SEO service company options compared on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to choose an SEO service company without guessing

1. Decide which of the three jobs you are buying. Technical health, content and topical coverage, or authority and links. Most sites need all three eventually but almost none need all three at once, and firms specialise despite what their service lists say. Write one sentence describing which problem you believe you have, take it into every call, and notice which candidates challenge your diagnosis with evidence rather than agreeing with it.
2. Ask what the first ninety days produce. Not what the strategy is, what the artefacts are. A prioritised technical issue list with owners, a keyword and intent map tied to specific URLs, a content calendar with named pieces, or a link prospecting list are all concrete answers. Anything that comes back as discovery, alignment and optimisation without named deliverables is a retainer with nothing to inspect at the end of the quarter.
3. Check the reporting against reality. Ask which tool the reporting comes from and whether you will receive Search Console access rather than a screenshot. Rankings from a third party tool are directional; impressions, clicks and average position from Search Console for your own property are the record. Insist reporting is built on data you can see yourself, and that the account belongs to you rather than the agency.
4. Settle ownership and exit before the first invoice. Content produced for you should be yours, published on your domain, with source files delivered. Any links built should point to your site rather than to a leased microsite or an agency owned property. Analytics, Search Console and tag manager must be your accounts with the agency as a user. Agree what the handover pack contains at the end, and expect a notice period rather than a lock in.

What our index records, and what it deliberately does not

Every entry is read from the firm's own website and dated. Where a starting price or minimum engagement is published, we record it. Where a firm names clients, we record that too. Nothing is estimated, nothing is supplied by the firms themselves, and no firm pays to appear. That makes this a comparison of what companies are willing to state publicly as much as of what they can do, which is a narrower claim than a ranking and a more useful one, because it is checkable.

It follows that the absence of a published price is not a mark against a firm. Search work varies enormously in scope and many good practitioners quote per engagement for sound reasons. What the index gives you is the ability to sort by disclosure, see the range across the market, and arrive at a first call already knowing which questions a given firm has already answered in public.

The claims that should end a conversation

Guaranteed rankings are the clearest one. No firm controls the ranking systems, and Google's own guidance on hiring a search professional warns explicitly against anyone promising a specific position. A guarantee is either meaningless, covering terms nobody searches, or it signals techniques that create risk for your domain rather than value.

Two others are nearly as reliable. A private blog network, a link package sold by the unit, or any offer priced per link is a manipulative link scheme under Google's published spam policies, and the exposure lands on your site rather than on the vendor. And a proposal that will not name the specific pages it intends to change is usually fulfilment being resold: the work will be generic because it was written before anyone looked at your site.

Fitting the firm to the size of the problem

A single location business competing in one metro needs local presence work, a handful of well built service pages and consistent review generation, and is usually badly served by a large firm's minimum engagement. A national ecommerce catalogue with tens of thousands of URLs needs technical capacity, log analysis and internal linking work that a two person consultancy cannot staff. Matching scale honestly saves more money than negotiating rate does.

Where you are unsure, buy a small defined piece first. A technical audit with a prioritised action list, or a content plan for one product line, costs a fraction of a year of retainer and tells you exactly how a firm thinks, how it writes, and whether it does its own work. Judge the artefact, then decide about the relationship. Most disappointing engagements were signed before either side had produced anything to inspect.

Questions people actually ask

How long before search work shows results?

Google's own guidance on hiring a search professional notes that changes take time to have an effect, and in practice most sites see movement in impressions before clicks and clicks before revenue. Technical fixes on an established site can move within weeks. New content on a new domain is a matter of months. Agree at the start which leading indicator you will judge at ninety days and which lagging one decides renewal.

Is a monthly retainer the right structure?

It suits ongoing content and technical programmes and it suits agencies. It suits a one off migration or audit badly. Ask what the retainer buys in hours or deliverables, ask what happens in a month when there is less to do, and prefer a structure where a defined project is priced as a project. A retainer with no stated output is the shape most likely to drift into reporting about itself.

Should we hire local or does location not matter?

For most of the work location is irrelevant and remote firms compete on equal terms. It matters where the work depends on being physically present, photography, in person interviews with your team, or trade specific local knowledge. Choose on discipline fit and communication rhythm first, and treat proximity as a tie breaker rather than a filter.

What does the handover look like if we leave?

Ask for it in writing at signing: exports of all content and source files, a list of every URL created or changed, access to any tools bought in your name, the current technical issue list, and confirmation that all accounts already sit under your ownership. A firm that has structured the engagement properly can describe this in a paragraph, because nothing needs to move.

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