Choosing an agency
What an SEO agency does, month by month
Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor
First published Updated 11 min read
Before you sign
What worries people before they hire an SEO agency
People hesitating over an SEO proposal want to know what the agency does for the money and what they’ll get in return. Most proposals avoid saying.
- A monthly fee with no list of what you get for it.
- You get a number and a paragraph about strategy, and nothing about what will exist at the end of month one. Ask: what will have changed on the website by a named date? The answer tells you most of what you need to know.
- A proposal that lists activities, with no plan.
- Keyword research, on-page optimisation, content creation, link building, monthly reporting. Every proposal uses these words. They describe types of effort, not decisions about your business. A plan says what’s wrong now, what gets done first and why.
- Nobody will say what success looks like, or when you’d know.
- Ask what should be different in three months and the answer comes wrapped in warnings that search takes time. Some caution is fair: nobody can promise a position or a volume. But refusing to name any visible change by any date sets up an arrangement that can never fail.
- Reports that are long and colourful and answer nothing you asked.
- Forty pages of charts arrive each month. Traffic is up, impressions are up, a line climbs. You still can’t tell whether the money brings in customers, what was done or what comes next.
The work itself
The work, in the order it usually happens
The balance shifts as the months go on. The order rarely does. A supplier who starts at step four is guessing.
Find out why you’re not being found
Before anything gets made, someone has to find what’s wrong: pages that can’t be indexed, a structure that splits strength across near-identical addresses, content aimed at terms buyers don’t use, or a brand nobody links to. The diagnosis shapes everything after it, and it’s the step most often skipped in the rush to publish.
You get: A written diagnosis with faults ranked by what they cost you
Fix what stops pages being crawled, indexed and loaded
Broken canonical tags, accidental blocks, redirect chains, duplicate addresses, slow loading on mobile, and templates that bury the content. Nobody sees this work, yet it’s often the most valuable month. Until it’s done, nothing else you build can perform.
You get: A log of technical changes made, with before-and-after evidence
Decide what the business should be found for
Skip the highest-volume terms. Go after the ones that bring in profitable customers you can serve. That means knowing your margins and best accounts, so the good version of this step uses your sales conversations as well as a research tool.
You get: A ranked list of searches, chosen for commercial value over search volume
Build or rewrite the pages that answer those searches
Published pages, not a calendar of plans. Each one has to beat what already ranks for its search. That means more useful, more specific and better backed up. Matching the current top result gives Google no reason to change anything.
You get: Published pages, each with a target search and a reason it should win
Earn the links and mentions that let those pages compete
Coverage, mentions and links from sites with their own reputation, earned by being worth referencing. This is the slowest and most expensive part. It’s also where the gap between a serious supplier and a cheap one shows most.
You get: A record of earned coverage with the reason each was obtained
Measure, then change the plan
Look at what happened, decide what it means and adjust. This step separates a programme from a subscription. If the plan in month eight is the same as in month two, nobody has been reading the results.
You get: A short monthly note on what changed, what it means and what happens next
The alternatives
Agency, freelancer or in-house hire: what each gives you
An agency
Several skills on one account, such as technical, writing, outreach and measurement, without hiring four people. Cover when someone is away, and lessons from working on many sites at once. You pay a margin for that, and the most senior person rarely does the day-to-day work.
A freelancer
The lowest hourly cost for real expertise, and often the sharpest single opinion you can get. The limits are time and range. One person can’t be excellent at technical work, writing, outreach and reporting all at once. And when they go on holiday, everything stops.
An in-house hire
Knowledge of your business nobody outside can match. They know the product, the sales team and why last year went the way it did. They’re slower to get going, harder to replace, and usually strong in one skill. It works once there’s enough steady work for a full-time role.
Reporting
What belongs in a monthly SEO report, and what’s padding
A report exists to help you decide whether to keep paying. Judged that way, much of what arrives is decoration.
The test: if you finish reading and still can’t say what was done, whether it worked or what happens next, the report was written to justify an invoice.
- What went live this month, in plain sentences, with links to the pages that changed.
- Enquiries, calls or bookings from organic search. These are business results, which session counts aren’t.
- Movement on the searches you agreed to focus on, including the ones that went backwards.
- What was learnt that changed the plan, and what the plan is now.
- Anything blocked, who needs to unblock it, and what the delay is costing.
- Search Console figures in plain terms: clicks and searches, with no impressions used to suggest progress.
- A short note on competitors who moved and what they did, where it matters.
- Next month’s plan in three or four concrete items, included without you having to ask.
