Choosing an SEO company can be harder than it looks. Most agencies promise better rankings, more traffic, and more leads, but those promises don’t tell you much about how they plan to get results or whether their approach fits your business.
The agency you choose can directly affect how your business appears when potential customers search for the products or services you offer. In BrightLocal’s 2026 research, 84% of U.S. consumers said they had searched for a local business online in the previous three months.
Before you hire an agency, ask questions that reveal how it works, what it will actually do, how it measures results, and what you can expect from the relationship
Here are the questions to ask an SEO company or a marketing agency before you hire one, and what you should look for in the answers.
Questions to Ask an SEO Company About Its Strategy
1. What would your SEO strategy be for my business?
This should be one of the first questions you ask.
A good SEO company should not give you a generic list of services such as “keyword research, content, backlinks, and technical SEO.” It should explain what it would prioritize for your website and why.
Ask how it would approach:
- Your target customers
- Your main products or services
- Your competitors
- Your current organic visibility
- Technical SEO issues
- Content opportunities
- Local search, if relevant
- Your business goals
The answer should be specific to your business, not generic enough to apply to any company.
2. What would you work on first?
You want to know what happens after you sign the contract.
An agency may start with a technical audit, improve important service pages, fix indexing problems, research competitors, optimize local listings, or address other issues it finds.
No single first step works for every website.
3. Which keywords and pages would you prioritize?
Do not judge an SEO strategy by the number of keywords an agency promises to target.
Ask which searches it thinks are valuable and which pages should rank for them.
A good strategy considers search intent, competition, relevance, location, and the likelihood that the searcher will become a customer.
For example, a local roofing company may get more business from ranking for high-intent service searches in its service area than from attracting large amounts of unrelated informational traffic.
4. How do you perform competitor analysis for my business?
Competitor research should go beyond copying the keywords other websites use.
Ask what the agency looks for when analyzing competitors.
This might include:
- Pages that generate organic traffic
- Keywords they rank for
- Content gaps
- Backlink opportunities
- Local search visibility
- Site structure
- Service or location pages
- Search intent
The goal is to understand where your competitors are strong and where your business can realistically pursue opportunities.
Questions to Ask an SEO Company About Experience
5. Have you worked with businesses like mine?
Industry experience is useful, especially if your market is competitive or highly specialized.
Ask for specific examples rather than a general statement that the agency has “worked with hundreds of businesses.”
Find out:
- Which businesses or industries it has worked with
- What type of SEO work it performed
- How long the campaigns ran
- What was measured
- What changed as a result
If it has not worked in your industry, ask how it plans to learn your market before building the strategy.
6. Can you show me a relevant case study?
A case study should explain what the agency actually did.
Look for details such as:
- The client’s starting position
- The SEO problems identified
- The work completed
- The time period
- Traffic or search performance changes
- Leads or conversions, where available
Be careful with case studies that show only a dramatic traffic percentage without explaining what happened behind the number.
Questions to Ask About Local SEO Strategy
If your business depends on customers in a particular city, region, or service area, you need to ask more than general SEO questions.
Local SEO involves your website, Google Business Profile, reviews, local relevance, and other signals that help your business appear for searches with local intent in your targeted locations.
7. How will you approach local SEO for my business?
Ask the company to explain its local SEO process from start to finish.
It should be able to discuss areas such as:
- Google Business Profile optimization
- Local keyword research
- Service and location pages
- Reviews
- Local citations
- Local links
- Competitor research
- Local conversion tracking
Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and how well-known or prominent a business is.
8. How will you optimize my Google Business Profile?
Ask exactly what the agency plans to change or manage.
This could include reviewing:
- Primary and secondary categories
- Business information
- Services
- Business description
- Photos
- Hours
- Reviews
- Profile completeness
Also ask how much access it needs.
You should generally retain ownership of your Business Profile while giving the agency the access it needs to manage it. Google specifically recommends that businesses maintain ownership when working with third parties.
9. How will you help improve my visibility in local search and Maps?
Do not accept “we’ll get you into the map pack” as a complete answer.
Ask what factors the agency will work on and how it will measure progress.
Also be cautious if an agency says it can simply pay Google to guarantee a better local ranking. Google states that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
10. How will you handle reviews?
Reviews can be important for local businesses, but the process should be based on genuine customer feedback.
Ask:
- How will you encourage customers to leave reviews?
- Who will respond to reviews?
- Will the agency write responses for approval?
- How will negative reviews be handled?
- What will it do if a review appears to violate Google’s policies?
Avoid any strategy based on fake or manufactured reviews.
Questions to Ask About SEO Strategy and Content
11. What exactly will you do each month?
Get past the phrase “ongoing SEO.”
Ask about the services included in your monthly service.
Depending on your strategy, this could include:
- Technical SEO
- On-page optimization
- Content creation
- Existing content updates
- Internal linking
- Keyword research
- Competitor research
- Link building
- Local SEO
- Reporting
You should also ask how much of each service is included and what would cost extra.
12. Who will create my content?
Content quality can vary significantly between SEO companies.
Ask:
- Who writes the content?
- How are topics selected?
- Who reviews it?
- How are facts checked?
- Can someone with industry knowledge contribute?
- Will you have an opportunity to review important content before publication?
The better question is not how many articles the agency will publish, but whether those pages are built around real customer intent, first-hand expertise, and information your competitors aren’t already repeating.
Google’s guidance emphasizes helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than content created primarily to manipulate rankings.
13. Do you use AI to create content?
It is reasonable to ask this directly.
Using AI during research, outlining, or drafting is different from publishing large amounts of generic AI-generated pages with little original value.
Ask how AI fits into the agency’s process and, more importantly, who reviews and improves the final content.
Google’s guidance says generative AI can be useful, but generating many pages without adding value can violate its policies on scaled content abuse.
