How do you vet an SEO provider?
You vet an SEO provider by asking questions whose answers you can verify. Four things matter most: what specific work will be delivered, what it costs per deliverable, what the plan is if results are slow to appear, and whether you can see a real example of past output. Clear, specific answers to those four tell you more than any pitch, case study or dashboard.
SEO is genuinely hard to judge from the outside. Much of the work is invisible to the buyer, results take months to show, and outcomes are shaped by factors no provider fully controls. That is not a reason for suspicion — it is a reason to anchor your evaluation on things you can actually check.
The twelve questions below are the ones a thorough, transparent provider will be comfortable answering. They work best as a shared checklist that helps both sides get specific — not as an interrogation.
The twelve questions
1. What exactly will you deliver in the first 30 days?
A strong answer: A specific list — a technical crawl and prioritised issue list, a keyword map, on-page changes to a set number of pages, a competitor gap analysis.
A weaker answer: "We'll start with research and strategy." This can be perfectly legitimate, but it helps to know what tangible artifact you'll have at the end of the first month. A provider doing hands-on work can usually name one.
2. What does each deliverable cost on its own?
A strong answer: A number per item.
A weaker answer: "It's all part of the monthly retainer." A retainer that can be broken into priced components is simply easier to evaluate and compare. If it can't be itemised, it's fair to ask for the breakdown — it tends to help both sides plan.
3. Can I see a real audit or report you've produced?
A strong answer: Yes — possibly redacted, possibly a sample built on a public site.
A weaker answer: "We can't share client work." Redacted samples and public-site demos are common ways to show output while respecting confidentiality. This is worth asking for: everything else is claims, and a sample is evidence.
4. Who does the work, and where?
A strong answer: A named person or team, with a clear picture of what's handled in-house and what's outsourced.
A weaker answer: A vague one. Plenty of excellent work is delivered by blended teams, including offshore specialists — the point is simply to understand who does what before you start, so there are no surprises later.
5. How do you decide what to work on first?
A strong answer: A prioritisation logic — impact against effort, or fixing what blocks everything else before optimising what already works.
A weaker answer: A list of tactics with no ordering. "Technical, content and links" describes the discipline; a plan orders that work for *your* site. It's reasonable to ask how they'd sequence it.
6. What have you seen that's specific to my site?
A strong answer: Something they found before the call — a crawl error, a cannibalised keyword pair, a competitor outranking you on a term you should own.
A weaker answer: Observations that could apply to any website. Site-specific insight is a good sign that they've actually looked, and it's a fair thing to ask for.
7. What's your reporting cadence, and what's in the report?
A strong answer: A named frequency and a named set of contents — including work completed, not only metrics.
A weaker answer: An automated dashboard link on its own. A dashboard shows numbers; a good report also shows what was done. Both are useful — it's worth asking what the report actually includes. See SEO report examples for what a strong one contains.
8. What happens if rankings don't move in six months?
A strong answer: A candid answer about how they'd diagnose and reassess, and a clear acknowledgement that rankings can't be guaranteed.
A weaker answer: A guarantee. No one controls Google's index, so a firm ranking guarantee is usually either narrowly defined (page one for your own brand name) or more optimistic than the reality. A thoughtful answer about diagnosis and adjustment is more reassuring.
9. What links will you build, and how?
A strong answer: A specific method — digital PR, resource-page outreach, relevant industry directories — described concretely.
A weaker answer: "We have a network." Reputable link-building methods are easy to describe. If the method stays vague, it's worth understanding why before links become part of the engagement.
10. What do you need from me?
A strong answer: A real list — Search Console and Analytics access, a developer contact, content approval, an hour a month with a subject-matter expert.
A weaker answer: "Nothing, we handle everything." The best SEO usually needs some input from you: content written with input from someone who knows the business simply reads better. A provider who asks for the right things early is a good sign.
11. What's the contract term and the exit?
A strong answer: A stated term, a stated notice period, and a clear answer on what you keep.
A weaker answer: A long lock-in with a lengthy notice period and no clarity on ownership. Ask specifically: do I keep the content, the reports, and the accounts? Confirm that Search Console and Analytics are registered under your ownership. Clear terms here protect both sides.
