Every month we talk to owners who've already been through one or two SEO agencies. The stories rhyme: a confident sales call, a twelve-month contract, a dashboard full of green arrows, and a phone that never rang any more than it used to.
Here's the thing — almost every one of those outcomes was predictable from the first call. We run an SEO practice ourselves, so read this knowing where we sit (and hold us to every line of it). This is the checklist we'd hand a friend.
Start with what the agency can't fake
Sales calls are performances. Work logs aren't. Before you evaluate anything else, ask for two artifacts:
1. Last month's work log for a current client. Not a case study — a work log. Real shops can show you a redacted list: pages published, titles rewritten, citations built, GBP posts made. Invoice factories can't, because the "work" is software running unattended.
2. A live client's Search Console curve. Anonymized is fine. What you're looking for isn't a hockey stick — it's whether they measure in Search Console at all. Agencies that report only from their own branded dashboard are choosing metrics you can't independently verify.
If an agency can't produce either artifact, the meeting is over. Nothing they say after that matters.
The red flags, ranked by expense
A twelve-month contract before any work starts. The single most reliable predictor of a bad experience. Long lock-ins exist to protect the agency from their own results. Fair terms look like month-to-month with 30 days' notice — the agency retains you by performing.
They own your website "as part of the package." Some agencies build your site on their platform and keep it if you leave. That's not a service, it's a hostage situation. You should own the domain, the site, and the data — in writing.
One retainer price for every business. A plumber in a town of 5,000 and a med spa in a metro of 500,000 do not need the same work. One-size pricing means one-size (automated) fulfillment.
They won't say who does the work. "Our team" sometimes means three specialists down the hall — and sometimes means a reseller passing your account to the cheapest fulfillment shop they could find. Ask directly: who touches my account, and where do they work?
They promise specific rankings on a timeline. Nobody controls Google. Confident promises about a machine the promiser doesn't operate tell you everything about the rest of the pitch.
The green flags
- They start by looking, not selling. A real practice audits your site and your market before quoting anything. (This is why we lead with a free scorecard instead of a pitch deck.)
- The monthly scope is listable. "X pages of content, GBP management, citation building, on-page fixes, monthly Search Console review" — concrete enough that you could check it happened.
- You keep your accounts. Search Console, Google Business Profile, analytics, domain — owned by you, with the agency added as a manager.
- They'll tell you what they don't do. Specialists have edges. "We don't do national e-commerce" is a green flag; "we do everything for everyone" is not.
- Pricing is published. If you can't find a number anywhere on their site, the number depends on how you sound on the phone. (Here's ours, and here's what the whole market charges.)
Five questions for the first call
- "Walk me through last month's work for a client like me." — Tests the work log.
- "Which accounts will I own, and what happens to everything if I leave?" — Tests the hostage risk.
- "Who exactly does the work, and where are they?" — Tests the reseller risk.
- "How will I verify progress myself, without your dashboard?" — The only good answer involves your own Search Console.
- "What would make you tell me SEO isn't my best next dollar?" — Real practices have an answer, because sometimes it's true. (Sometimes the problem is response and follow-up, not visibility.)
What a fair engagement looks like
Pulling it together — a fair small-business SEO engagement in 2026: $1,000–$3,000/month, month-to-month, listable monthly scope, your accounts in your name, reporting from your own Search Console, and a specialist you can actually reach.
That's the standard. Hold every agency to it — including the one whose journal you're reading.