The first meeting with an SEO agency is a great time to assess the team's expertise and broadly defined marketing thinking. Well-asked questions can help distinguish a potential strategic partner from a chaotic contractor.
For this reason, we've prepared a set of basic questions worth asking an SEO agency at the very beginning of the relationship. These questions will assess professionalism, work methodology, and contract structure.
Does the agency understand the client's business goals?
The first key question should be how the subcontractor plans to learn about your industry and business model.
An agency that talks only about Google rankings, instead of business goals, gives the first warning signal – the most important task of an SEO agency is, of course, to deliver traffic, but it must be business-friendly traffic.
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It is worth asking which indicators, apart from website visits (e.g. revenue, leads, quote requests), they consider to be a measure of the success of SEO activities.
Does the SEO agency present a strategy and methodology?
Another point of conversation should be the work methodology. It's a good idea to ask how the agency builds its SEO strategy and how often it updates it.
Specialized teams combine data from technical, content, and link analysis, adapting the plan to the current situation. If the answer is limited to "keywords and links," it's worth delving deeper into audits, creating content plans, and leveraging data from analytical tools.
Does the agency start with an extensive website audit?
A good SEO agency begins with a thorough audit of the current state. An SEO audit is a process-based, multi-stage analysis of a website, culminating in a specific list of recommendations, not just a "bug review."
In practice, a good audit is more like a medical diagnosis combined with a treatment plan than a quick check-up.
- The first part covers the technical layer. It checks whether search engine spiders can crawl and index the page freely, analyzing the robots.txt file, XML maps, redirects, 4xx/5xx errors, canonicalization, and duplicate addresses. This is followed by performance: Core Web Vitals, load time, resource load, and any JavaScript and content rendering issues.
- The second layer is structure and content. Information architecture is analyzed: category arrangement, click depth, internal linking, and whether key sections are hidden too deeply.
- Next, we move on to content: relevance to search intent, keyword potential, cannibalization, duplicate content, insufficient content, meta tags, and headings. Based on this, a plan is developed: which pages to expand, merge, or remove, and what new content to create.
- The next step is the link profile and market context. We examine the quality and rate of link growth, domain types, and anchor text, looking for gaps in our rankings compared to the competition. In parallel, we analyze domains that are winning in the SERPs: their structure, content, and links.
Ultimately, a document is created with recommendations, divided into priorities, describing the impact on the business and indicating what to implement first.
Are activity reports regular and transparent?
Asking about reporting is a test of an agency's ability to speak the language of numbers. It's good practice to determine which metrics will appear in reports and how frequently they will be presented. For mature SEO companies, a report isn't just a set of charts, but also an interpretation of data and recommendations for the future.
What is the agency's stance on Google's guidelines?
Be sure to ask your SEO agency how they ensure compliance with Google's guidelines for website owners. A mere statement, "we work within the guidelines," isn't enough – ask for specific examples: what the link quality verification process looks like, and what tactics are excluded (e.g., keyword spamming).
What experience does the SEO agency have in my industry?
Asking about an agency's experience in your industry is a key factor in a first meeting. It's not about a general "yes, we've worked with e-commerce," but about specifics.
Ask for examples of clients with a similar business model and competitive landscape. Ask about the goals of these projects, the starting point (visibility, service condition), and the results achieved over time.
It's also worth asking what the agency learned from these campaigns: what tactics worked and what completely failed.
Does the agency have documented case studies with its clients?
This is an extension of the previous point. It's hard to find a better testament to the quality of an SEO agency's work when a satisfied client agrees to publish a case study with the company's name and logo. Each such case study is a public testament to the agency's professionalism.
Verseo client collaboration case studies can be found on our website – you can filter SEO by using the “channel/product” function and selecting SEO from the drop-down list.
How does the agency collaborate on content?
That is, who is responsible for creating content, who is responsible for approving it, and who publishes the created content on the website. Experienced agencies typically have entire in-house copywriting departments and, over the years, a network of external, proven content veterans built upon them when needed.
Does the price list include all costs?
It's also worth asking directly whether the price list presented includes all costs related to the implementation of the activities, or whether additional fees should be expected. Ask if the price includes things like external publications or content proofreading.
What kind of SEO does… an SEO agency have?
Finally, this question, contrary to appearances, is quite non-obvious because it's rarely asked. It's hard to find a more competitive market for website positioning than the SEO agency industry. Therefore, a good question is what the agency's SEO is like and whether it can "substantiate" its own strategy with its website results.
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FAQs about SEO agencies
The answer to this question is an excellent test of honesty. A professional SEO agency never offers a 100% guarantee of specific rankings. Search engine algorithms are independent of the agency and constantly change. A reliable partner will focus on transparent estimates, increasing valuable organic traffic, and improving conversions, not on empty promises.
SEO is a complex and long-term process. Typically, the first measurable and stable results are visible three to six months after initiation. However, the exact time depends on many factors: the current technical condition of the website, the domain's history, the budget, and the level of competition in the given industry.
Transparency is the foundation of any collaboration. It's worth determining whether you'll receive access to transparent, periodic reports (usually monthly). A good report should include not only keyword rankings but also information on website traffic growth, conversions, and a list of optimization efforts and plans for the following month.
Link profile remains one of the most important ranking factors. It's important to ensure the agency employs safe practices (so-called White Hat SEO). Links should come from trusted, thematically relevant websites and high-quality sponsored articles, not from mass, spammy directories that can result in a Google penalty.
Effective SEO requires collaboration between both parties. Initially, the agency will need access (to the website's CMS panel, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console). It's also worth asking who will be responsible for implementing technical changes to the website (does the agency have its own programmers or does it only prepare guidelines for your IT team) and who will be responsible for creating and publishing new content (copywriting).
Establishing a communication flow is crucial. Ask if you'll be assigned a dedicated project manager (e.g., an Account Manager or a dedicated SEO specialist). Knowing a specific person facilitates ongoing consultations, quick problem resolution, and ensures someone is constantly monitoring the development of your online business.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Asking the right questions at the first meeting allows you to verify the SEO agency's professionalism and understanding of your business goals.
- It is worth asking the SEO agency about the detailed methodology and how they update their strategy to ensure that their actions are based on reliable data analysis and not just simple slogans.
- A professional SEO agency should begin cooperation with a comprehensive technical, content and link audit, which will conclude with a list of specific implementation priorities.
- A transparent SEO agency should regularly report on data interpretation and demonstrate full compliance of its methods with current Google guidelines.
- Verifying the agency's experience in your industry through specific examples and documented case studies allows you to assess their real effectiveness in similar projects.
- Before starting cooperation, you should precisely determine the division of responsibilities for content creation and make sure that the presented price list includes all operating costs.
- It is worth checking the visibility of the agency itself in the search engine, because its own SEO results are the best confirmation of the effectiveness of the strategies used.