The money question
When SEO is worth it as a first investment, and when it isn’t
Read the right-hand column first. If two or more rows describe your business, spend the money elsewhere for now.
| Dimension | When organic search usually pays | When something else should come first |
|---|---|---|
| Margin per customer | Enough margin that one extra customer a month covers a good share of the fee. | Thin margins on small orders, where the sums never work at any volume your market could produce. |
| How people find you today | People already search for what you sell, and find someone else. | Nobody searches yet because the category is new. Demand has to be created first. Search only captures it. |
| What the site does with a visitor | The website converts well enough that more of the right visitors helps. | The website doesn’t convert. Sending more people to it makes the loss bigger. |
| The sales process behind it | Enquiries get answered quickly and followed up by someone responsible. | Enquiries wait days for a reply. Fixing that costs nothing and works this week. |
| Urgency | You can fund two or three quarters before the work has to pay its way. | You need revenue this quarter. Paid ads can do that. Organic search can’t. |
| Who ranks now | Your competitors are average at this and there’s room to win ground. | National publishers, directories and marketplaces hold every spot, backed by ten years of built-up authority. |
| Budget | Enough to fund one programme properly for a year. | Barely enough for one, and most of it already tied up in something you can’t stop. |
| How long you’ll own the business | You expect to be running it in three years and to benefit as results build. | A sale, closure or change of direction is planned within eighteen months, so the payback comes after you’ve gone. |
Why order matters
SEO multiplies what your business already does
This is why order matters. Multiply something that doesn’t work and you get a bigger version of the same problem, at a higher cost. So the first conversation should be a diagnosis.
- Visibility earned
- Being found for the searches people make when they’re ready to buy. This is the part an agency works on directly.
- What the site does next
- Whether a visitor can tell you serve them, and whether getting in touch is quicker than their patience runs out.
- The process behind it
- Whether an enquiry gets answered, followed up and won. SEO multiplies this. It can’t replace it.
The uncomfortable part
For some businesses, SEO shouldn’t come first
For many businesses, the best first marketing spend isn’t search at all. It’s replying to enquiries faster, fixing the page where people drop off at the form, or paying for ads while organic work warms up.
That isn’t an argument against SEO. It’s about order: SEO multiplies whatever your business already does with a visitor.
The most useful thing an agency can do in a first conversation is work out which situation you’re in. If you turn too few enquiries into customers, that’s where the next pound should go. If your website loses people at one step, fixing it lifts the return on every channel you run.
When SEO is the right answer, agree at the start what should be visibly different at three months and at six, and review against it. Nobody can promise a position or a volume, and anyone who does is telling you something about themselves. Anyone can commit to what will have been built, tested and learnt by a given date.
If you decide to buy SEO
Where each part of the work above is covered in more detail, and what it costs.
The work, by part
Questions
Questions from first-time SEO buyers
What does an SEO agency do each month?
Four things, in changing amounts. It fixes whatever stops pages being found and loaded, decides what the business should be found for, builds or rewrites the pages that answer those searches, and earns the links and mentions that let those pages compete. Measurement runs under all four and shapes next month’s plan.
Early months lean towards diagnosis and technical fixes, later months towards content and links. A proposal promising the same tasks every month for twelve months hasn’t been thought through.
How long before I see anything?
Usually something within eight to twelve weeks, but it won’t be revenue. It’ll be pages getting indexed, the site showing up for searches it didn’t appear for before, and technical faults getting fixed.
Sales take longer. They depend on where you start, how competitive your market is and how fast changes can go live on your website. If nobody can publish a change for six weeks, the work moves at that pace whatever the plan says.
How do I know whether it is working?
Watch the early signs before the late ones. Look for new searches the site appears for, the click-through rate on impressions you already get, pages moving from unindexed to indexed, and the quality of the enquiries coming in. The number of sessions matters less.
Then hold the agency to a stated expectation. At the start, ask what should be different by month three and month six, and get a specific answer in writing. That gives you something to check instead of a feeling to argue about.
Is SEO worth it for a small business?
It depends on three numbers. What you make from a customer, how many more customers you could realistically win, and how long you can fund the work before it has to pay for itself. If one extra customer a month would cover a good part of the fee, the sums usually work.
If you make little per customer and few people search for what you sell, the sums often don’t work at any level of effort. Work it out on paper before you sign. A good agency will do the sum with you, even when the answer goes against them.
What should be in the monthly report?
What went live, in plain sentences, with links to the pages that changed. Movement on the searches you agreed to focus on, including the ones that went backwards. Enquiries or calls from organic search. What was learnt that changed the plan, and what the plan is now.
Padding looks like impressions charted without clicks, a tool export nobody reads, screenshots of rankings for terms nobody searches, and a list of hours spent. If the report doesn’t tell you what happens next, it was written to justify an invoice.
What does Google say about hiring an SEO?
Google has a page called "Do you need an SEO?". It lists what an SEO can properly offer, from reviewing your site’s content and structure and giving technical advice to content development, keyword research and, more recently, optimising for generative AI. It also warns that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. It says to beware of anyone who claims to, or who claims a special relationship with Google.
Its suggested questions for a possible supplier are worth borrowing. Do they follow Google Search Essentials? What results do they expect, and by when? Will they share every change they make to your site? A supplier who hesitates on the last one is showing you how the reporting will go.
When should I spend the money on something else instead?
When your website doesn’t convert the visitors it already gets, when enquiries go unanswered for days, when you need revenue this quarter, or when nobody searches for what you sell because the category is new.
In the first two cases the fix is faster and cheaper than any SEO programme, and it lifts the return on every other channel too. In the last two, paying for ads gets you in front of buyers faster than organic work can.
References
Sources for what does an SEO agency do
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Start here
Not sure SEO is the right spend yet?
Tell us what you sell, what a customer is worth and where enquiries come from today. We’ll help you work out whether search should come first for you, or whether something else should.
Rather check it yourself? Try our free SEO tools