An outreach agency contacts other websites in your name, which makes it the only SEO service where a supplier's judgement is exercised in public with your brand attached. Most buyers never see a single message before it is sent. That is the thing to fix first, because the difference between a good outreach program and a damaging one is almost entirely in what those emails say and what they offer.
Read the templates before anything is sent
Ask for the actual sequences, not a description of them. You are looking for whether the message makes a specific and true statement about the recipient's page, whether it offers anything of value in exchange for a link, and whether it misrepresents who is writing. A template that opens by praising a blog post nobody read is the version of this service that annoys people in your name at scale.
What is offered in exchange is the compliance question
Google's spam policies treat links exchanged for money, goods or services as link spam where they pass ranking signals. Outreach that offers payment, product or reciprocal placement therefore sits inside that definition, whatever it is called in the proposal. Ask explicitly what is offered, get the answer in writing, and treat vagueness as an answer in itself.
Sending domain and identity should be settled deliberately
Decide whether outreach is sent from your domain by a named person at your company, or from the agency's domain on your behalf. Both are legitimate; pretending to be an employee who does not exist is not. If it goes out from your domain, use a subdomain or a separate domain so that a reputation problem does not reach your transactional mail.
Volume is the wrong dial and the easiest one to turn
Outreach response rates are low, so the temptation is always to send more. Past a point, more sending means less research per message, worse targeting and a higher chance of being reported. Ask what the agency's daily sending volume per mailbox is and how many mailboxes it runs for you. The answer tells you whether you have bought research or a mail engine.
Judge it on placements you would have wanted anyway
The honest test of an outreach program is whether the sites it earned links from are places your buyers actually read. Ask for the last twenty placements from any client and look at them. A list of unfamiliar sites with broad topical coverage and no evident audience is what a volume process produces, and it is worth very little.
Questions people ask about SEO outreach agency
Is outreach the same as link building?
Outreach is the method most link building uses: contacting people who could link to you and giving them a reason. Link building is the goal. The distinction matters when choosing a supplier, because some sell outreach as a process with a volume attached and others sell a result, and the second is much harder to do well.
What response rate is normal?
Low, and any supplier quoting a high one is either counting automated replies or targeting sites that link to anybody. The more useful question is how many placements per month result and on what kind of sites, which is what you are actually buying.
Should outreach come from my own email address?
It is more effective and it is also riskier, since the messages carry your name and your domain's reputation. If you do it, insist on reviewing the templates, use a separate sending domain, and require that no message misstates who is writing.
What should I refuse to approve?
Anything offering payment or free product for a link, anything claiming a relationship that does not exist, anything sent from a fabricated identity, and any volume that means nobody read the page being pitched. Each of those is a decision made in your name.