Hiring an SEO expert is one of those jobs that most business owners put off. Not because they don’t want more customers, but because the whole subject feels overly technical and a bit murky. You get three quotes, they all say different things, and none of them answers the only question you actually have: can you help me, and how will I know?
I’ve worked in SEO and web design for over 20 years, and I’ve lost count of how many people have come to me after a bad experience with a previous provider. Almost every time, the warning signs were there at the start. They just didn’t know what to look for.
So this post is my attempt to fix that. I’m going to walk you through the green lights that tell you someone knows what they’re doing, the red flags that should make you pause, and nine plain-English questions you can ask any SEO consultant or agency before you commit. By the end, you should feel confident enough to make a decision, even if you never learn what a canonical tag is.
Why hiring an SEO expert feels so confusing
Part of the problem is that SEO has no professional body, no licence and no exam. Anyone can put “SEO expert” on their LinkedIn profile, and plenty of people do after a couple of months of watching YouTube videos.
The other part is that results take time. If you hire a plumber and the tap still drips, you know within the hour. If you hire someone for SEO, it can be three to six months before you see meaningful movement, which means you’re being asked to trust somebody on the strength of a conversation and a proposal.
That’s why the questions you ask up front matter so much. You’re not trying to become an expert yourself. You’re trying to find out whether the person in front of you is one.
A quick analogy I use with clients: hiring an SEO expert is a bit like hiring a personal trainer. A good one asks about your goals, your history and your diet before they touch a dumbbell. A bad one sells you a 12-week transformation on the spot and blames you when it doesn’t happen.
Green lights: what a good SEO expert looks like
Let’s start with the positives. These are the things I’d want to see if I were the one hiring an SEO expert for my own business.
Experience you can check
It’s all too easy for somebody to call themselves an SEO expert when they’ve only been doing it since last spring. Ask how long they’ve been working in SEO specifically, not “digital marketing” in general. Ask what kinds of businesses they’ve worked with. Ask whether they’ve handled a site like yours before, whether that’s a local trades business, a professional services firm or an online shop.
Experience doesn’t guarantee results, but it does mean they’ve seen things go wrong before and know how to fix them. Google changes its algorithm constantly, and someone who lived through the last few major updates will have a far calmer, more realistic view of what works.
Testimonials and reviews that read like real people
This one speaks for itself. If the person or agency you’re considering has glowing reviews from named businesses, you can feel more confident about working with them. Look on Google, Trustpilot and Facebook rather than just the testimonials page on their own site.
Two extra things to check. First, are the reviews specific? “Great service, very professional” tells you nothing. “Our enquiries doubled within six months and Justin explained everything in plain English” tells you a lot. Second, see how they respond to reviews, especially any critical ones. A calm, helpful reply to a negative review is one of the best character references you’ll find.
Knowledge they can explain without jargon
A true SEO expert has a much better grasp of what needs to happen to get you more traffic, and crucially, they can explain it in a way you understand. If someone hides behind acronyms and technical terms, it’s often because they don’t fully understand the subject themselves, or because they’d rather you didn’t ask too many questions.
You should come away from a first conversation knowing roughly what’s holding your site back and what the first few months of work would involve. If you come away more confused than when you started, that’s a bad sign.
Real interest in your business
Good SEO is never a single task. It’s a mix of technical fixes, content, local visibility, links and measurement, and all of it depends on who you’re trying to reach and what you want them to do. An experienced consultant knows this, so they’ll ask you a lot of questions before they quote.
Expect to be asked about your best customers, your margins, which services you actually want more of, what area you serve and who your competitors are. Some of these questions might not seem relevant at first. That’s fine. It’s a very good sign. Someone who quotes without asking is either guessing or selling a package.
Red flags when hiring an SEO expert
Now the warning signs. None of these on their own means someone is a cowboy, but if you spot two or three together while hiring an SEO expert, walk away.
Rock-bottom prices
When it comes to SEO, you truly get what you pay for. There’s a floor below which the work simply can’t be done properly, because SEO takes real human hours: researching keywords, writing content, fixing technical problems, building relationships for links and reporting back to you.
If someone offers “full SEO” for £99 a month, ask yourself what you’re actually getting for that. Usually it’s automated software, a monthly report nobody reads and, in the worst cases, spammy links that can get your site penalised. Cheap SEO often ends up being the most expensive option once you’ve paid someone else to clean it up.
Guaranteed rankings and empty promises
If an SEO expert guarantees you’ll be on page one of Google in 30 days, think very carefully about whether you want to work with them. Nobody controls Google’s results. Not me, not them, not the biggest agency in London.
Google itself warns against this. Its own guidance on choosing an SEO provider says to be wary of anyone who claims to guarantee rankings or a “special relationship” with Google. You can read that advice in Google’s guide to hiring an SEO. Good SEO takes time, and an honest consultant will tell you that up front rather than promising the moon to win the contract.
Hiding their process
If they keep most of their work behind a curtain and only give you the bare minimum, it’s unlikely your project is getting the care and time it deserves. You don’t need to see every keyword spreadsheet, but you should be able to ask “what did you do this month?” and get a clear answer.
Some providers describe their methods as “proprietary” or “secret”. In my experience, that usually means one of two things: the methods are the same as everyone else’s, or they’re the kind of methods that break Google’s guidelines. Neither is something you want to pay for.
Poor communication
Do you feel reassured when you talk to them, or are you expected to hand over money on trust alone? How do they respond to pressing questions or negative feedback? Do they take three days to reply to a simple email?
