Questions to ask an SEO agency, by stage: before the call, on it, on the proposal, before signing and at day 30, with what a strong answer sounds like.
One test works for every answer an SEO agency gives you: is it specific about the sequence of work, or only confident about the outcome? How an agency answers while they are selling is a fair preview of how they will work once paid, and the good ones tend to be specific from the first email.
This is the companion to our guide on how to choose an SEO agency, which covers the seven questions for the pitch itself. Here I’ve gone wider: 22 questions grouped by stage, from the first email to the 30-day review, and for each one what a strong answer contains and what a less helpful one tends to sound like.
The short version
- Ask an SEO agency to be specific about sequence, not just confident about outcome: who runs the account, what the first 90 days look like, and what changes if results stall at month six.
- There are 22 questions in total, six of them for the first call, covering staffing, reporting, discovery pricing, and what happens if the programme is not working by month six.
- We answer all 22 of these in writing for anyone who gets in touch; see how we run discovery and reporting further down this page.
What should you ask an SEO agency before the first call?
Three questions, by email, before anyone books an hour. They cost the agency ten minutes to answer and tell you whether the hour is worth having.
1. Who would run our account day to day, and how many other accounts do they carry?
A strong answer gives you a name, their seniority, and a number: a senior specialist carrying four to six accounts is a different product from a coordinator carrying twenty. “Our team” usually means the staffing is not decided yet, so ask again before you sign.
2. Can you send an anonymised monthly report from a live client?
The report you want puts enquiries or pipeline next to activity and cost, carries a changelog of what shipped, and has a couple of clumsy redactions in it, because that means it is real. A sample deck built for sales, or a live one that is all rankings and sessions, tells you what the agency is used to being asked for.
3. Here is our budget range. Is it enough for what you would want to do?
The answer you want is a plain yes, a plain no, or “yes at reduced scope” with the dropped piece named. “We can make anything work” is kindly meant but tells you nothing about what a month contains.
Just so you know, for reference, this is why sharing the range helps. When we get no budget signal at all we price high, because we have to quote for the widest plausible scope, and we can always go down, never up again. Give the range and you get a proposal shaped to it. Mid-market UK retainers sit between £2,500 and £8,000 a month, and the reasons are in what SEO costs in the UK.
It also helps to share your commercial number alongside the budget, even a rough one. Together they let an agency tell you early whether they are the right shape for the work, and a good one will say so if not.
What should you ask an SEO agency on the first call?
Six questions, in the same words to every agency, and write the answers down while they talk. An hour later you will remember the personalities and not the content.
4. What have you understood about our commercial problem so far?
A strong answer plays your problem back with a number in it, then names what they would need to check before committing to a plan. If the call opens with what they can deliver and how much it costs, start the strategy conversation yourself. Ali’s first question on every discovery call is where the strategy is, because tactics priced before the plan tend to cost more and deliver less.
5. What happens in the first 90 days, in order?
You are listening for a sequence: a technical audit, a keyword and competitor map, a scored roadmap, then the first fixes live, with rough weeks against each. Confident on results but hazy on steps gives you nothing to check at day 30.
6. Why is discovery paid, and what do I walk away with?
A free audit inside 48 hours is nearly always an automated crawl with a person presenting it, because that is the only way to produce one at that speed and price. It cannot diagnose your position or set a strategy, because that takes senior hours nobody can give away. Discovery done properly has a fee, a four to six week timeline, and outputs you own whether or not you hire the agency: a diagnosis of where you sit, one search strategy across organic and paid, and a twelve-month roadmap. A standalone audit of a typical business site runs £3,000 to £8,000 and I’ve set out what it should contain in how much an SEO audit costs. We charge for it because we want to protect the work we do for paying clients, and because the strategy is the valuable part.
7. What would you do if it isn’t working at month six?
The answer you want describes how they would diagnose it, what they would change, and the point at which they would tell you organic is the wrong channel for you. Every agency that has run enough programmes has had one stall, so if they cannot picture it, ask them to come back in writing.
8. What did you change in the last twelve months because of AI search?
Look for named changes to structured data and machine-readable brand information, describes how they track citations in AI answers, and has a view on which of your queries now get answered without a click. “Nothing yet” is at least candid; a new “GEO package” at a new price deserves a question about what is in it.
9. Which of your clients is shaped most like us, and what went wrong on it?
Ask them to walk one engagement through end to end and listen for the mistake, named unprompted. A logo wall with no setbacks is a sales page rather than an answer; most agencies will go deeper if asked. Shape matters more than sector: a six-person buying committee and a long sales cycle is a discipline in itself, which is the argument in SEO for B2B.
What should you ask about the proposal?
Five questions, in writing, once the document lands. The proposal is the first deliverable the agency will ever hand you. Read it as one.
10. Where is the diagnosis?
The proposal should open with your position in the market, a figure for what closing the gap is worth in revenue or pipeline, and a plan that visibly follows from those two things. If it opens with the agency’s process and a price, ask for the diagnosis to be added; an agency that has done the thinking can put it on paper in a day.
