Five questions to ask before paying for SEO

You do not need to become a search expert to buy useful help. You do need to know what someone plans to change, why it matters and how you will judge the work.

An email arrives promising more visitors to your website. There is a chart, a list of things apparently wrong with your pages and an invitation to book a call.

Perhaps the sender has spotted something useful. Before agreeing to the work, ask them to explain it in terms you can check.

SEO means search engine optimisation: work intended to help people find your website through search. That can involve fixing a genuine fault, improving an explanation or making a page easier to discover. The name alone tells you very little about what you are buying.

These five questions will help you get a clearer proposal. The example answers below are invented illustrations, not quotes from suppliers or promises of results.

1. What will you actually change?

Ask to see the pages involved and the proposed work. "Improve your visibility" is an ambition. It does not describe a job you can check has been done.

A useful answer might sound like this: "Your commissions page does not explain lead times or delivery. We will add that information, with your approval, and make the enquiry link easier to find."

For technical work, ask for the same clarity: what is wrong, how was it checked and what will be different afterwards? You should not need to understand every technical term to understand the purpose.

Agree who approves changes, whether you will get a record of them and what is included in the fee. If writing is involved, establish who checks the facts about your business. A polished wrong answer is still your wrong answer once it is on your website.

2. Why is this the right work for my business?

Ask what the supplier has learned about your customers and what you want them to do.

A useful illustrative answer is: "You want more local repair bookings, but your page only describes new installations. We would start by explaining the repairs you offer and the area you cover."

If they cite a successful project elsewhere, ask how that business compares with yours. A large online shop may have a very different problem from a local tutor.

Someone else's result can be encouraging without being a forecast. Ask to see the original case study, including what changed and how the outcome was measured. A percentage on a presentation slide cannot do all of that work.

3. What will we measure?

Start with what matters to the business: suitable enquiries, bookings or sales. Then ask which website figures will help explain whether you are getting there.

Appearances in search results, visits to a page and completed bookings are different things. If the proposal includes getting mentioned in AI answers, ask how those mentions will be checked and how the supplier will distinguish them from people actually visiting or buying.

An illustrative agreement might be: "We will record enquiries for repairs, note which are within your service area and compare them with visits to the repair page."

Also ask to see the starting figures. If nobody has been recording enquiries, setting that up may be the first useful job. Agree which information you will be able to access yourself.

4. What else could explain a change?

A busy month might coincide with the website work and a successful exhibition, a press mention or your busiest season. Write those things down alongside the results.

Where there is enough traffic, a supplier may be able to compare changed pages with similar unchanged pages. That can provide stronger evidence than simply comparing last month with this month. Most small websites are well below the level at which that kind of comparison works.

"We do not yet have enough information to tell" can be an honest answer. Ask what the supplier can reasonably learn from your site's level of activity, and what would remain uncertain.

5. What happens if it does not help?

Agree when you will review the work and what decisions you will make. That might mean keeping a change, revising it, stopping further spending or continuing to observe because there is too little information.

Ask how changes can be undone if they create a problem. Keep a copy of the previous page and a record of the work.

Some improvements have a clear purpose even without a traffic gain. Correct opening hours should stay correct. A form that now works should keep working. You are assessing each change against the job it was meant to do.

Put the answers on one page

Before agreeing, you should be able to write down:

• The work, its price and who approves it.
• Why it addresses a problem your business has.
• The starting position and intended outcome.
• What might make the result difficult to interpret.
• The review point and what happens next.

Take those five questions to the next conversation. A useful proposal should leave you understanding what you are paying for.