Communication during the sales process is as good as it’s ever going to get. If they’re slow, vague or defensive before you’ve paid a penny, imagine what it will be like six months in when you want to know why traffic dropped. If they never give a straight answer or disappear at crucial moments, avoid them.
9 questions to ask an SEO agency or consultant
Here’s the practical part. These are the questions to ask an SEO agency, freelancer or consultant before you sign anything. Whether you’re hiring an SEO expert for the first time or replacing one who let you down, they work just as well. For each one, I’ve included what a good answer sounds like and what should worry you.
1. How long have you been doing SEO, and for what kinds of businesses?
A good answer: A specific number of years, some named clients or industries, and ideally an example that’s similar to your business. Bonus points if they talk about what they learned from a project that didn’t go to plan.
A worrying answer: Vague talk about “digital marketing experience” with no dates or examples, or a list of impressive-sounding logos they can’t tell you anything about.
2. Can I speak to a current or recent client?
A good answer: “Yes, of course.” Any established consultant should have at least one client happy to take a five-minute call. Failing that, they should point you to reviews on an independent platform.
A worrying answer: Excuses about confidentiality, or an offer to send you written testimonials instead. Written quotes on their own website are the easiest thing in the world to make up.
3. What would you do in the first three months?
A good answer: A plain-language outline that’s clearly based on your site. Typically this means a technical audit, keyword research, fixing the biggest problems first, then a content and links plan. They should explain why they’d start where they’d start.
A worrying answer: A generic package with a fixed list of deliverables that would be identical for a dentist, a plumber and a solicitor. That tells you nobody has looked at your site.
4. How will you report to me, and how often?
A good answer: Monthly reporting at a minimum, with a written summary in English rather than just a dashboard export. They should tell you which numbers matter (rankings for the keywords that bring customers, organic traffic, enquiries) and which are vanity metrics.
A worrying answer: “You’ll get a report from the software.” Automated reports have their place, but if nobody is interpreting them for you, you’re paying for a subscription rather than a service.
5. Do you follow Google’s guidelines?
A good answer: A clear yes, followed by a sensible explanation of what that means in practice: earning links rather than buying them in bulk, writing content for people rather than robots, and not trying to trick the search engine. Google publishes its expectations in the Search Essentials, and an honest consultant should be comfortable being held to them.
A worrying answer: Any hesitation, or phrases like “we know a few tricks” or “everyone does it”. Shortcuts that work today tend to get punished in the next algorithm update, and it’s your website that takes the hit.
6. What tools do you use?
A good answer: Named tools, and a reason for each. I use SE Ranking for rank tracking and audits, Google Search Console for the data Google itself provides, and Keywords Everywhere for quick research. The specific tools matter less than the fact that they have a proper toolkit and can tell you what each one is for.
A worrying answer: “It’s all in-house” or “we have our own system”. Occasionally that’s true. Usually it’s a way of avoiding the question.
7. Who actually does the work?
A good answer: A named person or small team, and an honest explanation of what’s done in-house and what’s outsourced. Outsourcing some content writing or technical work is normal. Hiding it isn’t.
A worrying answer: A confident salesperson who can’t tell you who’ll be looking after your account once you’ve signed.
8. What happens if I want to leave?
A good answer: A short notice period, and confirmation that you keep everything: your website, your Google accounts, your content and any tools or logins set up on your behalf.
A worrying answer: A 12-month lock-in, or any suggestion that the work “belongs” to them. Some providers build your content on their own systems so you lose it all if you leave. That’s not a partnership, it’s a hostage situation.
9. What results should I realistically expect, and when?
A good answer: Honest ranges rather than promises. Something like: “Technical fixes and quick wins in the first couple of months, meaningful ranking improvements from month three onwards, and we’ll review the strategy every quarter based on what the data tells us.”
A worrying answer: A guarantee. Any guarantee. See the red flags section above.
SEO red flags at a glance
If you want the short version to keep next to you during a sales call, here are the SEO red flags I’d never ignore:
- Guaranteed page-one rankings, or any promise with a fixed deadline
- Prices so low that the work can’t possibly be done by a human
- Refusing to explain their process, or calling it “proprietary”
- No independent reviews, or reviews with no detail in them
- Quoting before they’ve asked you anything about your business
- Long contracts with no clear exit
- Slow, vague or defensive replies to simple questions
- Claims of a special relationship with Google (there’s no such thing)
And the green lights, for balance:
- Years of experience they can talk about in detail
- Specific, independent reviews they respond to gracefully
- Plain-English explanations you actually understand
- Lots of questions about your customers and goals before any quote
- Clear monthly reporting with a human summary
- Named tools, named people, and a fair contract
A note on price
Because I’ve told you to avoid cheap SEO, it’s only fair to say something about what reasonable looks like when you’re hiring an SEO expert in the UK. For a UK small business, ongoing SEO from an experienced consultant usually sits somewhere in the hundreds of pounds a month rather than the tens, with larger campaigns going well beyond that. The exact figure depends on how competitive your market is and how much needs fixing.
The useful question isn’t “what does it cost?” but “what would one extra customer a month be worth to me?” If you’re a conveyancing solicitor or a commercial cleaning company, one new client can pay for a year of SEO. If the numbers don’t stack up for your business, a good consultant will tell you that too, and might suggest something else entirely.
What to do next
Hiring an SEO expert doesn’t have to be a leap of faith. Ask the nine questions above, watch for the red flags, and trust your instincts about how the conversation feels. If someone is patient, clear and interested in your business at the quoting stage, that’s usually how they’ll be for the rest of the relationship.
Want more of the right people finding you? Have a look at our SEO and marketing services, or book a call and we can talk it through. I’ll happily answer all nine questions myself.
