If you’re paying an SEO agency every month and all you get for it is a pretty-looking report full of green arrows, then you have no idea what you’re paying for. Traffic’s up, and a couple of keywords have moved, but at the same time, you’re checking your inquiries and hoping that some of that will finally turn into customers.
Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean the agency is doing a bad job. That said, what do you judge them on when you can’t tell what they’ve changed and why they’ve changed it?
There’s no need to become an expert at SEO because why would you? You’re willing to pay someone to do it for you. But before you even sign a contract, you should be able to figure out whether an agency will be a waste of money or not. Choose an SEO agency on what you can verify, not on how good the pitch deck looks.
Read on to learn how to do that.
What Your SEO Fees Should Cover
‘SEO services’ is an extremely broad term that can cover a lot of things, and if you’re not familiar with SEO, seeing this in a contract could be enough to make you sign it, even though you don’t really know what you’re signing.
Here’s what should be included in the price you pay.
The Research Phase
Research is usually seen as ‘researching the competition’ – which is VERY important. But what’s more important is researching the actual business first.
Here’s a quick example why:
If your business sells 5 services but only 2 bring the kind of customers you want more of, the agency you’re about to hire should ask about that and build their offer/strategy around that. Otherwise, what might end up happening is that your business ends up getting more traffic in the places you don’t really care about instead of where you want the increase (or at least most of it).
Before anything gets done, they should start researching your business, like what you sell, who buys it, where you operate, what makes an inquiry worth your time, and so on.
And they should also research your competitors because you want to know in which areas they’re ahead and where they’re not.
Technical SEO
A technical audit should show you problems, like clicking a service link and landing on an error page.
The problem is that the results of an audit can leave you with dozens of warnings, but you might not have a clue about which of those are important. If you’re paying an agency, they should sort that out, explain what needs to be fixed, what can wait, and why.
What do you want fixed at this stage?
- Crawlability/indexing issues
- Redirects
- Broken links
- Canonical tags
- XML sitemap
- Robots.txt
- Duplicate pages
- Core Web Vitals (especially speed issues and mobile friendliness)
- Structured data (Schema)
- Internal linking
- Orphan pages
- HTTP response codes (200, 301, 302, 404, 410, 500/503)
And you have to ask who’ll make those changes because if the agency sends all that to your developer, it means you’ll be paying yet another bill.
You should be able to see clear improvements. Otherwise, something might not be done correctly.
As seen by tried-and-tested results, after fixing crawling issues, duplicate content, canonicalizations, structured data (Schema), a website can see a 102% year-over-year increase in organic search traffic on Google, a 93% increase in new sign-ups from organic search, and a 9% increase in its organic traffic conversion rate. While this result is specific to one company, the job board Saramin, it goes to show that good results are possible. – Google Search Central, Saramin case study
Content Creation & Link Building
There’s no rule that says you need 4 new blog posts every month. But you do need someone to fix the service page that never explains your prices or who the service is for.
You should ask why the agency recommends the content they do, and how their team will get the details right. There shouldn’t be any backtracking on new content simply because the writer doesn’t understand how the business works or how it generates profit. Guesswork and misleading/incorrect information could end up hurting the business.
The same goes for link building; ask practical, simple-to-answer questions. Where will they get the links? How? Will the linking pages be contextually relevant to your business and the pages they’re linking to?
You want to know how it works in order to know what to expect. You also want to know how it works to know what you want and what you don’t want.
Tracking Results & Client Reporting
You’re looking at your report, and you see that the traffic is up 30%. But that seems weird because your phone isn’t ringing any more than usual. Where did all those visitors go? Did they do anything useful?
Implementing JobPosting structured data can be followed by an increase of 94% in organic traffic to job-detail pages, with applications increasing by 10%. – Google Search Central, Monster India case study
The first thing you want to do is make it absolutely clear what you want. If you aren’t sure about what an agency could do for you (e.g., calls, bookings, purchases, inquiries, building a contact/email list, etc.), then ask. After that, make a decision. This is absolutely paramount, simply because the agency will build their strategy around that.
So, if you just say something like “I want more traffic on the site”, but you don’t specify which page, or what you want to get from that increased traffic, you might end up with unwanted results a couple of months down the road.
When looking at 2 million+ Wix websites that are connected to GSC and have their sitemaps submitted via Wix’s SEO integration, an avg. of 15% traffic increase has been observed, with ecommerce sites seeing a 24% increase in monthly Gross Product Value (GPV). – Google Search Central, Wix case study
You should also know when you’ll get updates, and each of those updates should explain what was done and what’s next.
What Should You Check Before Signing?
Let’s say you have a developer and you have someone who writes your content.
Now think of a full-service link building agency, such as Stellar SEO. What would they add exactly? What are you getting from your investment?
There is a positive correlation between the number of unique websites linking to a page (referring domains) and the amount of organic web traffic that specific page receives. – Ahrefs
It could be that you only need help with link building or figuring out why nobody can find your pages. On the other hand, if everything depends on you, check which jobs the agency you’re interested in does and whether what you need is included in the price.
Scope is also moving. A lot of agencies now sell answer engine optimisation and AI search visibility alongside traditional SEO, so ask whether that work is inside the retainer you’re quoted or billed as an extra.
Before you sign, check that what you discussed matches what’s in the contract. If the agency told you that their team will write content and fix the problems on your website, that should be included in the price, and it should be part of the contract.
You don’t want surprises here.
Another thing you need to know is how long the contract will last and how you can end it. If you need to give them notice (which you probably do), ask how much notice that is and whether you’ll pay something for cancellation. Also, see what will happen to the content you paid for. You need to be able to keep access to your website and analytics accounts even if you decide to leave.
If any of that is vague, ask for explanations, and put those in writing.
Conclusion
Basically, you need to know exactly what you’re paying for, and the contract should be crystal clear. That should all go without saying, but people are quick to sign contracts that they don’t fully grasp how SEO works and/or simply because they think everything’ll work out without caring for the details, which are very important here.
What have you agreed to? Will you have to pay extra for something? How will you know it’s working?
These are the types of questions that need to be answered before anything else happens.
