR, partnerships, and content worth referencing.

Ask for a list of every link they built this month. If the websites look like they were made in 1995 and have no actual readers, they are likely part of a Private Blog Network (PBN), which can eventually get your site penalized or banned from Google.

7. Clarify Communication and Accountability

SEO work happens over months, not weeks, which makes communication critical. Ask how often you’ll receive updates, who your main point of contact is, and how questions or concerns are handled.

Also ask what happens if performance stalls.

Will the strategy be adjusted?

Will priorities change? Agencies that actively review results and adapt tend to outperform those that run on autopilot.

Google updates its algorithm constantly (you can track the latest Google Search Status updates here). If your traffic drops, a lazy agency will simply say, “The algorithm changed.”

A partner agency will say: “Google released a Core Update that prioritized ‘Helpful Content.’ Our current service pages are too thin on information, so we are going to add FAQs and expert bios to regain that trust.”

8. Watch for Guarantees and Long-Term Lock-Ins

One of the clearest warning signs is a guarantee of rankings or instant results. No agency controls Google’s algorithm, and anyone who claims otherwise is overselling.

It’s also worth asking about contract terms upfront. Shorter commitments with clear deliverables often indicate confidence in the work. Long contracts without flexibility usually benefit the agency more than the client.

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Final Thought: Transparency Beats Promises

The best SEO agencies don’t promise shortcuts. They explain trade-offs, set realistic expectations, and tie their work back to business value.

If an agency can clearly explain what they’ll do, why it matters, how success will be measured, and how they’ll adapt over time, you’re probably talking to the right partner.

And if they can’t answer those questions clearly before you sign, they won’t suddenly get clearer after.

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