Hire SEO Agency: The 8-Step Vetting Process (2026)

To hire SEO agency help without regret, run the vetting like an operations project: a brief, a baseline, a scripted interview and a signed change log.

This is the eight-step process I'd run, built on Google's own page Do you need an SEO?, plus the AI-search checks that page added for 2026.

If you'd rather walk through it live, book a free SEO strategy session with my team and bring your shortlist.

Step 1: Confirm you actually need outside help

Google is blunt about this: a small local business can usually handle much of its own SEO.

Its advice is to read the SEO starter guide first, so you can spot a bad technique when someone pitches it.

Outside help earns its keep in three situations.

A redesign or relaunch is coming. Google calls this a great time to hire, and the earlier the better.
You have pages but no time. The work is clear, but nobody in the business owns it each week.
The site is technically tangled. JavaScript rendering, redirects, migrations or several country versions.

If none of those apply, spend a month on the starter guide before you take a single sales call.

Step 2: Write a one-page brief before the first call

Agencies pitch better when they have something real to react to.

Keep the brief to one page and fill in these six fields.

What you sell, and the three services or products that matter most.
Who buys, and the exact phrases they type or ask an AI assistant.
Your top three competitors in search, not just in real life.
What has already been tried, including any old agency work.
Who signs off on site changes, and how fast they can do it.
What a good result looks like to you: calls, form fills, orders or booked jobs.

Send the same brief to every agency so the proposals compare like for like.

Step 3: Pull your own baseline numbers first

Never let the agency set the starting line.

Export these yourself on day zero and save them in a dated folder.

Search Console: clicks, impressions and top queries for the last 16 months.
Search Console's generative AI performance reports, which show impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode and reached every site on 31 August 2026.
Bing Webmaster Tools, including its AI Performance report for Copilot citations.
Analytics: organic sessions and conversions by landing page.
A plain list of every live URL from your sitemap.

Later, when an agency reports progress, you compare against your file, not their slide.

Step 4: Run the interview with Google's question list

Google's hiring page gives you the interview script, so use it word for word in your own notes.

Ask every agency the same questions, in the same order, and score each answer from 0 to 2.

Question to ask	A strong answer sounds like
Can you show examples of past work?	Named pages or anonymised screenshots with dates and context
Do you follow Google Search Essentials?	Yes, and they can point to the policy pages they work from
What results do you expect, and when?	Ranges and leading indicators, never a fixed position
What's your experience in my industry and area?	Specific problems they've seen in businesses like yours
How will you tell me what you change?	A shared change log and the reasoning behind each change
How long have you been doing this?	A straight number, with the work to back it

Google adds one test you can't script: notice whether they ask about your customers, your competitors and what makes you different.

If they don't seem curious about your business, Google's advice is to keep looking.

📞 Want a second opinion on your shortlist? Bring your brief and the proposals you've received, and my team will tell you which answers hold up against Google's own checklist. Book a free SEO strategy session. → Grab a free strategy session slot

Step 5: Add the AI-search questions for 2026

Google's hiring page now asks whether an agency's AEO or GEO advice lines up with its official guide to optimising for generative AI features.

That guide says that, from Google Search's view, optimising for generative AI is still SEO.

So add these four questions to your script.

Which official Google, OpenAI or Bing pages back your AI-search advice?
What do you change in robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, and why?
Will you tell me plainly that nobody can promise a ChatGPT or AI Overview mention?
If you suggest llms.txt, will you also tell me Google says Search does not use it?

On the last point, Google's guide says you can ignore extra AI text files and content "chunking" for Google Search, and its AI features page says no special schema is needed either.

Bing's Webmaster Guidelines make the same point for its side: GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations.

Step 6: Scope the audit and lock down access

Most engagements open with an audit, and this is where operators get careless with permissions.

Grant read-only access to Search Console for the audit stage, exactly as Google advises.
Hold back admin, hosting and FTP access until there is a signed scope.
Ask for the audit to give realistic estimates of improvement and of the work involved.
Treat any tool "approved by Google" claim as a warning: Google says it doesn't endorse third-party SEO tools, and those tools can't see its internal ranking data.

If the audit promises first place, Google's own line is to find someone else.

Step 7: Test their link building answer against the spam policy

Ask how they earn links, then read the answer next to Google's spam policies.

Google defines link spam as links made mainly to manipulate rankings, and it lists buying links that pass credit, heavy link swaps and automated link programs as examples.

Paid placements are allowed when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", as Google's outbound link guide explains.

Good outreach-earned links are still a core service, and at Goldie Agency the wording is "manual outreach, no PBNs".

