Whether it is your first SEO agency or your fifth, hiring one takes a lot of time and resources. Years of working in SEO have taught us which questions to ask an SEO agency to find the best SEO services for your business, and we share them below.
The best questions to ask an SEO agency
The best questions to ask an SEO agency are these:
- Which areas of SEO will you optimise my site for?
- Do you specialise in SEO for particular markets?
- Do you work with any of my competitors?
- How do you define success in SEO?
- How do you fit SEO into a wider marketing strategy?
- Will you work with my other agencies?
- Do you need access to the site?
- When should I expect to see SEO results?
- What kind of SEO reports will you provide?
- Which SEO tools do you use?
- How do you communicate with clients?
- Who will I be dealing with?
- How much of my time will you need?
- What do you need from my business to make this work?
- Are you willing to travel for face-to-face meetings?
- Do you require an SEO contract?
- What happens if I end my contract?
- What is your SEO pricing model?
- What are your SEO deliverables?
- Can you give us some client references?
- Why should we hire you rather than another SEO agency?
1. Which areas of SEO will you optimise my site for?
Whatever the SEO company's website says, ask this question anyway.
Too often we have seen businesses sign with an agency expecting XYZ and then get ABC. Ask this question and you can check whether the agency really meets your needs.
To make sure a potential SEO partner fits your specific needs, you need to understand the main areas that drive online visibility and engagement. Here they are:
- Technical SEO: making sure search engines can easily crawl and understand your website. Think of it as optimising the fundamentals, such as site speed, how the site works on mobile devices and the use of schema markup to give search engines extra context.
- User experience (UX) optimisation: search engines favour websites that users like. So your site should be easy to navigate, the content easy to read and the overall design appealing. The aim is to keep users on your site for longer and make them want to come back.
- Off-page SEO: building your website's reputation and authority. It includes earning backlinks from other trustworthy websites, sharing your content on social media and promoting it elsewhere. In practice, it is about showing search engines that your site is a reliable source of information.
SEO is not one-size-fits-all. Agencies focus on different aspects, such as technical SEO or content SEO. Your goals are what matter most. Choose an agency that matches your priorities.
2. Do you specialise in SEO for particular markets?
Hiring an SEO agency that specialises in your sector, such as manufacturing, or in your business model, such as B2B, can give your SEO strategy an edge, because the agency genuinely understands your market and its challenges.
If the agency has experience in your sector, ask some follow-up questions, such as:
- How many businesses in my sector have you worked with?
- Will a sector specialist be assigned to my account?
- Do you have references or case studies you can share?
An agency with a proven track record in your specific market can often deliver faster, more effective results. Do not hesitate to ask for examples of past successes, and have a look at some of our case studies.
3. Do you work with any of my competitors?
Even if an agency does not specialise in your market, one of the questions to ask an SEO agency is whether it works with your direct competitors.
Reliable SEO providers do not work with direct competitors... If they do, many will refer you to agencies they recommend.
Reliable SEO providers do not work with direct competitors, and they often check this before continuing the conversation with you and your team.
If there is a conflict, many will point you to agencies they recommend.
4. How do you define success in SEO?
This is one of the most important questions to ask when hiring an SEO company.
The answer can tell you a lot about the potential partnership, including why you should hire an SEO company for your business.
People define success differently in search engine optimisation (SEO). Some focus on rankings and traffic, others on leads and revenue. This question shows you how the agency measures the success of an SEO strategy. Looking closely at those metrics reveals the SEO thinking behind its strategies.
Ideally you want a company that:
- Asks how your organisation defines SEO success
- Shares your organisation's definition of SEO success.
We include the second point because the relationship usually works better when you and the SEO agency agree on what makes an SEO strategy work. Agencies can adapt to different client views, but something is often lost in the process. That is where adjusting the SEO strategy matters, to align expectations and reach the results you want.
5. How do you fit SEO into a wider marketing strategy?
You are probably investing in more than search engine optimisation (SEO) for your website. Like other digital marketing strategies, from paid advertising to email marketing, SEO works best as part of a multichannel marketing plan. So the agency should be able to offer a tailored SEO approach that fits in with your other marketing activities.
Ask the agency how it fits its work into your overall marketing strategy.
For example, does it take your email lead magnets into account when producing and publishing content on your site? Or does it help you make sure paid landing pages follow SEO best practice, such as being set to noindex?
SEO companies that offer this kind of support tend to act more as partners to their clients than as mere service providers. For businesses of every size, that partnership is often what makes the difference when outsourcing SEO.
6. Will you work with my other agencies?
From web design studios to social media management agencies, businesses commonly work with several agencies to cover their marketing needs. If that is the case for your organisation, ask SEO providers this question.
When your agencies work together, the benefits include:
- Simpler project management
- Project deadlines being met
- Marketing initiatives kept in sync
- And more.
