Questions to ask an SEO company before you hire one, and what a good answer sounds like

Before you pay an SEO company, a freelancer or an agency, ask five things: what exactly will be done, in writing; what access it needs; what it promises; where links and reviews will come from; and what you keep when you leave. Google publishes its own questions and warnings for buyers, and this page is built on them. Each question comes with why it matters and what a good and a bad answer sound like.

The short version

Ask	A good answer has	The warning sign
What exactly will you do, and can I see it written down?	A list of tasks you can check afterward	"Optimization", or hours with nothing against them
What access do you need?	The least the job needs, in a named person's own account	Your password, or ownership of an account or a profile
What do you promise, and how will you report?	The work, an estimate, and Google's own figures with their dates	A ranking, a traffic figure or a date stated as certain
Where do links come from?	Nothing is paid for, and you see every link	A number of links a month, or a list you may not see
Where do reviews come from?	Every customer asked the same way, nothing offered	Reviews written for you, rewarded or filtered
What happens when I leave?	Every account in your name	Anything held until a last invoice
How long is the term?	The term, the notice and the price in one document	A term you learn of when you try to leave
What does the engine say about "AI SEO"?	A link to the engine's own documentation	A file or a score sold as the way into AI answers

What Google tells buyers to ask

Google's page for site owners is called "Do you need an SEO?" It gives questions to put to anyone you interview. In its order, they ask:

for examples of previous work and success stories
whether they follow Google Search Essentials
what results they expect, in what timeframe, and how they measure success
what their experience is in your industry
what it is in your country or city
what it is with international sites
how long they have been in business
how you will communicate, and whether they will share every change they make to your site and the reasoning behind each recommendation

Its warnings are as plain:

Be wary of a firm that emails you out of the blue. Google says it gets those emails too.
"No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Beware of anyone who claims a "special relationship" with Google or a "priority submit".
Be careful if a company is secretive or will not clearly explain what it intends to do.
"You should never have to link to an SEO."
Avoid anyone who talks about link popularity schemes, or about submitting your site to thousands of search engines.

One sentence is the reason for all of it: "Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire".

The page gives no figure for how long results take. It only says to ask. How long SEO takes sets out what Google does say about timing.

The questions below follow from that page and from Google's other published policies.

What exactly will you do, and can I see it written down?

Why it matters. You can check only what was named beforehand. Google's page asks whether an SEO cites official Google documentation as supporting evidence for their recommendations. Of an audit it says it "should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved".

A good answer is a list: which pages, which settings, which reports, and what you will be shown afterward. Each recommendation names the documentation it rests on, and each change is logged with its date.

A bad answer is "optimization", "ongoing SEO" or a number of hours with nothing against them.

The WordPress SEO audit checklist lists what an audit of a WordPress site looks at, so you can hold a proposal against it. WP Ministry's WordPress SEO audit is one example of work against a list: a one-time, written audit in which each finding names the documentation it rests on, the fixes on the WordPress side are done, and each fix is tested again.

What do you need access to?

Why it matters. Access outlasts the work unless someone takes it back.

Search Console. Google's advice for an audit is to "only grant read access to Search Console" and, at that stage, no write access. Search Console's help page lists three permissions: owner, full user and restricted user, the last with "simple view rights on most data". Only an owner can add or remove users, under Settings, then Users and permissions. So you stay the owner, and the company's own Google Account is added as a user.

A Google Business Profile. Google's policies for companies that manage profiles say the business must "retain ownership or co-ownership" of its profile at all times. A company whose client already has a profile is told to ask to be invited as a manager, not as an owner.

The website. Give each person an account in their own name. Outsourcing WordPress maintenance has the steps for handing over access and taking it back.

A good answer names the least access the job needs, in a named person's account, and says when it will be removed.

A bad answer asks for your password, or for ownership of a property or a profile. Search Console and a Business Profile both let you add a person, so nobody needs to sign in as you.

What do you promise?

Why it matters. Where a page appears is Google's decision, and nobody selling SEO makes it. Of an SEO who promises first place, Google's advice is to "find someone else". Its policies for companies that manage Business Profiles forbid false, misleading or unrealistic claims, and promised top placement is one of their examples.

A good answer separates three things: the work they will do, an estimate of what should change and why they expect it, and what they do not control.

A bad answer is any ranking, traffic figure or date stated as certain, whether in a sales call, a headline or a contract.

How results should be reported

Google's page says it "doesn't evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools", and that these tools have no access to its internal ranking data. A score from a tool is that tool's opinion of your site, not a measure of what Google has done. Ask for:

Google's own figures. Search Console's reports for the site, and the profile's own performance report for a local business. Google's policies require a company to report Business Profile data separately from other platforms' data.
The dates each figure covers, and the same length of period each time.
Any tool's score labeled as that tool's, and kept apart from the first-party figures.

Where do links and reviews come from?

