What to ask an SEO company before you sign Seven questions, and the answers that should worry you
Appearing in Google's organic results costs nothing, and Google says so on the same page it uses to warn buyers that no one can guarantee a number one ranking.
Which means every pound a UK trade business hands to an SEO is paying for work, not for the listing. That single fact ought to change how the first meeting goes. The question is not whether the company is good at SEO, because everybody in the room will say yes and nobody can prove it in an hour. The question is whether they will write down what they are going to do, how it gets measured, who holds which account afterwards, and what happens if it does not work. Google has published the interview questions for years and almost nobody arrives with them. Seven questions settle it, and the useful part is rarely the answer itself. It is how fast the conversation moves off the question.
Ask seven things before you sign: which searches are measured, how position is measured, when the clock starts, what happens if the target is missed, who stays primary owner of your Google Business Profile, what arrives every four weeks, and what you keep if you leave. A UK firm that will not put those in writing is not ready to be paid.
Google publishes the interview questions, and hardly anyone asks them
Google's guidance for people hiring an SEO tells buyers to ask whether the SEO follows Google Search Essentials, what results they expect and in what timeframe, how they measure success, and what experience they have in your industry and your country.
Start with the source rather than with the pitch. Google's page on whether you need an SEO is written for the exact person reading this: somebody about to hand money to a stranger over search results. It carries a short list of things to ask, and the list is deliberately boring. Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories. Do you follow the Google Search Essentials. What results do you expect, and in what timeframe. How do you measure your success. How long have you been in business. How will we communicate. It also says to go and ask past clients whether the service was useful, whether the firm was easy to deal with, and whether it produced results.
Notice what none of those are. None of them asks how good the company is at SEO. They are all questions about process, measurement and accountability, because those are the only things a buyer can actually check before the money moves.
The seven below are that list, sharpened for a local trade business paying for Google Maps and content rather than for a national e-commerce site. Ask them in order. Write the answers on your phone in the meeting, because the ones that go vague are the ones that matter.
Three answers that should end the meeting
A guaranteed position, a claimed special relationship with Google and a priority submit are the three things Google's own buyer guidance names as warning signs, and all three are still sold to British trades.
A guaranteed position, as opposed to a guaranteed consequence
These sound identical in a meeting and they are not remotely the same promise. Nobody outside Google decides where you sit, so a promised position is a promise about somebody else's system. A promise about the consequence, this measurement by this date or here is what happens, is a promise about their own behaviour, and that one can be written down and enforced. The full version of that argument, including the four clauses that make a Maps promise testable, is in are Google Maps ranking guarantees real. In the meeting, one question separates them: what happens if you miss it.
Anything that hints at somebody on the inside
Google states that it never accepts payment to include or rank a site, and that appearing in organic results costs nothing. There is no queue to jump and nobody to know. A claimed special relationship with Google, a priority submit, or a wink about a contact at a Google office is either a misunderstanding or a lie, and neither is a good foundation for a twelve month bill.
The third answer to walk away from is not on Google's list, because Google is not thinking about one van businesses. It is a monthly figure with no named deliverables attached to it. A price is not a service. If nobody will tell you how many pages get written, what happens to the profile and what the report contains, you are buying activity.
Ask who owns the Google Business Profile when it is over
Only the primary owner of a Google Business Profile can transfer primary ownership, so an SEO company sitting in that seat controls your Maps listing until it chooses not to.
This is the question that costs people the most and gets asked the least, and it is worth understanding the mechanics before the meeting. Google's help page on adding and removing owners and managers sets out the levels. A manager can do nearly everything an owner can. What a manager cannot do is add or remove other users, or remove the profile. And only the primary owner can hand primary ownership to somebody else.
Manager is enough, and owner is too much
So the arrangement that works is simple: your Google account stays primary owner, and whoever does the work is added as a manager. They can change categories, add services, upload job photos, reply to reviews and post updates. They cannot lock you out, and they cannot walk off with the listing that your phone calls come through. Manager access is all the work needs, which is what I ask for, and a company that insists on owner access should be able to explain why in one sentence.
Ask the same about the website and the domain
Then run the question across everything else. Whose name is on the domain registration. Who has the logins for the hosting. Who holds the Google Search Console and analytics properties. Who owns the pages written for you if you leave in a year. In British trades the usual pattern is that nobody asked, and it only surfaces when somebody wants to move.
Ask what actually lands every four weeks
A search retainer should name its deliverables in numbers: how many pages get published, what happens to the Google Business Profile, how reviews get asked for, and what the report contains, rather than a figure a month and a promise of effort.
Local search work is not mysterious. It is a small number of jobs done repeatedly: get the profile set up the way Google reads it, publish pages that answer what people in your area actually type, collect recent reviews, keep your name and number consistent across the directories that count, and measure the map. Any firm charging for it should be able to list those in the agreement with numbers against them.
The third number is the one I would push hardest on if I were buying. Ask for live URLs, not a portfolio PDF. Anybody selling search should be able to show you pages they have published on client sites this month and pages they have published on their own. My SEO and Map Pack page lists five of them for exactly that reason, four client sites and this one, because a link opens in a second and a case study takes a meeting to argue with. Whether the ongoing figure makes sense on a single van is a separate calculation, worked through in is £300 every four weeks for SEO worth it on one van.
The reporting question belongs here too, and the answer you want is specific rather than generous. Not a dashboard login. A monthly document with the same search, the same radius, the same grid, and the average position as a number you can compare with last month. What the rest of it should contain is set out in what a monthly SEO report should show.
Check the company before you check the pitch
A UK SEO company should be findable on the Companies House register with an incorporation date and filed accounts, and the search is free and takes about two minutes.
Before the second meeting, spend two minutes on the register. Companies House lets anyone search the register free of charge, and it will tell you the incorporation date, the registered address, the current and resigned officers and whether accounts have been filed. None of that proves somebody is good at their job. A company incorporated six weeks ago while claiming a decade of results, or a registered address that is a virtual office in a city nowhere near the team you met, is worth knowing before you agree a minimum term. Plenty of excellent sole traders are not limited companies at all, mine included, so absence from the register is not a red flag by itself. A claim that contradicts the register is.
What has to be in the agreement, not in the meeting
Answers given out loud are worth nothing in month five: the searches, the measurement, the start date and its pauses, the remedy, the account ownership, the four-weekly deliverables and the exit terms all have to be in the document you sign.
Read whatever you are sent against the five below. If something is missing, ask for it by email and keep the reply.
The bottom line: ask the seven questions, write down which ones went vague, and sign nothing that leaves the measurement or the ownership undefined. A company that answers all seven plainly has done this before and expects to be held to it. One that treats the questions as distrust is telling you what the next twelve months look like. If you want to try the seven on me, start with the free Maps check. I will scan your patch, tell you straight whether the search is winnable, and you will have every answer in writing before anything is signed.