Hiring outside SEO help

Google's guidance for small local businesses is to start with the official material and try the work yourself (Do you need an SEO?). That is also the cheapest way to learn what you are buying: a provider should be able to explain each task in terms you already recognize. Before you hire, the free groundwork is:

• a verified Business Profile with an honest name, the right category and real photos (chapter 1)
• a website with one page per service, a page for each place you actually serve, and a clear phone number (chapters 5 and 7)
• Search Console and an analytics property on accounts the company owns (chapters 8 and 10)
• a written keyword map and one useful local guide (chapters 6 and 13)

If those are in place, outside help starts from a known position instead of charging you to discover it. If they are not, an audit is a fair first purchase, provided it comes with the work estimate and not just a score.

Google publishes the questions it suggests asking a potential SEO (Do you need an SEO?). Reproduced as a script you can read aloud:

1. Can you show examples of previous work and describe what changed?
2. Do you follow Google Search Essentials?
3. What results do you expect, in what timeframe, and how will you measure them?
4. What is your experience in my industry, and in my city or state?
5. How will we communicate, and will I see every change you make with the reasoning behind it?
6. How long have you been in business?

Add two of your own. First: which page or document supports this recommendation? Second: who on your side does the work, and who on mine approves it? A provider who answers both without deflecting has a method. One who answers with rankings has a sales script.

Search Console has owners, full users and restricted users, and only an owner can add or remove other users (Search Console Help). A Business Profile has a primary owner and managers, and the primary owner controls who else has access (Google Business Profile Help). Those two roles belong to the company, not to a provider.

For an audit, Google's advice is to grant read access to Search Console and not write access at that stage (Do you need an SEO?). The same logic covers everything else:

Asset	What the company keeps	What a provider may hold
Domain name	Registrar login owned by the company	Nothing
Hosting and deployment	Account and billing owner	Access through the company’s own user seat
Search Console	Owner role	Full or restricted user
Business Profile	Primary owner	Manager on a named account
Analytics	Administrator on a company account	Editor, if they configure events
Website content	Company repository or admin login	Access through the company’s own user list

If a provider will only work through accounts it owns, the work cannot leave with you when the arrangement ends. Treat that as a defect in the offer.

Google says to be careful when a company is secretive or will not clearly explain what it intends to do, and that you are responsible for the actions of companies you hire (Do you need an SEO?). A scope that answers the following is not bureaucracy; it is the record you check invoices against.

• Pages and systems in scope. Named pages, profiles and accounts, and the ones explicitly out of scope.
• Work order. What happens first, second and third, and what depends on what.
• Who does what. Which tasks the provider performs, which require your approval, and which stay with your staff.
• What they will not do. A short list is a good sign. Buying links, generating reviews, keyword-stuffed pages and made-up service areas should all appear there (chapter 3 and chapter 13).
• Reporting. Which numbers get reported, from which system, and what a bad month looks like.
• Ownership and exit. Where the accounts, files and documentation live, and what is handed back when the arrangement ends.
• Change control. Who approves edits to the site and the Business Profile, and how quickly approvals happen.

Google names several of these directly (Do you need an SEO?):

• a guarantee of first place in search results
• a claimed special relationship with Google, or a paid priority submit
• unsolicited email offering to fix your site’s search visibility
• a refusal to explain what will be changed and why
• pressure to link back to the provider’s site
• submitting your site to thousands of search engines and directories
• link popularity schemes or link packages sold by quantity

Add anything that conflicts with the spam policies: scaled pages built to capture search terms rather than to help a customer, paid links that pass ranking credit, or review incentives (Google spam policies). If you have already been through a suspension, a provider that proposes the same tactics again is proposing the same outcome (chapter 2).

Before acting on an audit or a recommendation, compare it with the official guidance, and ask which document supports it (Do you need an SEO?). You do not need to become a specialist to do this. Three habits cover most cases:

• Open the cited page and read the section, not the headline.
• Ask what the change does for a customer, and where on the page a visitor sees it.
• Ask what would make the provider reverse the change.

Two claims are safe to distrust on sight: that a single technique decides rankings, and that a tool score is a business result.

Google notes that in the United States the Federal Trade Commission handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices, and links to the FTC website for filing one (Federal Trade Commission). Keep the written scope, the invoices and the change history; a complaint is easier to support with a record than with a recollection. Your own state consumer protection office is the other place to ask.

None of this is legal advice. If money or a contract is in dispute, ask a lawyer who handles small-business matters in your state.