Hiring an SEO contractor, compared on evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to vet an SEO contractor

1. Establish who touches the keyboard. Ask by name who will perform the work, and whether any of it is subcontracted. With independents the person selling is usually the person delivering, which is the main advantage; with agencies it frequently is not, and the difference in output quality between the pitch team and the delivery team is where most disappointment begins.
2. Ask Google's own hiring questions. Google's guidance on hiring search help says to ask for examples of previous work, to ask what results are expected and in what timeframe, and to be skeptical of anyone guaranteeing a top ranking, refusing to explain their methods or claiming a special relationship with Google. Ask all of them before discussing price.
3. Define the deliverable, not the hours. Contract work drifts when the unit of purchase is time. Specify what physically exists at the end of each month: pages shipped, technical issues closed, profile changes made, content published. A retainer with no named artifacts is impossible to audit in a slow month, which is precisely when auditing matters.
4. Settle access and ownership up front. The site, the analytics property, Search Console, the Google Business Profile and everything written should sit in accounts your business owns, with access granted to the contractor. Agree the offboarding in writing at the start, including who keeps the documentation and the tracking configuration.

Independent contractor or agency

An independent usually costs less per month and gives you direct access to the person doing the work, which is worth a great deal when the work is technical and the questions are specific. The trade-offs are capacity and continuity: one person can only ship so much, holidays are real, and a single practitioner cannot cover writing, development, design and profile management at depth simultaneously. Where the plan requires a volume of production, an independent will either subcontract it or the plan will quietly shrink.

An agency buys you capacity, redundancy and a broader skill set, and charges for the overhead that provides them. The failure mode is distance: the strategist who sold the engagement moves on, and the account is delivered by whoever is available. The practical test is the same in both cases, which is to ask who does the work, then ask to see something that person specifically produced.

If you are a contractor buying search

For a trades business the work is local, and Google publishes the rules that govern most of it. Local results are decided mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and Google states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone selling guaranteed map pack placement to a contracting business is selling something the platform says does not exist.

The rest is unglamorous and effective: a Business Profile that reflects the business as it is genuinely represented in the real world, service and service area pages with real projects and photographs rather than town names swapped into a template, fast intake because the first company to answer the phone usually wins the job, and a steady flow of genuine reviews. The FTC's endorsement guidance is clear that reviews must reflect honest experience and that material connections have to be disclosed, so decline any vendor whose review process involves writing them for you.

What this index checks

Listings here are built from published evidence: printed pricing or a disclosed minimum, named clients whose work can be opened and inspected, and a written description of method that can be held against the invoice later. A firm that publishes a floor has told you whether it works at your size before consuming an hour of your time, which is a courtesy worth rewarding with a place on the shortlist.

What is deliberately not counted: unauditable awards, anonymous case studies with round numbers, and claims of special standing with Google, which Google's own hiring guidance flags as a warning sign. Where a candidate publishes nothing checkable, treat that as information rather than as a neutral absence.

Questions people actually ask

Is an SEO contractor cheaper than an agency?

The monthly figure usually is, because you are not paying for agency overhead or account management. Whether total cost is lower depends on how much production the plan requires and whether you have people in-house to do it.

What should a monthly contract include?

Named deliverables, a reporting format agreed in advance, a defined response time, and explicit ownership of everything produced. Keep the initial term short, ninety days is reasonable, and review against the named deliverables rather than against traffic alone.

Can a contractor guarantee rankings?

No. Google's guidance on hiring search help warns buyers against anyone guaranteeing a number one ranking, and its local ranking guidance says there is no way to pay for better placement. Treat a guarantee as a reason to end the conversation.

How do I hand over cleanly at the end?

Agree at the start that all accounts are yours with access granted, that documentation is written in a place you control, and that the final month includes a written handover of outstanding work. Doing this at signing costs nothing; doing it at the end rarely works.

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