What SEO services actually involve
A serious SEO engagement has four distinct workstreams. Most agencies do at least two of these; the best do all four and are honest about the prioritisation.
Technical audit and fixes
The starting point for almost any engagement. A technical audit covers crawlability, indexation, site speed, mobile usability, HTTPS, structured data, canonicalisation, and internal linking. Problems found here block everything else — there's no point publishing brilliant content if the pages aren't getting indexed.
Expect a prioritised list of issues, not just a raw export from a crawl tool. Ahrefs flagging 4,000 "issues" is not a strategy. A good auditor tells you which five things to fix first and why.
Content strategy and creation
Keyword research feeds into a content plan that identifies the topics worth covering, in what format, at what depth. Execution means writing, editing, and publishing — either by the agency or with your team doing the work and them doing the direction.
The honest version of content strategy also covers pruning: identifying existing pages that are thin, duplicated, or cannibalising each other, and either improving or removing them.
Link earning
Link building is the most time-consuming and least predictable workstream. Good practitioners focus on earning links through content worth citing, digital PR, and genuine relationship-building. Anyone promising a fixed number of links per month at a low price is buying them — and that's a risk you carry, not them.
Ongoing monitoring
Rankings, traffic, indexation, Core Web Vitals, and backlink profile all need watching. Google updates happen constantly; a site that's performing well in January can lose ground by March without any change on your end. Monitoring catches problems early and attributes them correctly.
Red flags
These should make you pause or walk away:
- Guaranteed rankings — no one can guarantee positions. Google decides. Guarantees are either dishonest or attached to terms that make them meaningless (guaranteed to rank for your brand name, congratulations).
- "Secret algorithm" claims — search ranking is complex, but not secret. Google publishes its Quality Rater Guidelines and has documented its core signals over decades. Anyone claiming insider knowledge is selling mystique.
- Vague deliverables — "we'll work on your SEO" is not a scope of work. You should know exactly what will be produced: audits, content pieces, link outreach targets, reports. If they can't write it down, they can't do it.
- Ownership of your assets — some agencies build your site, content, or link profiles in ways that give them control. If you leave, you lose everything. Insist on owning your CMS, your content, and your Search Console access from day one.
- No mention of risk — aggressive link schemes and content spinning work until they don't. An honest practitioner will tell you what's safe, what's grey, and what could get you penalised.
Green flags
- Case studies with actual numbers — organic traffic increase, ranking movement on specific terms, revenue impact. Not "we helped a client in your industry grow significantly."
- Transparent process — they can explain exactly what they'll do in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. The first month of almost any engagement should be audit and strategy — anyone who starts publishing content before understanding your site is guessing.
- Realistic timelines — SEO is typically a 6–12 month investment before meaningful results, longer for competitive industries. Practitioners who set that expectation upfront are honest about how it works.
- Integration with your wider marketing — SEO doesn't live in isolation. A good practitioner asks about your sales cycle, your existing content, your PR activity, and your paid media — because all of those interact with organic search.
Questions to ask before hiring
- Can you show me a client in a similar competitive situation, and walk me through what you did?
- What would you prioritise in the first 90 days for our site specifically?
- How do you build links, and can you show me examples?
- How do you handle a Google algorithm update that negatively affects a client?
- What does the reporting look like and how often do we meet?
- What happens to the work if we part ways — do we retain everything?
If they struggle with any of these, or give you rehearsed non-answers, keep looking.
In-house vs agency vs freelancer
The right structure depends on budget and volume. A freelancer is often the right answer for small sites or one-off audits — lower overhead, direct accountability. An agency makes sense when you need a range of skills (technical, content, PR) and enough work to justify the account management overhead. In-house only makes sense when SEO is a primary growth channel and you have enough work for full-time focus.
Whatever the structure, make sure someone on your side understands SEO well enough to evaluate the work. Outsourcing the understanding is as dangerous as outsourcing the work itself. Our articles section and glossary are good starting points.