Links. Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links "primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings". Their examples include buying or selling links for ranking, whether for money, goods or services, automated programs that create links, and low-quality directory links. A paid link is allowed as advertising when it carries rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Sites that violate the policies, the page says, may rank lower or not appear at all.

Ask whether anything of value changes hands for any link. A good answer: nothing is paid for, and you see every link. A bad answer: a number of links a month, or a list you may not see.

Pages by the dozen. The same policies name scaled content abuse, which is many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings, "no matter how it's created". If a plan counts articles per month, ask who each one is for.

Reviews. Google's policy for Maps does not allow a business to offer an incentive, "payment, discounts, free goods and/or services", for posting any review, or for changing or removing a negative one. Nor may it discourage negative reviews or selectively solicit positive ones. It may ask customers to post about a genuine experience, with no incentive and no attempt to influence the rating.

In the United States, the FTC's rule on consumer reviews, 16 CFR Part 465, applies as well. What follows is the rule's text and not legal advice.

A business may not write, create or sell a review that materially misrepresents that the reviewer exists or had experience with the business, and may not buy one it knew or should have known did so (§ 465.2).
It may not give compensation or another incentive conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, positive or negative (§ 465.4).

A good answer: every customer is asked the same way and nothing is offered. A bad answer: reviews written for you, a reward for a review, or a form that sends unhappy customers somewhere private and happy ones to Google. Review stars not showing for a local business goes through both sets of rules.

What happens when I leave?

Google's pages settle two things.

A Business Profile. Within 7 business days of notice, a company must give its client the ability to disassociate the profile's Google Account from its services and regain exclusive control. "Keeps a profile hostage in exchange for money" is on Google's list of prohibited behavior.
Search Console. An owner removes a user under Users and permissions. A company that verified ownership with a token of its own, such as a file or a tag on your site, can verify again until that token is removed. So verify the property yourself, and add the company as a user.

No policy of Google's settles the rest: who owns the pages a company wrote, the analytics account it set up, the domain or the hosting. The agreement does. Ask for each in writing before the work starts.

A good answer: every account is in your name from the first day, what the company wrote is yours, and its access ends on a named date.

A bad answer: accounts opened in the company's name, or anything withheld until a final invoice. If a company already holds your profile, see how to get a Google Business Profile back.

How long is the term, and what does it cost to stop?

Ask whether the work is month to month or for a term, how much notice ends it, whether there is a setup fee or a fee to leave, and what is delivered during the notice period.

Google's tips for businesses that hire help with a profile say to get an official copy of the agreement, one that clearly details the services and their costs, before you agree.

No Google page says how long an SEO agreement should run, and this page does not either. A one-time job such as an audit ends by design. Monthly work ends only when the agreement says how. For prices, see what SEO costs for a WordPress site.

A good answer puts the term, the notice, the price and what you receive in one document you can read before you sign. A bad answer is a term you learn of when you try to leave.

"AI SEO", GEO and llms.txt

Google's page for buyers now lists "Optimizing for generative AI" among the useful services an SEO may provide, and tells you to check whether advice sold as "AEO" or "GEO" is aligned with its official guidance. That guidance says:

From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is "still SEO".
Google Search ignores llms.txt files, so creating one neither harms nor helps a site there.
No special schema.org markup is needed.
No third-party tool has access to Google's internal ranking or AI systems.

That is Google, documenting Google Search. It says nothing about other companies' assistants. So ask: which engine documents what you are selling, and can I read the page?

A good answer is a link to the engine's own documentation for each claim, and "nobody knows" for the rest. A bad answer is a file, a kind of markup or a score sold as the way into AI answers.

What an engine documents, what a study found and what is guesswork are three different standings. Generative engine optimization keeps them apart.

An agency, a freelancer or doing it yourself

Google's page ranks none of the three, and its questions are the same whoever you interview.

Doing it yourself. Google says that if you run a small local business, "you can probably do much of the work yourself", and recommends starting with its SEO Starter Guide. This fits when the site is small, the problems are settings, and you have the hours. It stops fitting when you cannot tell what is wrong.

A freelancer. One person does the work, and that is the person you talk to. This fits a defined job. Ask what happens when they are ill or busy, and whether any of the work is passed to someone else.

An agency. More people, and with them more kinds of work. The person who sells may not be the person who does the work. Ask who will do it, by name, and whether any of it goes to another company.

Whichever you choose, Google's page calls a redesign or the launch of a new site a great time to hire, "the earlier, the better".

The questions, as a list

What exactly will you do, and can I see it written down?
Which documentation does each recommendation rest on, and will you log every change?
What access do you need, in whose account, and when is it removed?
What do you expect to change, why, and what is outside your control?
Which of Google's own reports will you show me, and for which dates?
Does anything of value change hands for any link? Can I see every link?
If you write pages, who is each one for?
How do you ask for reviews? Is anything offered, and is anyone left out?
Whose name is on each account, and what do I hold when we stop?
Is this month to month or a term? How much notice ends it, and what does stopping cost?
If you sell work on AI search, which engine documents it?
Who will do the work, by name, and can I speak to a past client?