What Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Agency

A complete, modern buyer’s guide for choosing the right SEO partner

There have never been more SEO agencies, consultants, and SEO tools than there are today. I’ve spoken with many business owners about their experiences with different SEO providers, and what’s become clear is that there are many models of SEO support. Candidly, some of those models no longer deliver sufficient value to compete in modern organic and AI-driven search. Unfortunately, it’s still very easy to invest in a provider that lacks the experience or approach needed to meaningfully move the needle in today’s search landscape.

That said, having options isn’t a bad thing. What matters most is finding an SEO agency whose approach aligns with the business’s needs, expectations, and operating style. For example, Greenlane takes a highly collaborative, iterative, “do-it-with-you” approach — one that continuously adapts based on incoming data. We’ve found this works especially well in a fast-changing search environment. Other companies may prefer a provider that offers more predictable, fixed monthly deliverables — and that can be the right fit for them.

Hiring an SEO agency isn’t about finding someone who “does SEO.” It’s about finding a partner who understands how search, AI systems, and buyers actually decide. And, how well that partner can integrate into your business style and needs.

The questions below are the ones smart buyers ask (often without realizing it) when researching, vetting, and interviewing SEO agencies. If an agency can’t answer these clearly, they’re not ready to earn your trust.

Start With Outcomes, Not Tactics

One of the most common mistakes businesses make when hiring SEO help is starting the conversation too far down the funnel, asking about tactics, tools, or deliverables before clarifying what success actually means.

1. How do you define SEO success?

If an agency defines success primarily in terms of rankings or traffic, that’s an immediate signal that its perspective is narrow. Rankings and traffic can be inputs, but they are not outcomes. Unqualified traffic does not equal revenue.

Strong SEO agencies define success in business terms:

• Revenue influenced by organic search
• Qualified demand or leads
• Conversion efficiency
• Brand visibility and preference in competitive search results

Ask how success is measured, why those metrics matter, and how they tie back to your actual goals.

2. What problem is SEO meant to solve for our business?

SEO should exist to solve a specific constraint. It could be a lack of demand, poor visibility, weak trust in the marketplace, inefficient acquisition costs, or stalled growth in a competitive market.

A good agency will slow the conversation down and diagnose before prescribing. They should be able to explain what they believe is currently limiting your performance and how SEO can help address it. Granted, this would likely be identified during the early stage of your SEO relationship, but if your salesperson isn’t slowing the conversation down, you might be talking to a tactics-only SEO firm.

If the answer jumps straight to “we’ll optimize pages” or “we’ll build content,” you’re not hearing strategic thinking. In today’s world of SEO optimization, tactics alone don’t move the needle anymore.

3. How does SEO connect to revenue and growth?

SEO does not live in a vacuum, especially these days. A good organic strategy supports revenue by shaping demand, capturing intent, and reinforcing trust at key decision points.

Ask how SEO interacts with sales, paid media, brand, and conversion optimization. Agencies that treat SEO as an isolated channel often struggle to demonstrate a holistic impact.

Understand How The SEO Agency Thinks About Modern Search

Organic search today is no longer just a list of blue links. It’s an ecosystem of AI summaries, zero-click answers, recommendation systems, and brand interpretation. Google remains the largest source of organic traffic, but it faces significant competition. People are searching through YouTube, Amazon, social media, and LLMs far more than ever before. The way an agency understands this landscape will shape everything they do.

4. How do search engines and AI systems understand our brand today?

This question reveals whether an agency is operating in the present or the past. Strong answers reference:

• Entity understanding (who you are, what you do, how you relate to competitors)
• Topical authority and clarity
• How content, structure, and signals reinforce brand meaning

Weak answers focus exclusively on keywords and pages.

5. How do you approach AI-driven search and zero-click results?

AI Overviews, featured answers, and conversational search aren’t edge cases anymore — they’re becoming the default experience.

Ask how the agency thinks about:

• Being cited or referenced
• Being summarized accurately
• Being recommended, not just ranked

If AI search is treated as a buzzword or an afterthought, the strategy (and agency) is already behind. Old-school SEO is easier to sell to a prospective client, but it will limit long-term growth.

6. How do you adapt as search behavior changes?

Every SEO agency will tell you they “stay up to date.” On its own, that statement means very little. Reading industry blogs or reacting to algorithm updates isn’t a strategy — it’s table stakes.

What actually matters is how an agency adapts when reality changes. Strong agencies can explain their adaptation process in concrete terms, including:

• How quickly assumptions are tested
  What signals they monitor, how early they look for them, and how fast they validate (or invalidate) an approach once work is live.
• How strategy changes when data contradicts expectations
  Whether they’re willing to revise a plan when results don’t match projections—or whether they push forward simply to “stay the course.”
• How risk is managed during major updates or shifts in behavior
  How they avoid overcorrecting, protect what’s already working, and make measured adjustments instead of reactive swings.

Adaptation in SEO isn’t about chasing every update. It’s about having a disciplined feedback loop that turns new information into better decisions.

When evaluating an agency, look for a repeatable process they can clearly explain—not vague assurances that they’re “on top of things.”

Evaluate Strategy and Prioritization

SEO success is not about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things in the right order.

7. What does your SEO audit actually diagnose?

Many SEO audits are automated exports with commentary layered on top. They list issues but fail to explain the impact.

A real audit:

• Explains cause and effect
• Connects issues to outcomes
• Identifies constraints, not just errors

Ask to see a real audit example and listen for explanation, not just volume.

8. How do you decide what gets prioritized?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask, because SEO success is rarely about doing more — it’s about doing the right things in the right order.

