Every agency says the same things. This page gives you the questions that separate them, the answers that should worry you, and how to verify the work once it starts. Use it on us as well.
Ask these eight. The answers tell you more than any proposal, and the way they answer tells you even more than the answer itself.
They should be able to name something specific before you pay. If they cannot, they have not looked.
The right answer is your Search Console and your analytics. A dashboard only they can access is a warning.
If the answer is vague, or mentions packages and volumes, they are buying them.
It should be you, from day one. Anything else makes leaving expensive by design.
Listen for whether they have ever told a client the market was not worth entering.
In many agencies the person who sells you is not the person who delivers, and they never speak again.
Long lock ins usually exist because the results do not hold the client on their own.
Screenshots from the client's own tools. Not a percentage in a slide with no source.
Any one of these is a reason to slow down. Two of them together is a reason to walk away.
Nobody controls Google's results. An agency promising position one either misunderstands search or is counting on you not to check.
Bronze, silver and gold packages on a first call means you are being sold a template, not a solution.
Impressions and keyword counts always rise. If the number cannot be checked in an account you own, it is not a result.
Real links are earned from specific publications. If they will not name the type of source, it is a network or a marketplace.
Discounts that expire in 48 hours belong in retail, not in a professional engagement.
An agency that has never turned down a client is not judging fit, it is filling a pipeline.
You do not need to understand SEO to audit your agency. Four checks, each of which takes minutes.
It is free and it is your data. Look at total clicks over six months, not impressions. Clicks are people. Impressions are not.
Ask for a list of pages edited or created this month. Real work leaves a trail. Reports alone do not.
Ask where the last five links came from and open them. If the sites look like nothing a human would read, that is your answer.
In an incognito window, search what a customer would search. Not your business name, which you will always rank for.
What matters is whether they know the Australian market, not where the desk is. Australian search behaviour, spelling, the weight the map pack carries in trade markets, and rules like AHPRA advertising guidelines are all specific to here. Ask them about those things rather than about their address.
Australians search differently to Americans. An agency using US keyword defaults will target terms nobody here types.
In trade and service markets it matters more than the website. Overseas playbooks often skip it.
Health and legal advertising is regulated here. Content written without that knowledge creates a compliance problem, not just a marketing one.
Not a dealbreaker, but find out when you will get answers. Ask before you sign rather than after.
No invented testimonials anywhere on this site. Where results were not verified, we say so on the page.
Two months of local SEO for an Australian local business, measured year on year.
Read the case study →Crawl errors cleared from 58,614 to 36 in a full technical rebuild.
Read the case study →Position 2 for a commercial term at 3,700 searches a month.
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