How I'd choose an SEO agency

Anyone who guarantees me number one on Google gets shown the door, and Google's own page on hiring an SEO tells you to do the same. It says that if they promise first place, "find someone else". That filter takes a minute, so the real work is telling the rest apart, and working out whether I'd need any of them.

Do I need one at all?

Possibly not. Google says that if you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself, and it points you to its own starter guide. I'd read that guide either way, because it's how you'd notice someone proposing something daft.

Here's the sum I'd do before any meeting. Work out how many customers' profit the retainer equals. That's how many extra customers it has to bring in, every month, on top of the ones who'd have found you anyway.

If that number makes you laugh, you have your answer.

Google says a great time to hire is when you're planning a redesign or a new site, and it lists a review of your content and structure among the useful services. I'd buy that first, as a one-off with an end date, before I'd sign up for anything monthly.

Innovative Hub is one Malaysian agency that sells SEO services. Put them through the same questions as anyone else.

Who gets shown the door

Most of this is Google's list, and I've only put it in the order I'd lose patience:

• They emailed out of the blue. Google says it gets these emails too, addressed to "Dear google.com".
• They guarantee a ranking, or hint at a "special relationship" with Google.
• They won't clearly explain what they intend to do.
• They need you to link to them. Google says you should never have to.
• They talk about submitting your site to thousands of search engines.
• They say buying Google ads will help your organic results. Google says advertising has no effect on them.
• Their tool is "approved" by Google. Google says it doesn't endorse third-party SEO tools.

The harder ones sound like honest work, and come with a nice monthly number attached.

Links and pages by the dozen

Google's spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes, and that includes "exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links".² So if a package promises so many links or guest posts a month, I'd ask where each one comes from and who gets paid.

The same policies cover generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, "no matter how it's created".² A count of articles is easy to put in a proposal, and I'd ask what each page is for and who'd want to read it.

Google's hiring page has the sentence I'd pin above the desk: "you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire".¹ It also says a site could be removed from its index entirely over deceptive content an SEO made on your behalf.

Who does the work

A salesperson who's lovely in a meeting tells me nothing about the person who'll be editing my site. So I'd ask who, by name, and whether I can talk to them before signing. I'd also ask if any of it gets passed to a freelancer or another firm.

Then I'd ask how many hours I'm buying. My rough sum on what agencies sell was that a common retainer might buy between five and thirteen hours of someone's month. That's not a scandal, but I'd want it said out loud.

Google says a good SEO should be asking what makes your business unique, who your competitors are and how your customers find you. If a proposal arrives before any of that, I know how much of it was written for me.

What I'd want each month

Google suggests asking whether they'll share all the changes they make, with the reasoning behind them.¹ I'd go further and ask to see a real report sent to another client, with the name blacked out. I'd want it to answer these:

• Which pages changed, and why?
• Which links were gained, and from where?
• What's the plan from here?

I'd want the traffic numbers from my own Search Console, not only from their dashboard. Google notes that third-party tools don't have access to its internal ranking data, so a tool's chart is someone's estimate.¹

I'd ask what they expect and by when, which is another of Google's questions, and I'd rather hear a range and a reason than a date.

Whose name is on the accounts

Mine. I'd have Search Console, analytics and any ad account set up under my company's own login, with the agency added as a user I can remove. The domain and the site login stay with me too, and the contract would say that the content is mine when we part.

Google's advice for an audit is to grant read access only, and not write access at that stage.¹

What's a fair price?

I can't tell you in ringgit. I couldn't find an independent Malaysian survey of retainers, so these two are foreign and both come from companies selling SEO software, so hold them loosely.

Ahrefs polled 439 providers, and the most common retainer was $501 to $1,000 a month.³ SE Ranking's survey of 260 agencies, most of them in North America or Europe, tells much the same story.⁴

Share of agencies charging each monthly retainer, in %

I'd divide the price by the hours they've quoted, then look at the exit. I didn't find a survey of contract lengths I'd lean on, so I'd ask, and I wouldn't sign a long lock-in for something Google says nobody can promise.