Questions About Links and Technical SEO
14. How do you build backlinks?
Do not focus only on how many links the agency promises.
Ask where those links will come from and how the agency decides whether a link is worth pursuing.
You can ask:
- How do you find link opportunities?
- Are the websites relevant to my industry?
- Do you pay for links?
- Will I receive a list of links built?
- Do you use private blog networks?
- How do you evaluate link quality?
A large number of low-quality links is not automatically better SEO. Google identifies link spam as a form of search manipulation.
15. What technical SEO issues do you expect to find?
Ask whether the agency checks areas such as:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Redirects
- Broken links
- Canonical URLs
- XML sitemaps
- Internal linking
- Mobile usability
- Structured data
- Site architecture
You do not need to know what every technical term means. The agency should be able to explain which issues matter on your website and what fixing them would accomplish.
Questions About SEO Results and Reporting
16. How will you measure SEO success?
This is one of the most important questions to ask.
Rankings and traffic can be useful, but they are not necessarily the business outcome you care about.
Depending on your business, success could include:
- Qualified organic traffic
- Phone calls
- Contact forms
- Quote requests
- Bookings
- Store visits
- Sales
- Revenue
Ask the agency which metrics it will report and how those metrics connect to your actual business goals.
17. What will be included in my monthly report?
Ask to see a sample report before signing.
A useful report should make it easy to understand:
- What was done
- What changed
- What improved
- What did not improve
- What the agency learned
- What it plans to do next
If a report is mostly screenshots of rankings and a list of tasks completed, ask how those numbers connect to business results.
18. How long should it take to see results?
There is no universal SEO timeline.
The answer depends on factors such as your website’s current condition, competition, authority, market, content, and the changes being made.
A good agency should explain what it expects to happen at different stages rather than promising that you will reach a particular ranking by a particular date.
Before You Sign: Ask About Pricing, Contracts, and Ownership
19. How much does SEO cost, and what is included?
Do not compare agencies based only on the monthly price.
Ask what you actually receive for that price.
For example, one agency may include technical work, content, local SEO, and reporting, while another might charge separately for content or website development.
Compare the scope of work, not just the number on the proposal.
20. Is there a long-term contract?
Ask:
- How long is the initial agreement?
- Is there a minimum commitment?
- Can you cancel early?
- Is there a notice period?
- Are there additional cancellation fees?
You want to understand the commitment before signing, not after you decide to leave.
21. Who owns the website, content, and SEO accounts?
This is easy to overlook.
Make sure you understand who controls:
- Your domain
- Website
- Google Business Profile
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Content
- SEO tools
- Business listings
- Other accounts created for your business
An agency needs access to these assets, but that does not mean it should become the permanent owner of them.
22. Who will actually work on my account?
The person selling the SEO service may not be the person doing the work.
Ask who will handle:
- Strategy
- Technical SEO
- Content
- Local SEO
- Link building
- Reporting
Also ask who your main contact will be and how often you will communicate.
How Does the SEO Company Handle AI Search?
Search is changing, with Google showing AI-generated answers in some search experiences and users also asking questions through AI tools.
That makes it reasonable to ask how an agency approaches visibility in AI platforms beyond traditional rankings.
You can ask:
23. How does your SEO strategy account for AI search and AI-generated answers?
A credible answer should cover more than “we optimize for ChatGPT.” Ask whether the agency monitors how your brand appears in AI-generated answers, identifies the topics and queries where competitors are being mentioned, improves answer-focused content, and addresses the technical and entity signals that help AI systems understand your business.
Be cautious if an agency tries to sell “AI SEO” as a completely separate shortcut to visibility.
What Are the Biggest SEO Agency Red Flags?
Pay close attention to the answers you receive.
Some warning signs include:
- Guaranteed #1 rankings: No agency controls Google’s ranking systems.
- Guaranteed local rankings: Google says there is no way to request or pay for better local rankings.
- Huge backlink promises: A large number does not tell you whether the links are useful.
- No clear strategy: The agency cannot explain what it will prioritize or why.
- No access to your accounts: You should know who owns and controls your important business assets.
- Reports full of vanity metrics: Traffic and rankings should be connected to meaningful business outcomes.
- Long contracts with unclear exit terms: Know your obligations before signing.
- One strategy for every client: Your SEO plan should reflect your business, market, competition, and customers.
A Quick Checklist Before You Hire an SEO Company
Before signing a contract, make sure you can answer these questions:
- What exactly will the agency do?
- Why are those activities important for my business?
- Which pages and search terms will it prioritize?
- How will it approach local SEO?
- Who owns my accounts and profiles?
- Who creates and reviews my content?
- How are backlinks acquired?
- How will SEO results be measured?
- What will I receive in the monthly report?
- How much will everything cost?
- How long is the contract?
- What happens if I decide to leave?
If the agency can answer these questions clearly, you have a much better basis for comparing proposals.
A strong proposal should leave you with fewer unanswered questions. You should understand what the agency will work on, why those priorities were chosen, how progress will be measured, and what remains under your control.
Ready to Ask the Right SEO Questions?
You don’t need an SEO company that simply promises more traffic. You need one that can explain why your site is not getting the visibility it should, what needs to change, and how those changes can turn search visibility into qualified business opportunities.
That’s the approach we take at ClickTraces.
Our work goes beyond traditional rankings. We combine AI-powered SEO, technical optimization, strategic content, and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to help businesses stay visible as search moves from traditional results to AI-generated answers and zero-click experiences.
So when you’re comparing SEO companies, ask us the same questions we’ve covered above. We can show you the answers, not just tell you what you want to hear.
Talk to ClickTraces to see what an SEO strategy built around your business, search behavior, and AI-powered search visibility could look like.
