10 signs you're working with the best SEO company

Every SEO agency says it gets results. The difference shows in how they work: what they ask in the first meeting, what they put in writing, what they refuse to promise and what you can see for yourself each month. There is no single best SEO company for every business, but the good ones behave in recognisable ways.

Use the 10 signs below to judge an agency you are considering, or one you already pay. Each sign comes with a quick check, so you are not relying on a sales pitch.

10 signs of the best SEO company for your business

1. They ask about your sales before your keywords

A strong first conversation covers which products or services make you money, which enquiries turn into customers, how long your sales cycle is and which cities you serve. Keywords come after that. A developer selling flats and a clinic booking consultations need very different pages, even if both say they “want more traffic”.

Check: does the proposal mention your best customers, your margins or your sales process? If it could have been sent to any business, it probably was.

2. Their audit explains priorities in plain English

Automated tools can produce a 90-page audit in minutes. The valuable part is judgement: which few issues are actually holding the site back, what each fix involves and the order to do them in.

Check: ask them to walk you through the top three issues on your site and explain how each one affects enquiries.

3. They report enquiries, not only rankings

Rankings are an early signal. The outcome is enquiries, calls, bookings and sales. A good agency sets up conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4, uses Search Console for query data, and where possible matches leads to your CRM so organic search can be judged on revenue.

Check: does the monthly report show enquiries from organic search and which pages produced them?

4. They refuse to guarantee rankings

Google’s own advice on hiring an SEO is blunt: no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Agencies that promise page one usually choose phrases nobody searches, or use tactics that put your site at risk. The best SEO company commits to the work, a realistic timeline and agreed targets for traffic and enquiries.

Check: read the contract. A clause promising “top 10 positions for 20 keywords” is a warning sign, not a benefit.

5. They follow Google’s spam policies

Google’s spam policies name the shortcuts that get sites demoted, including link spam, keyword stuffing, hidden text, expired domain abuse and scaled content abuse. That last one covers mass-producing pages with AI or other tools without adding value for readers. Cleaning up after these tactics costs far more than doing the work properly the first time.

Check: ask how they earn links. “Relevant publications, partners and directories your buyers use” is a good answer. “Packages of 500 backlinks” is not.

6. They fix technical problems, not just list them

Crawl errors, pages Google has not indexed, slow mobile pages, broken redirects and missing structured data all cap what content can achieve. Better agencies have people who can make the fixes on your platform, or who write clear tasks your developer can act on.

Check: Search Console has a Core Web Vitals report that groups pages as good, needs improvement or poor. Ask what the agency will do about the last two groups.

7. They show case studies you can verify

Look for named clients, specific numbers, a time frame and a live website you can visit. For example, our SEO work for Motwani Constructions took the site from 8 to 115 ranking keywords in 90 days, and Z Estates grew from 4 to 95 ranking keywords and from 136 to 758 monthly visits between October 2023 and April 2024. Both are real businesses you can look up.

Check: ask for a reference call with a current client in a similar industry.

8. They plan for AI Overviews and AI assistants

Buyers now read Google AI Overviews and ask ChatGPT or Gemini for recommendations. Google says its AI features need no special files or markup, only pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet, so the fundamentals still decide who gets cited. What changes is the content style (direct answers, specifics, clear sources) and the reporting (citations as well as positions). Here is how we approach AI SEO.

Check: ask how they would find out whether your brand appears in AI answers for your 20 most important queries.

9. You own everything

Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Business Profile, the website and every article written for you should sit in accounts owned by your business, with the agency added as a user. If you part ways, you keep the history and the content.

Check: find out who is listed as the owner of your Search Console property today.

10. They communicate on a fixed rhythm and think long term

Expect a monthly report on a set date, a call to walk through it and a written plan for the following month. Good agencies are also honest about timing: technical fixes can move rankings in 6 to 12 weeks, while content and authority usually take four to six months to show meaningful growth. They connect SEO with your content, local listings and paid campaigns rather than treating it as a separate project.

Check: can they tell you, in three sentences, what they did for you last month?

Red flags that should end the conversation

• Unsolicited emails promising page one in 30 days
• Claims of a special relationship with Google
• Refusal to explain what they will do because the method is “proprietary”
• Backlink packages priced per hundred links
• The agency, not you, owns your Search Console, analytics or domain
• Reports with dozens of keyword positions but no traffic or enquiry data

Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO lists several of these same warning signs.

What to prepare before you speak to agencies

You will get better proposals, and compare them more fairly, if every agency receives the same information:

• access to Google Search Console and Google Analytics, or exports covering the last 12 months
• your most profitable products or services and the cities you serve
• roughly how many enquiries a month the website produces today
• three competitors you regularly lose business to
• details of any past SEO work, including backlink packages, so risks can be checked

Questions to ask before you sign

1. What will you do in the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
2. Which pages will you create, rewrite or merge, and why?
3. How will you measure enquiries from organic search and from AI search?
4. Who will do the work day to day, and what is their experience in my industry?
5. What do you need from my team each month?
6. What happens to the content and accounts if we stop working together?

What the first 90 days should look like

A realistic plan for most business websites looks like this:

• Weeks 1 to 2: a technical crawl, a content and competitor review, and a look at your Search Console and analytics data, ending in a prioritised list of fixes
• Weeks 2 to 6: technical fixes, rewrites of key service pages, internal linking and structured data
• Month 2 onwards: new pages and articles on a steady calendar, plus local SEO and authority building
• Day 90 review: fixes shipped, indexing improved, early movement in impressions and rankings, and a clear plan for months four to six

If you reach day 90 and nobody can name what changed on your website, the problem is not a lack of patience.

For businesses that sell in specific cities, local SEO should be part of that plan from the start. You can see our full approach, timelines and pricing model on the SEO services page.