Most businesses hire an SEO the same way they hire a plumber: get three quotes, pick the middle one, hope. The difference is that you can see whether the pipe stopped leaking. With SEO you often cannot tell whether you were served well until six months and a few hundred thousand pesos have gone by.
So here are the questions I would ask if I were on the other side of the table — including the ones that are uncomfortable to be asked, and what the answers should sound like. I have written the worrying answers out too, because the wrong answer is usually more informative than the right one.
1. “What will you do in the first 30 days, specifically?”
What good sounds like: a technical audit, Search Console and Analytics access, a crawl, keyword and competitor research, and a prioritised list of fixes. Concrete deliverables with names.
What should worry you: “We’ll start optimising your keywords.” That sentence has no content. If a provider cannot describe month one in specifics before you sign, they do not have a process — they have a template.
2. “Who actually does the work?”
What good sounds like: a straight answer. Either the person in front of you, or a named team, or an outsourced partner they will tell you about without being pushed.
What should worry you: vagueness. Plenty of agencies sell in a pitch meeting and hand delivery to a junior or an offshore contractor. That is not automatically bad — but it should be disclosed, because it determines who you can actually reach when something breaks.
3. “What do you need from me, and how much of my time?”
What good sounds like: a real number. Content approvals, developer access, subject-matter input, someone who can publish. Usually a few hours a month, more in the first six weeks.
What should worry you: “Nothing, we handle everything.” This is the answer clients most want to hear and the one that most reliably predicts a stalled campaign. SEO that requires nothing from you is SEO that never touches your actual business — and in my experience the single most common cause of a flat campaign is not bad strategy, it is recommendations sitting unimplemented because nobody on the client side owned them.
4. “How will we measure this, and what counts as failure?”
What good sounds like: non-brand organic traffic, ranking query count, qualified leads or bookings. Plus a stated point at which we would agree the approach is not working.
What should worry you: reporting built on branded search, “impressions” alone, or keyword rankings for terms nobody searches. If someone reports your own company name as an SEO win, they are padding. And a provider who cannot define failure has given themselves permission to never be wrong.
5. “Can you show me a campaign that did not work?”
What good sounds like: an actual example, with what went wrong and what they changed. Every practitioner with real years behind them has several.
What should worry you: “All our clients get results.” Nobody has a hundred percent record in a channel where the algorithm, the competition, and the client’s own implementation capacity all vary. A flawless record means a short memory or a sales script.
6. “What happens to the work if we stop?”
What good sounds like: you keep the site, the content, the accounts, and the documentation. Everything is in properties you own.
What should worry you: content hosted on their domain, Search Console or Analytics under their account with no admin access for you, or a site built on a proprietary platform you cannot export. Ask who owns the Google Business Profile too — this is a recurring problem in local SEO and it is painful to unwind after the fact.
7. “Do you guarantee rankings?”
This is a trick question and you should ask it anyway.
The correct answer is no. Nobody controls Google’s ranking systems, and any guarantee is either meaningless small print or a signal that someone intends to chase easy keywords that will not move your revenue. A provider who says “no, but here is what I will commit to instead” and then names a process is telling you the truth.
The questions they should be asking you
Vetting runs both directions. If nobody has asked about your margins, your best-fit customer, your sales capacity, or what a lead is actually worth to you, then whatever gets optimised will be optimised toward traffic rather than revenue. Those are not the same target and they frequently point in different directions.
A scoping conversation that never mentions your business model is a warning sign about everything that follows it.
Once you have hired someone, how long SEO actually takes sets realistic expectations for month one. More on how I run engagements is on my SEO service page.
Frequently asked questions
What should I ask an SEO before hiring them?
Ask what happens in the first 30 days specifically, who does the work, what they need from you, how success and failure are defined, and what you keep if you leave. Vague answers to any of these are more informative than polished ones.
Is an SEO who guarantees first-page rankings legitimate?
No reputable practitioner guarantees rankings, because nobody controls Google's systems. A guarantee usually means either meaningless fine print or a plan to target keywords so uncompetitive they will not affect your revenue.
How do I know if my current SEO is doing anything?
Check Search Console yourself. Look at indexed pages, non-brand impressions, and how many distinct queries you rank for. A working campaign ranks for more terms before it ranks higher for any single one. Exclude your brand name from every report.
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency?
It depends on scope and how much coordination you need rather than on which is inherently better. I have written a fuller comparison in SEO agency vs freelance specialist.
SEO specialist and digital marketer from the Philippines. I handle SEO for the country's biggest media and publishing brands — Vogue Philippines, MEGA, Billboard Philippines, Rolling Stone Philippines — alongside clinics, e-commerce stores, and startups. Every article here comes from real client campaigns.
More about me →Ask me all seven
I will answer every one of these on a call, including the uncomfortable ones. If my answers are not what you need, I will tell you that too.
Book your free strategy call