How do I choose an SEO agency?

Get an independent read on your site first so you can tell a real diagnosis from a rehearsed pitch. Then ask what is produced each month and who does it, ask to see a redacted example of their work, ask how they report and what the report will show, and ask what happens if it does not work. Walk away from any guaranteed ranking.

What questions should I ask an SEO agency?

What exactly is produced each month, and who does it? Can I see a redacted audit or content sample? How do you report, and will it connect work to enquiries rather than only rankings? What does month one look like versus month six? Who owns the website, content and accounts if we part ways? What happens if it does not work? Is there a contract minimum?

What are the red flags when hiring an SEO agency?

A guaranteed ranking is the clearest one, because nobody controls Google's algorithm. Others: vagueness about the monthly deliverable, keyword-stuffing your business name in Google Business Profile, buying links or reviews, refusing to put scope in writing before payment, and reporting that shows only rankings and never enquiries.

How long should I give an SEO agency before judging results?

Expect early movement on low-competition terms within weeks of fixing fundamentals, and two to four months before consistent local pack presence on competitive keywords. Judge the work at month three by whether the promised deliverables actually appeared, and judge results at month six.

Who should own the website and content if we part ways?

You should. Ask before signing who holds the domain registration, the hosting, the Google Business Profile, the analytics accounts and the content itself. An agency that keeps your Google Business Profile or your domain has leverage over you that has nothing to do with the quality of their work.

Buying SEO

How to choose an SEO agency without getting burned

By Garnett Banfield · Harlem, NYC · 7 min read

Get an independent read on your site first, so you can tell a real diagnosis from a rehearsed pitch. Then ask four things: what is produced each month and who does it, can I see an example, how will you report, and what happens if it does not work. Walk away from any guaranteed ranking — nobody controls Google’s algorithm, so that promise is either empty or untrue.

We sell SEO, so read this the way you would read any guide written by someone with an interest. The questions below are ones we would have to answer too — that is rather the point of publishing them.

Before you talk to anyone: get a baseline

The single biggest disadvantage in a sales conversation is not knowing what is wrong with your own site. Without that, every pitch sounds equally plausible, and the most confident presenter wins rather than the most competent one.

Run a free audit first — ours, or anybody’s. Ten minutes gets you a rough list. Then when an agency explains what they would fix, you can hear whether they are describing your site or reciting a template. The template ones become obvious almost immediately, and you will save yourself two or three meetings.

The seven questions

1. What exactly is produced each month, and who does it?

Ask for the answer in nouns: how many pages, which pages, what technical work, who is doing it. “SEO” describes both a monthly PDF from a crawler and a person writing pages and fixing faults, and both get quoted under the same word. This question is most of why proposals vary by 10×.

2. Can I see a redacted example of your work?

An audit, a content piece, a monthly report — anything real, with the client’s name removed. You are checking whether it reads as specific to an actual business or as a tool export with a cover page. This one eliminates more providers than the other six combined.

3. How will you report, and what will it show?

Rankings alone are a vanity metric. A position on a term nobody searches is worth nothing, and a good report connects work to outcomes: calls, form fills, direction requests, and which pages produced them. If the reporting cannot do that, you will have no way to judge the engagement at month six except by how you feel about the meetings.

4. What does month one look like, versus month six?

A real answer has different shapes at different times — fundamentals and fixes early, content and authority later. An answer that is identical every month usually describes a subscription rather than a plan.

5. Who owns everything if we part ways?

The domain registration, the hosting, the Google Business Profile, the analytics accounts, the content. The answer should be you, on all of it. An agency holding your Google Business Profile or your domain has leverage over you that has nothing to do with the quality of their work, and it is a genuinely common way for small businesses to get stuck.

6. What happens if it does not work?

An honest answer exists: we will show you what we did, what moved, what did not, and you can leave. A provider who has clearly never been asked is telling you something about how their engagements usually end.

7. What is the contract minimum, and why that long?

Minimum terms are not automatically a red flag — SEO genuinely takes months, and an agency that invests upfront has a fair case for asking. What matters is whether the length is explained in terms of the work, or simply asserted.

Five red flags

1. A guaranteed ranking. The clearest signal there is. Nobody controls the algorithm, so a guaranteed position is either on a term nobody searches, or it is not true. There is no third possibility.

2. Vagueness about the monthly deliverable. If they cannot say it in nouns after two attempts, there may not be one.

3. Keyword-stuffing your business name. Turning “Joe’s Plumbing” into “Joe’s Plumbing | Best Plumber Brooklyn NYC” in Google Business Profile violates Google’s guidelines and gets profiles suspended. Some providers still do it because it works briefly. You own the suspension; they do not.

4. Buying links or reviews. Both are policy violations, both are increasingly detectable, and the penalty lands on your business rather than on whoever recommended it.

5. No written scope before payment. The scope disagreement arrives in every engagement eventually. Far better that it arrives before the money does.

What a fair proposal looks like

It states what is produced and how often. It separates one-time work from ongoing work. It gives a timeline as a range with a reason attached, not a date. It says who owns what. It explains how you will know whether it is working. And it does not promise a position.

A proposal that reads as confident about process and cautious about outcomes is a good sign. The reverse — vague about process, certain about results — is the pattern that costs small businesses the most money.

Agency, freelancer, or software?

Software ($0–$300/mo) suits you if you have time and some appetite to learn. Modern tools do genuinely handle the mechanical parts. What they cannot do is decide what matters.
A freelancer ($500–$1,500/mo) suits a small, simple site where one capable person is enough. Depth depends heavily on which person you get.
An agency ($1,500–$5,000/mo) suits a competitive market or a business where the site is the main channel and the cost of it not working is high.

All three are legitimate. The mistake is buying agency-priced software or expecting software-priced agency work.

How we would answer our own questions

Fair is fair. We publish every price with no “contact us” on anything self-serve. Our audit scope is written out in full and matches the contract you would sign. Everything — site, content, profile, accounts — is yours. We take one client per category per neighborhood, so we cannot serve your direct competitor while serving you. And we do not promise rankings, traffic or revenue, because we cannot control them.

If the honest answer for you is the $49/month software rather than anything hands-on, that is a legitimate outcome and not a failed sale.

Get your baseline before the first meeting

A free scorecard for your site in about a minute. Use it to judge us, or whoever else you are talking to.

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