11. What exactly does a month contain?
What you want to see is volumes with seniority attached: content pieces with intended URLs, technical hours, outreach placements, and the name of the person doing each. “SEO retainer” with a list of nouns underneath is hard to reconcile against a report later, so ask for the detail now.
12. If the price is too high, what comes out?
The helpful answer is that the scope shrinks and they tell you which piece goes and what that costs you in outcome. If 20% comes off and nothing changes, either the first number had room in it or the work will shrink without anyone deciding where. I will say this is how we run it: reduce scope, never value. A client can strip a service out of the monthly if they need to. The price of what remains does not move.
13. What will the monthly report show, and can I see the template with our numbers in it?
A strong template leads with qualified enquiries or pipeline from organic, cost per lead against paid, a changelog, and next month’s plan, with rankings and sessions in the appendix where they belong. A rankings dashboard with a sessions graph is the tool default, so if that is what comes back, ask for the commercial figures on page one.
14. How does this change if we have an in-house marketer?
The version you want has the agency directing and overseeing rather than duplicating, a scope that drops to match, and a line, offered without prompting, that your own people are part of the plan. A proposal that is identical either way has not been written for your situation yet.
What should you ask before signing?
Four questions for the contract. Most agencies have been asked them before and will not mind.
15. What do we own if we part ways?
Yes, in writing, to all of it: accounts, data, content, tracking configuration and the strategy document itself. “We’d discuss that at the time” is not a refusal, but it is not an answer, so get it into the contract now.
16. What is the term, the break clause and the notice period?
Six to twelve months with a break clause at three and 30 to 60 days’ notice after that works for both sides. Shorter than six proves nothing because the first quarter is setup. Twelve months with no break and a fee for leaving puts the risk of a slow programme on you, so ask for the break clause.
17. Who do we call when something touching revenue breaks, and how fast do they answer?
One working day, in writing, for anything that touches revenue: a broken form, a page dropped from the index, a tracking gap. If the route is an account manager relaying to a specialist and back with no response time attached, ask for the time to be added; the relay is normal, the missing number is the part to fix. We hold ourselves to first contact inside 24 hours on our own pipeline and there is no reason a client should accept less.
18. Can I speak to one current client and one former one?
Both, plus the reason the former client left, offered before you ask. Nobody keeps every account, and how an agency talks about the one that moved on tells you more than the ten it kept. If you are offered current clients only, ask again.
What should you ask at the 30-day review?
You are not done asking questions when you sign. At day 30 the break clause is still close, and four questions tell you whether the programme has started properly.
19. Can I see the scored roadmap for the next quarter, with dates?
There should be a written plan where each item is scored on current position and cluster volume, with a revenue estimate against the top items, so the order of work is logic rather than preference. A kickoff deck and a keyword list means you have been onboarded rather than started, and it is fair to say so.
A roadmap scored this way is the same discipline we bring to our own SEO engagements before a single page goes live. See how we build SEO strategy
20. What is live on the site already?
At least one fix should be live. On a 30-page site the first technical corrections are rarely the hard part, so “we’re still in research” at day 30 usually means the audit has run long, which happens. Ask for a shipping date.
21. What is our baseline commercial number, and where does it sit in the report?
The baseline you want is organic enquiries, qualified leads or pipeline for month zero, recorded in the same report format you will see every month from here. If the baseline is sessions, ask for the commercial figure now; a baseline set in month three is one you cannot use.
22. What did you find that you didn’t expect, and what did you tell us before we asked?
Ideally they raised the broken form, the tracking gap or the page that lost 30% of its clicks on the day they found it, rather than in the monthly deck. If nothing was volunteered, say you would like it to be; the habit is easy to set at day 30 and harder at month ten.
Questions we get asked
How many questions should I ask before hiring an agency?
Twenty-two across the whole process, spread over the first email, the first call, the proposal and the contract, with six on the call itself. Forty questions in one meeting gets you forty rehearsed answers.
What does a less helpful answer from an SEO agency sound like?
One that is confident about the outcome and light on the sequence that produces it. Guaranteed rankings, a method that cannot be explained, and a free audit that arrives in two days are the three most common versions. None makes the agency a bad one, but they leave you nothing to check against, so ask for the steps.
Should I ask an SEO agency for references?
Yes, and ask for one current client and one former client. The current one tells you what the work is like; the former one tells you how the agency behaves when an account is not going well, which you cannot see in a pitch.
Is it rude to ask an agency about their own rankings?
No, and a good agency expects it. Search the commercial terms they would want and see where they land, then treat the result as one data point among several, because plenty of good firms grew on referral and never had to compete for a head term.
What should I ask about reporting?
Ask to see a real anonymised report before the first call, then the template with your own numbers in it before you sign. You are looking for a commercial figure on page one, a changelog of what shipped, and next month’s plan. If the report shows what the invoice bought, most trust questions answer themselves.
Where we fit
Clear Click is a senior-led SEO agency for B2B and ecommerce companies that want organic reported as pipeline. Discovery is paid, the people on the first call are the people on the account, and our case studies carry names and numbers: for Myagi that meant 38% more qualified organic leads and 115% pipeline growth.
If you are running this list on a shortlist, run it on us. Get in touch with your budget range and your commercial problem and we will answer all 22 in writing.
