# How to Choose an SEO Company: 7 Questions Before You Sign > Published 2026-07-13 ยท Canonical: https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-an-seo-company SEO is hard to buy: you can't see the product and results arrive months later. Here are the 7 questions that separate serious companies from the ones burning your budget, plus the warning signs that should end the conversation. Buying SEO is harder than buying a website. With a website you can see what you get: pages, design, features. With SEO you're buying a promise about the future, and the results arrive months later, long after the contract is signed. That's exactly why the field attracts both genuinely good people and smoke sellers, and from the outside the two can sound identical. The good news: you don't need technical knowledge to tell them apart. You need the right questions and the patience to listen to the answers. We covered [how much SEO costs](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/how-much-seo-costs) in another article; this is the step before the budget: who you give the money to. ## Why SEO is so hard to buy Three things make the choice difficult. One: you can't see the product. SEO work happens in texts, in your site's structure, in signals Google reads, not in a deliverable you can hold in your hand. Two: results come late. A weak company can collect 6 months of retainer before it becomes obvious nothing is happening. Three: the knowledge gap. The seller knows far more than the buyer, and some make a living out of that difference. In [our beginner's guide to SEO](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/seo-guide-for-small-businesses) we explained what SEO is and how it works. You don't need to master it to choose a provider well, but if you read it first, the questions below will make even more sense. ## The 7 questions (and what the answers sound like) Ask all of them, in this order. There are no perfect answers, but there are honest answers and answers that should end the discussion. ### 1. What exactly do you do in the first month? **Good answer:** technical audit, keyword research, competitor analysis, a written plan with priorities. The first month at a serious provider is about diagnosis, not blind action. **Alarm answer:** "We start optimizing right away and publish links." Whoever jumps straight to execution, without looking at your site and your market, applies the same recipe to everyone. Universal recipes don't exist in SEO. ### 2. What does the monthly reporting look like? **Good answer:** a report that tells you three things: what was concretely done, what moved in numbers that matter (positions on your searches, organic traffic, inquiries or bookings coming from it) and what happens next month. Ask to see a real, anonymized report before you sign. **Alarm answer:** reports with nothing but impressions. Impressions grow almost regardless, even when nobody does anything, which is why they're the favorite metric of empty reports. If you can't see the link between their work and your customers, you're paying blind. ### 3. Who writes the content and who approves it? **Good answer:** a person who can be named, a clear documentation process, and approval sitting with you before anything goes live. Content is your business's voice; you have the right to know who's using it. **Alarm answer:** total vagueness ("we have our content team") or unrealistically high volume at a low price. Mass-generated, undocumented texts published without your approval can damage both your rankings and your reputation. ### 4. Where do the links come from? **Good answer:** full transparency: mentions earned through content, real partnerships, sources you can see. A serious provider shows you the link list without being asked twice. **Alarm answer:** "We have our own network of sites," or lots of cheap, fast links. Links bought in bulk are exactly the kind of practice Google penalizes, and the penalty lands on your site, not on the company that produced it. ### 5. What can you NOT promise? Our favorite question, because it's a test of honesty, not competence. **Good answer:** "We can't guarantee rankings. We can guarantee the work, the process, and the transparency." [Google states explicitly](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo) that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and warns just as clearly about anyone claiming a special relationship with the search engine. **Alarm answer:** any ranking guarantee. Whoever guarantees what they don't control either doesn't know what they're doing, or knows exactly what they're doing and is lying. ### 6. When should I see results? **Good answer:** first signs in 3 to 6 months, solid effects in 6 to 12, faster on local searches, slower in crowded fields. People who have actually done SEO give horizons in months and tie them to the competition in your field. **Alarm answer:** "You'll see results in the first week." Something minor can move quickly, but that promise is made to get your signature, not to inform you. ### 7. What happens if we stop? **Good answer:** everything that was built stays yours: the content, the access to Search Console and Analytics, the changes on the site, the link list. The contract has a clear exit with reasonable notice. **Alarm answer:** accounts created on their email, content hosted on their side, exit penalties, or contracts that renew themselves. If leaving hurts, dependency is the business plan. ## Red flags that end the conversation on the spot In short, the signals where you don't negotiate, you walk: - **Guaranteed #1 rankings.** They don't exist. See question 5. - **"We have a special relationship with Google."** Nobody does. Google itself lists this claim among the signs of a scam. - **Suspiciously cheap.** Serious SEO is skilled people's work, month after month. At 100 euros a month you're getting, at best, an automated report. - **The unsolicited email that "found serious problems" on your site.