Choosing an agency · 10 min read
The questions that separate a good SEO agency from a good pitch
Fifteen questions worth asking in a pitch, each with the shape of a strong answer and the shape of a weak one. You do not need to know SEO to use them. You need to know what a specific answer sounds like.
Written by Zubair Afzal, FounderUpdated
Any agency can tell you what it does. The question that separates them is what they would refuse to do for you, and whether they can explain why.
The tables below group fifteen questions by what each one is testing. Every question is paired with the shape of a strong answer and the shape of a weak one, so you can score the room without knowing SEO yourself.
You are not looking for the right answer. You are looking for a specific answer: one that could only have been given about your business, by someone who looked at it first.
Group one
Questions about the work itself
These test whether anyone has genuinely examined your site, or whether you are being sold the standard package with your logo on it.
| Dimension | A strong answer sounds like | A weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| What would you do in the first 90 days? | A sequence with reasons: what gets diagnosed first, what gets fixed first, and why that order for this site specifically. | A generic onboarding timeline that would be identical for any client, with "keyword research" occupying month one. |
| What is the main reason we are not ranking now? | A specific, testable hypothesis: your four service pages target the same query and split each other, so none of them wins. | You need more content and more links. Offered before anyone has opened your site. |
| What would you not do for us? | A real exclusion with a reason: I would not build location pages yet, because your core service pages are not earning and new ones would dilute them. | Nothing is ruled out. Every service on their price list happens to be something you need. |
| Who writes the content, and who checks it is accurate? | Named writers, a stated method for getting knowledge out of your team, and a review step before anything publishes. | We have writers. No process for learning your business, no accuracy review, and no sample you are allowed to read. |
| How do you approach links? | A description of what genuinely earns a link in your market, what they will not do, and why the distinction matters. | A fixed number of links a month at a fixed price, with the sources unnamed and the method described as proprietary. |
Group two
Questions about measurement and reporting
These decide whether you will be able to tell, twelve months from now, whether the money did anything.
| Dimension | A strong answer sounds like | A weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| What will you report on, and what will you leave out? | A short list tied to your commercial outcome, with an explicit statement of the vanity metrics they exclude and why. | Everything the tools export. A long deck in which nothing is prioritised and therefore nothing can be wrong. |
| Which conversions count, and how are they defined? | Named actions with definitions, a note on which ones are unreliable, and who validates the tracking before the baseline is set. | Leads. No definition, no deduplication, and no distinction between a form fill and a booked appointment. |
| What is our baseline, and when will it be recorded? | A commitment to record a defined baseline before work starts, over a stated window, with seasonality noted against it. | A vague comparison to how things were before we started, never written down, quietly moving over time. |
| Will I have direct access to the raw data? | Yes, in properties you own, with administrator rights that survive the end of the contract. | Access through their dashboard or their agency account, with your view dependent on the relationship continuing. |
| What does a bad month look like in your reporting? | A concrete description of how a decline would surface, when they would raise it, and what they would change in response. | A pause. Or an assurance that months are not really good or bad, because search is a long game. |
Group three
Questions about people, contract and exit
The least interesting questions in the meeting, and the ones that cost the most when skipped.
| Dimension | A strong answer sounds like | A weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Who in this meeting will still be on the account in six months? | A named practitioner, their role, roughly how many hours a week you get, and what happens if they leave. | You will have a dedicated account manager. No name, no practitioner, no hours. |
| What is subcontracted, and to whom? | A straight list — writing, development, outreach, design — with who does each part and how it is checked. | Everything is in-house, stated quickly, by a firm too small for that to be plausible. |
| What is the notice period, and what triggers early exit? | A stated term and notice, a non-delivery clause you could actually invoke, and an example of when it has applied. | Twelve months, automatic renewal, notice measured in months, and no definition of what would count as failure. |
| Who owns the accounts, content and links at the end? | You do, all of it, listed in the contract, with a handover process described before you thought to ask for one. | We can talk about that at the time. Or assets that sit in agency-owned accounts by default. |
| How many other accounts does our lead carry? | An actual number, and an honest comment on whether that sits at the top of their range. | Deflection to overall team size, or a claim that capacity is never a constraint for them. |
Afterwards
Six questions for their references, not for them
Ask for two references: one current client and one that has finished. The second call is the more useful of the two, and the willingness to offer one is itself a signal.
Keep the questions open. You are listening for texture rather than for a score out of ten.
- What did the first three months actually feel like, day to day?
- How quickly do they respond when something breaks on a Friday afternoon?
- What did they get wrong, and how did they handle it once it was obvious?
- Who did you deal with in practice, and was it the person who pitched?
- Did the reporting ever tell you something you did not want to hear?
- Knowing what you know now, would you sign the same term again?
Technique
How to run the conversation so the answers are worth having
Ask the same question twice, half an hour apart, in different words. A considered position survives rephrasing and comes back slightly differently each time. A rehearsed line returns verbatim, which tells you it was written before anyone looked at your site.
Invite disagreement early. Say something about your own market that is nearly right and see whether anyone corrects you. People who are selling will agree with you. Practitioners find it very hard not to correct a factual error in their own field.
Notice what they ask you. The strongest signal in any pitch is the quality of the questions coming the other way: your margins, your sales process, whether anyone answers the phone at nine on a Monday, what happens to a lead once it arrives. An agency that never asks how you make money is preparing to sell you traffic.
Write your notes in the room, and mark each answer as specific or generic before you leave the building. A week later every meeting feels equally good, and the only durable record is what you wrote down while it was still uncomfortable.
Questions about the questions
Running a pitch process well
How many agencies should I put through this?
Two or three. Beyond that the meetings blur, the notes stop being comparable, and you start choosing on recency rather than on substance.
A longer list is usually a sign that the brief has not been written yet. Tighten the brief and the shortlist shortens by itself.
Should I send the questions in advance?
Send the brief in advance and keep the questions for the room. You want to see how someone thinks in real time, not read a document their marketing team assembled overnight.
The exception is anything factual: subcontracting, account ownership, notice periods. Ask for those in writing so the answer is on the record.
What if I do not understand the answer well enough to judge it?
Ask them to explain it again for someone in your business who is not in marketing. A practitioner can do that without losing the substance. A weak answer either collapses into slogans or stays deliberately technical.
You are not assessing the SEO. You are assessing whether the person can reason about your specific situation.
What if an agency refuses to answer something?
It depends what. Declining to name another client is normal and often contractual. Declining to say who does the work, what is subcontracted, or who owns the accounts at the end is not.
Note the refusal and ask why. The reason is usually more informative than the answer would have been.
If I only ask one question, which one should it be?
What would you not do for us, and why? It cannot be answered well without having looked at your business, and it cannot be answered at all by an agency selling its whole menu.
A close second is asking what they believe the main reason for your current position is. It forces a hypothesis you can hold them to later.
Bring the whole list to a call with us
We would rather answer fifteen hard questions than present a deck. Book a strategy call, ask every one of them, and judge how specific the answers are before anything gets signed.
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