12. What would you tell me not to do?
A strong answer: Something real — a market you shouldn't enter yet, a service they'd tell you to skip, a competitor you can't realistically outrank right now.
A weaker answer: "Everything we offer will help you." A provider comfortable telling you what to skip is advising you, not just presenting a menu. It's a good question to end on.
Four claims worth a closer look
None of these automatically rules a provider out, but each is worth a follow-up question.
| Claim | Worth asking |
|---|---|
| "We guarantee first-page rankings" | No one controls the index — ask how the guarantee is defined and what it covers. |
| "We have a special relationship with Google" | There's no such arrangement for organic search; Google Partner status applies to Ads. |
| "We can't share our methods, it's proprietary" | SEO best practice is publicly documented, so most methods can be described at a high level. |
| "Sign up now, the price goes up Monday" | Urgency pricing on a months-long service is usually a sales cadence rather than a real constraint. |
What to check before the call
Fifteen minutes of homework makes for a better conversation.
Do they rank for anything? A provider that doesn't rank for its own service terms isn't necessarily a concern — those terms are brutally competitive — but it's reasonable to expect an explanation.
Does the named consultant exist outside their website? A LinkedIn profile, a conference talk, a byline somewhere. A visible external footprint is a helpful signal.
How current is the site content? A blog whose last post is a few years old tells you where the team's attention tends to go.
Search their brand name plus "review." Less for star ratings, more for the shape of any recurring themes.
Retainer, project, or per-service?
Three models, and the right one depends on what you actually need.
| Model | Works well when | Struggles when |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | You need continuous work — content production, ongoing link acquisition, an evolving large site | The work tapers off but the invoice doesn't; later months can quietly deliver less. |
| Fixed project | You need a specific thing: an audit, a migration, a site launch | Ongoing work is genuinely needed and nobody owns it after handover. |
| Per-service | You want to buy exactly what you need, in sequence, and stop when it's done | You need someone accountable for an outcome over time rather than a set of deliverables. |
Many small businesses end up on a retainer when a few defined projects would have served them better. A simple test: if you can't name what next month's invoice buys, it may be worth revisiting the model.
A note on how we're answering this
For transparency: TapasSEO sells per-service SEO with fixed prices and no retainer, so question 2 and the table above aren't entirely neutral — worth saying plainly rather than pretending otherwise.
What *is* neutral is that every question here can be asked of us, and we'd expect to answer all twelve. If you ask any provider for a sample of their work and they can't produce one in any form, that's useful to know regardless of who you eventually hire.
Ours is public: a complete site audit of stripe.com — not a redacted excerpt, but the actual deliverable, on a site nobody paid us to flatter.
Frequently asked questions
How much should SEO cost? It depends on scope, not on a single monthly figure. See what SEO actually costs for real per-deliverable pricing rather than ranges.
Should I hire an SEO agency, a consultant, or a freelancer? A consultant or freelancer usually gives you direct access to the person doing the work. An agency gives you coverage across specialisms and continuity if someone leaves. Agencies are at their weakest when a senior handles the pitch and a junior handles the account; freelancers are at their weakest on capacity.
Can an SEO guarantee first-page rankings? No. Nobody controls Google's index. A ranking guarantee is either not dependable or defined so narrowly — such as ranking for your own brand name — that it means little.
How long before SEO shows results? Technical fixes can show within weeks. Content and authority work typically takes three to six months to move competitive terms, and longer on a new domain. Anyone promising faster on a competitive term is estimating optimistically.
What should I ask for in an SEO contract? A defined deliverable list, a stated notice period, and explicit confirmation that you retain ownership of content produced and administrative access to Search Console, Analytics and any tools set up on your behalf.
Is a monthly SEO retainer worth it? It is when there's continuous work to do. It becomes worth revisiting the month you can no longer name what the invoice buys — which is sometimes earlier than the contract allows you to leave.
Start with evidence, not a pitch
The most reliable way to evaluate any provider — including us — is to look at the output before you talk to anyone.
See a complete sample audit → Free, no email required, on a real site.
If you'd like the same done on yours, the 360 SEO Page Audit covers a single page end to end, and the Site SEO Audit covers the whole site across 22 sections. Both are fixed-price, one-time, and yours to keep whether or not you ever work with us again.