One more check from Google's page: you should never have to link back to an SEO as part of the deal.

Step 8: Put reporting, change logs and ownership in writing

The contract is where good intentions become operating rules.

Every site change goes into a shared log with date, URL, what changed and why.
Content, schema and reports you pay for are yours to keep if you part ways.
Accounts for Search Console, analytics and your Business Profile stay in your name.
Reports compare against your Step 3 baseline, including AI-feature impressions.
Either side can explain any change in plain words on request.

Google reminds owners that they are responsible for what any hired company does on their site, so this paperwork protects you, not the agency.

🔥 Rather run Steps 2, 3 and 5 with your own AI agents? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week, so you can learn AI SEO yourself before you sign anything. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Gotchas that sink agency engagements

Cold email pitches. Google tells owners to be wary of SEO firms that email out of the blue.
"Special relationship" or "priority submit" claims. Google names both as warning signs.
Vague monthly activity lists. Hours logged tell you nothing; URLs changed tell you everything.
Shared logins. Give each person their own access so you can remove one without locking out everyone.
Blocking the wrong bot. Disallowing GPTBot stops OpenAI training use, but blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers.

Where AI agents speed up the vetting

An agent can't sign the contract, but it can do the boring prep in an afternoon.

Crawl your sitemap and list missing titles, duplicate H1s and broken links for your baseline.
Fetch your robots.txt and check each AI crawler against OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic crawler docs.
Turn each proposal into a table of deliverables so you compare scopes side by side.
Draft follow-up questions for any answer that dodged a timeframe or a method.

Keep a human on the final call, because judgement about trust doesn't automate.

If you want the agent workflows ready-made, the AI Profit Boardroom is where Julian shows them step by step.

Worked example: a plumbing firm hiring its first agency

Here's how a three-van plumbing business would run the process in practice.

Monday: the owner fills in the one-page brief, listing boiler repair, leak detection and bathroom refits as the money services.
Tuesday: the office manager exports Search Console, the gen-AI report and the sitemap into a folder named with the date.
Wednesday: an AI agent checks robots.txt and flags that a security plugin blocks OAI-SearchBot.
Thursday and Friday: three agencies get the same brief and the same interview script.
The following week: the owner scores answers, drops the agency that promised the top spot, and grants read-only access to the winner for the audit.

Nothing in that week needs a technical background, only a checklist and some discipline.

Your 30-day onboarding checklist

Day 1: kickoff call, brief reviewed, baseline file shared.
Day 7: audit delivered with a prioritised fix list.
Day 14: first changes logged, each one tied to a URL.
Day 21: content plan agreed for your top services and buyer questions.
Day 30: first report against your baseline, plus what's next and why.

📞 Ready to see what an audit should look like? On the call we look at your site, your competitors and your AI-search visibility, then map the first steps. Book a free SEO strategy session. → Book your strategy session now

The red-flag scorecard to keep on your desk

Red flag	Why it matters
Guaranteed #1 ranking	Google says nobody can guarantee it
Guaranteed ChatGPT or AI Overview mention	OpenAI says placement is not guaranteed
Secret or unexplained methods	Google tells you to be careful with secretive firms
Private blog networks	Link schemes fall under Google's spam policies
Asks for admin access on day one	Read-only access is enough for an audit

One red flag is enough to walk away, and if you want help reading a proposal, book a free strategy session with Julian Goldie's team.

🎁 Two free tools for the process above Grab the 200+ AI SEO Prompts for your brief and baseline, plus the free link building book so you can judge any agency's link answer in Step 7. → Book a free SEO strategy session

Also On Our Network

FAQ: Hire SEO Agency

What access should I give an SEO agency for the audit?

Google advises read-only access to Search Console at the audit stage. Hold back admin, hosting and FTP access until the scope is signed.

Which robots.txt bots matter for AI search?

OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and Claude-SearchBot for Claude search. Training bots such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot are controlled separately.

How many agencies should I interview?

Three is a workable number. Send each the same brief and the same questions so the answers compare fairly.

Should the change log be in the contract?

Yes. A shared log of every change, with the URL and the reason, lets you check the work against your own baseline.

Does the agency need to build links to its own site from mine?

No. Google's hiring page says you should never have to link to an SEO.

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About Julian

I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.

I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.

I've built a 7-figure SEO and link building agency, Goldie Agency, with a team of 70+ SEO experts.
I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
I wrote "Link Building Mastery".
My Udemy courses have taught over 29,000 students.

→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom

Run the eight steps in order, keep your own baseline, and when you're ready to hire SEO agency support you can test first, book a free strategy session with Goldie Agency.