** Good companies don't need spam to find clients. - **A contract with no exit, or accounts that don't belong to you.** See question 7. ## How to compare two offers that sound the same Say you've made it through the questions and you're left with two decent offers. On paper they both say "audit, on-page, content, links, reporting," at different prices. How do you split them? Ask both for the same thing: the concrete plan for the first 3 months, on your site, with named deliverables. Not the general strategy, but which pages get optimized, how many articles get written and on what topics, what gets fixed technically first. The offer that stays vague at this level will be just as vague in month four. Then compare what's NOT included: often, the price difference is a content difference (how many pages, how many articles) or a difference in who actually does the work, an experienced person or an automated process with a human name on the invoice. And one detail that says a lot: who asked you more questions about your business before giving you a price. Good SEO starts from your business, not from a service package; whoever asks nothing is selling everyone the same thing. ## Freelancer, agency, or in-house? The same logic we used when we wrote [how to choose a web design agency](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-web-design-agency) applies here, with SEO's own nuances. **A good freelancer** makes sense for bounded projects: an audit, optimizing a set of pages, one-off consulting. The best price-to-competence ratio on the market, if you're lucky enough to find them, with the risk of depending on a single person. **An agency or studio** makes sense for ongoing collaborations, where you need the technical side, the content, and disciplined reporting all at once. You pay somewhat more for a single point of responsibility and for continuity. **An in-house hire** makes sense only at high volume: many pages, many campaigns, daily work. For most small businesses, a full-time SEO employee costs more than the entire external collaboration, and is hard to evaluate for exactly the reasons in this article. For most small businesses, the practical order is: lay the foundations yourself, get an audit or a small monthly collaboration from a provider vetted with the questions above, and grow the budget only when you see the reporting connect the work to results. ## What a healthy collaboration looks like Once you've chosen, the working relationship tells you quickly whether you chose well. A healthy collaboration has a few constant traits: the access lives on your accounts, the plan is written and prioritized, the reports connect the work to results in language you understand, and when something goes wrong, you hear it from them, not from Google. And maybe the most important sign: they also tell you what NOT to do. A provider who stops you from spending on useless things is a provider thinking long term. That's how we built [our SEO service](https://goodglyph.com/en/services/seo-optimization): audit before the quote, a written plan, reporting on results, zero ranking promises. Not because we're more virtuous, but because it's the only way SEO actually works. ## The GoodGlyph take Choose the provider who talks to you about process, not about rankings. Ask all 7 questions and take seriously not just the content of the answers but their tone: whoever answers "what can't you promise?" concretely and calmly will be just as concrete and calm when your campaign goes through a bad month. If you want a starting point, [write to us](https://goodglyph.com/en/services/seo-optimization): we do the audit first, then talk about the offer, and we'll tell you honestly whether SEO is your priority right now or not. ## Closing SEO remains an investment judged in months, made on trust. Trust isn't requested, it's verified: with good questions, with reports that say something, and with a contract you can exit. The rest is patience. ## FAQ ### How much should an SEO company's services cost? It depends on your field's competition and your goal: roughly 150 to 500 euros per month for local SEO, and from several hundred upward for more competitive projects. We wrote a separate pricing guide with market bands and billing models. ### Is it okay for them to guarantee me the number-1 spot in Google? No. Google states explicitly that nobody can guarantee rankings. A serious company guarantees the process and the transparency, not the position. ### How long should a minimum SEO contract run? Usually 3 to 6 months, because under 3 months the effects are only starting to appear. Watch out for contracts that renew automatically or have no clear exit clause. ### What should I receive monthly from an SEO company? A report saying what was done, what moved in rankings and traffic, what clients or inquiries came from organic, and what happens next month. Impression numbers alone are not reporting. ### Can I do SEO myself, without a company? The foundations, yes: your Google Business Profile, reviews, clear page copy, site speed. The advanced technical side and consistent content take time and experience, and that's where paid help makes sense. ### How do I verify results without knowing SEO? Ask for access to Search Console and Analytics on your own accounts and track three things over time: positions on the searches that matter, organic traffic, and the inquiries coming from it. If all three sit still for more than half a year, ask why. ## Related - Related service: [An SEO budget that makes sense for you](https://goodglyph.com/en/services/optimizare-seo) - [How Much Does SEO Cost? A Pricing Guide for Small Business](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/how-much-seo-costs) - [SEO for Dental Clinics: How Patients Find You (Without Breaking the Rules)](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/seo-for-dental-clinics) - [Local SEO: How Clients in Your City Find You](https://goodglyph.com/en/blog/local-seo)