How to choose an SEO company.

To choose an SEO company, judge them on four things: whether they look at your actual site and competitors before quoting, whether they can explain in plain English what they'll do each month, whether they report on enquiries and traffic rather than rankings alone, and whether the contract lets you leave if it isn't working. Walk away from anyone who guarantees a number one position, won't say how they build links, or locks you into twelve months before you've seen any work. Price matters less than most people think. A good provider at £600 a month and a poor one at £600 a month look identical on paper, so the questions you ask are what separate them.

What should I look for in an SEO company?

Start with how they handle the first conversation. A provider worth hiring will want to see your website, ask which services and areas actually make you money, and look at who currently ranks for those searches before they put a figure on anything. If you get a fixed package price within ten minutes of an email, with no questions about your business, you're being sold a template.

Then look for specifics. "We'll optimise your site and build your authority" describes every SEO company in the country. "We'll rewrite your five main service pages, fix the indexing problem on your blog, and create a page for Newport because you get calls from there but don't rank" describes a plan. You should be able to repeat back what you're paying for.

Finally, check that they can show you results for businesses like yours, with the client named or at least the before-and-after visible in a Search Console screenshot. A list of logos proves very little on its own.

What questions should I ask an SEO agency before hiring?

Google publishes its own list of questions for anyone hiring an SEO, in its "Do you need an SEO?" guide. These are the ones that tend to reveal the most in practice:

• What would you do in the first three months, specifically? You want named pages and tasks, not "onboarding" and "strategy".
• How do you get links to a site? A good answer involves content worth linking to, local partners and genuine PR. "We have a network" is a bad answer.
• Who will actually do the work? At some agencies the person who sells to you is never seen again, and the work goes to a junior or an overseas subcontractor.
• What will the monthly report show? Ask to see an example. Look for enquiries, calls and organic traffic, not just a list of keyword positions.
• What happens if I want to leave? Find out the notice period, and confirm that content, accounts and any pages they build stay yours.
• Will you need access to my Google Business Profile and Search Console? They should be added as a user on accounts you own, never asked to set up accounts in their own name.

What are the red flags when choosing an SEO company?

Guaranteed rankings are the clearest one. Nobody controls Google's results, and Google says plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. Providers who promise it are either planning to rank you for a phrase nobody searches, or using tactics that work briefly and then get the site penalised.

Other warning signs are vaguer but just as telling: a long minimum contract before any results are possible, reports that only show rankings for obscure phrases, "hundreds of backlinks a month" sold as a selling point, and refusal to tell you what was changed on your site. Cold emails that open with "I noticed your website has 47 SEO errors" are almost always automated tool output sent to thousands of businesses at once.

A newer one: being sold "AI search optimisation" or "GEO" as a separate add-on at extra cost. Google's own guidance on AI features says the same SEO fundamentals apply to AI Overviews, so treat it as part of good SEO rather than a second bill. We covered this in is AI SEO a separate thing you need to buy?

How much should a good SEO company cost?

The price bands below are typical UK figures for 2026, with what you should reasonably expect at each level. They match the ranges in our fuller guide to how much SEO costs in the UK.

Should I choose a local SEO company?

Being nearby isn't required to do good work, and plenty of SEO is done remotely. What a local provider does bring is knowledge of your market: which towns your customers search from, which competitors keep turning up, and how a search in Cardiff differs from one in Merthyr Tydfil. It also makes a face-to-face meeting easy if you want one. For a business that relies on local customers, that context tends to show up in the work.

If you're weighing up a one-person consultancy against a larger firm, freelance SEO consultant vs agency sets out the trade-offs, and what does an SEO agency actually do? explains what the monthly work should involve.

Is it better to start with an SEO audit?

For most small businesses, yes. A one-off SEO audit tells you what's holding the site back before you commit to a monthly fee, and it doubles as a test of the provider. If the audit is specific to your business and you understand every recommendation, that's a good sign for the ongoing work. If it's generic, you've found out cheaply. You also keep the findings either way, so you could hand them to your web developer or a different provider.

A caveat about this guide

This is written by someone who sells SEO, so read it with that in mind. The questions above are the same ones you should put to us, and none of them depend on hiring Webolific. Some good providers will also fail one of the tests: a capable consultant might not have a case study in your exact trade, for example. Treat the red flags as reasons to dig deeper rather than an automatic no, with the exception of guaranteed rankings, which is always a no.

It's also fine to decide you don't need an SEO company yet. If your business is new, the site is a few pages, and the basics aren't done, our guide to SEO for small business covers what you can do yourself first. You can see how a Webolific engagement runs, month by month, on how it works.