On the other hand, providers that do not collaborate often push businesses towards a full-service agency. These agencies offer every solution a business needs without having to use several separate agencies.
7. Do you need access to the site?
SEO work means updating the site, from publishing new content to updating title tags and implementing page speed fixes. Some SEO agencies can work without site access, others require it.
If you cannot give site access, which is common for enterprise organisations (and familiar to the best SEO companies), ask this question. As a follow-up, ask how often the agency has worked without site access and how that affects its processes and performance.
8. When should I expect to see SEO results?
In our experience, this question tends to expose unreliable SEO companies.
These companies often promise unrealistic timescales for SEO results, such as 30 days or a couple of months. SEO typically takes three to six months to show results, and some websites need up to 12 months of work.
If the agency has audited your site's SEO, it can probably give you a more tailored estimate.
9. What kind of SEO reports will you provide?
Every SEO provider should supply SEO reports. Asking this question, though, helps you understand how that agency puts its reports together. For example, you can find out which metrics it measures, which attribution model it uses and more. You could also ask for a sample report.
10. Which SEO tools do you use?
You will probably not have access to your SEO agency's tools, but knowing its toolkit helps you understand its data sources and processes. The best SEO agencies usually mention Ahrefs, Semrush, Sistrix and other paid SEO platforms.
If the company mentions an in-house or exclusive tool, ask some follow-up questions, such as:
- Is it a white-label or proprietary tool?
- Will I have access to it?
- Where does the tool's data come from?
- How will my company's data be handled?
- Can I see a demo of the tool?
The answers will help you understand the tool's role. We suggest looking into the platform yourself afterwards, so you have more questions ready for the SEO agency at your next meeting.
11. How do you communicate with clients?
Communication is central to a successful agency-client relationship, so you need to know:
- Which channels the agency uses, such as email, phone calls or video calls
- How often the agency will be in touch, for example weekly, monthly or quarterly
- Who will communicate with you and your team
- Whether the agency can meet any specific communication needs you have.
Before contacting an SEO agency, check whether its reviews mention communication. Client reviews let you judge in advance whether the agency is strong (or weak) in this area.
12. Who will I be dealing with?
The previous question may cover this one, but it matters enough to ask on its own. Whether you want to share information or sort out a problem, you need a dedicated point of contact (POC) at your SEO agency. Not every agency provides one.
13. How much of my time will you need?
Ask SEO agencies this whatever level of involvement you prefer, hands-on or hands-off. SEO agencies usually need more of your time at the start, but how much can vary depending on who manages your account.
The question also shows you how involved you will be with the agency.
14. What do you need from my business to make this work?
Your SEO performance depends on your agency, but also on your own team. That is why you should ask SEO agencies what they expect from your business or team in order to succeed.
For example, agencies often need:
- Brand or style guidelines
- Target audience
- Site access
- Best-selling products or services
You will often be the one giving SEO agencies background on your business and your products or services. That background helps them research keywords, develop content topics and other ideas for your marketing. The more specific you are, the better they can tailor an SEO strategy to your business.
15. Are you willing to travel for face-to-face meetings?
If you are hoping to meet your SEO team in person, do not forget to ask this. Some SEO agencies are happy to come to your offices, especially if they are based nearby, while others will not, for example because of the distance.
Alternatively, if you are willing to travel, ask whether you can visit them.
16. Do you require an SEO contract?
In most cases, SEO agencies require an SEO contract. How long it runs depends on the agency. In our experience, most businesses sign a contract of six to twelve months, although some agencies work month to month.
17. What happens if I end my contract?
Find out before you sign with an SEO agency, and ask what would happen in the worst case (specifically, if the contract is terminated). How agencies handle termination often depends on why the relationship is ending, for example results, service, budget cuts or something else.
18. What is your SEO pricing model?
Most SEO agencies do not publish their prices online, so we recommend asking this to understand the cost of SEO services. The most common pricing model for SEO services is a monthly retainer. If you hire an SEO agency for SEO consultancy, you may be charged an hourly rate or a one-off project fee.
19. What are your SEO deliverables?
Deliverables set out what an SEO agency will do for your business. That is why we strongly advise avoiding SEO agencies that refuse to give you a list of deliverables and to include them in the SEO contract.
20. Can you give us some client references?
Client references are very useful, especially if they come from your own sector. Add this to your questions for an SEO agency and you will get an even fuller picture of what working with that agency is like.
21. Why should we hire you rather than another SEO agency?
What we like about this question is that it gives you a clearer idea of the other agencies you are considering. For example, you might find out that company ABC raises its prices frequently or that company XYZ buys links. Of course, you cannot take this at face value: you will need to check it.
For more questions, see our SEO FAQs.
Get answers to these questions from our SEO agency
So you have weighed up in-house SEO against an agency and decided to go with an experienced agency. Want to try these questions out? Put them to our SEO agency. Get in touch today to book a free SEO consultation.