Strong agencies have a clear prioritization framework. They can explain how they weigh:

• Impact vs. effort
  Which initiatives are most likely to drive meaningful business results relative to the time and resources required.
• Risk vs. reward
  Whether a change could create unintended consequences, and how upside is balanced against potential downside.
• Dependencies between fixes
  What needs to happen first for other work to be effective (for example, technical clarity before content expansion).

Just as important, they can explain why certain work is intentionally delayed or deprioritized. SEO involves tradeoffs, and experienced agencies are comfortable making them.

If an agency treats everything as “high priority,” it’s a sign they lack a decision-making framework — and without one, effort gets spread thin, progress slows, and results stall.

Prioritization isn’t a nice-to-have in SEO. It’s the difference between focused momentum and expensive busywork.

9. What would you intentionally not recommend for us?

This question forces strategic clarity.

Agencies that can’t articulate what isn’t worth doing often default to busywork. Agencies that can say “no” are usually the ones protecting your budget.

Dig Into Execution Without Getting Lost in Tactics

Execution absolutely matters. Strategy without follow-through is just theory. But in SEO, execution only creates value when it’s clearly in service of a broader strategy.

One of the easiest ways SEO efforts go off the rails is when conversations become overly focused on tasks — pages published, issues fixed, links built — without revisiting why those actions exist in the first place. Activity increases, but outcomes don’t.

Strong agencies can talk about execution in a way that stays anchored to intent:

• What problem a specific task is meant to solve
• How does that task support a defined objective
• How success will be evaluated once the work is live

They don’t hide behind checklists or volume-based deliverables. Instead, they treat execution as a means to validate strategy, learn from results, and refine next steps.

When evaluating an SEO agency, the goal isn’t to find the one that promises the most work — it’s to find the one that can explain why each piece of work matters, how it fits into the larger plan, and when it should change.

10. How do you approach content?

Content should exist to win conversions, not to fill a calendar. Content for content’s sake is no longer king. Publishing volume alone is not a strategy. Ask how content is:

• Mapped to intent
• Differentiated from competitors
• Aligned to funnel stages

11. How does SEO integrate with other channels?

SEO is most effective when it doesn’t operate in isolation. It should amplify and be informed by insights from other channels, not compete with them for attention or budget.

Strong agencies can clearly explain how SEO connects with:

• Paid search, using query performance, conversion data, and messaging tests to inform organic strategy
• Analytics and CRO, identifying where organic traffic underperforms and what changes actually improve outcomes
• Sales and customer teams, incorporating real-world objections, language, and intent into content and positioning

This kind of integration creates feedback loops: paid search reveals demand, SEO scales what works, analytics measure impact, and sales validate whether the traffic is meaningful.

Agencies that treat SEO as a standalone function often miss these connections, which limits results. Look for partners who prioritize shared data, cross-channel learning, and alignment across teams, because that’s where SEO stops being a cost center and starts becoming a growth lever.

12. What role do SEO tools play in your process?

SEO tools are valuable, but they are inputs, not answers. The difference between effective SEO and expensive busywork often comes down to how tools are used and what happens after the data is pulled.

Strong agencies can explain:

• Which tools they use and why, including what each tool is designed to reveal and where its limitations are
• How insights are interpreted, not just reported — what the data means in the context of your business and market
• Where human judgment enters the process, especially when prioritizing, weighing tradeoffs, or deciding when not to act

Tool-first pitches usually emphasize dashboards, scores, and automation, but struggle to explain decision-making. Experienced agencies use tools to inform thinking, validate hypotheses, and surface opportunities — not to replace strategy.

When evaluating an SEO agency, listen for how clearly they can translate tool output into actions that actually move the business forward.

Set Expectations Early

Misaligned expectations are the root of most failed SEO engagements.

13. What does progress look like before rankings improve?

Modern SEO often shows progress in subtle ways first:

• Improved coverage and crawl behavior
• Better alignment with intent
• Early conversion improvements
• Increased brand demand

If rankings are the only signal discussed, expect frustration.

14. What should we expect in the first 90 days?

The first 90 days of an SEO engagement are rarely about dramatic wins. They’re about learning, foundation-building, and setting the conditions for future growth.

Strong agencies set clear expectations around what happens early:

• How they assess what’s already working (and what isn’t)
• What foundational issues must be addressed before growth is possible
• Which early indicators suggest the strategy is on the right track

They are also honest about constraints. SEO is a long-term investment, and early performance is heavily influenced by what already exists on your site, your market’s competitiveness, and your competitors’ current positions.

Be skeptical of any agency promising quick wins in the first few months. In reality, early SEO performance is constrained by what you already have on the site and how dominant your competitors are. Credible partners focus on building leverage through clarity, alignment, and momentum so results compound over time rather than spike briefly and then stall.

Watch for Red Flags

Be cautious if an agency:

• Guarantees rankings
• Avoids discussing tradeoffs or risk
• Focuses on deliverables instead of outcomes
• Can’t explain their reasoning clearly
• Treats AI search as optional

These are often signals of outdated or overly tactical models.

The Question Behind All the Questions

You’re not hiring an SEO agency to “do SEO.” You’re hiring a decision-making partner in an increasingly complex and opaque search environment.

The right agency helps you:

• Understand how search actually works today
• Prioritize what matters most
• Adapt as conditions change
• Build durable, defensible visibility

The wrong agency will keep you busy while your competitors pull ahead.

Asking the right questions upfront doesn’t just protect your budget; it reveals whether an agency is capable of helping you compete now and in the future.

If you’re searching for a new SEO partner, we’d love to chat through these questions with you. Contact us today.