How to choose an SEO agency

Six questions, asked on the first call, separate agencies that earn results from agencies that rent them. Every one has a red-flag answer – and yes, you should ask us all six.

The six questions

1. "Where will the links come from?" The only good answer describes content and stories that earn them. The red flag is a number: links per month at a price per link means bought links, whatever they're called on the invoice.
2. "Can I see a case study with its measurement methodology?" Not a screenshot of a graph – the method. Ask whether ROI figures exclude paid channels, and what the starting point was. (Ours is published, with the methodology stated.)
3. "Who actually does the work?" Some agencies sell senior faces and deliver outsourced juniors. Ask who writes, who builds, who pitches – and whether they're employed by the agency you're paying.
4. "What happens in month one?" The good answer starts with an audit of your site, competitors and search landscape. The red flag is activity from day one – deliverables before diagnosis means a template.
5. "How do you measure AI visibility?" A current test. An agency without an answer on citation rate and AI-referred traffic is optimising for the search landscape of five years ago.
6. "Can you guarantee rankings?" You want to hear no. Nobody controls Google's results or an AI's answers; an agency that guarantees them is either naive or planning to hit a number that doesn't matter.

Then compare like for like

Get each candidate's answer in writing and compare methods, not adjectives – every agency says "quality content" and "white-hat links"; the six answers above are where the differences actually show. If you're also weighing an internal hire, the honest cost picture is in SEO agency vs in-house.