Knowledge base / For owners
Fifteen questions to ask before you hire anyone, including us.
Each one has an answer that should reassure you and an answer that should end the meeting. Four of them are questions we would rather you did not ask, which is why they are here.
Key takeaways
- What is the single best question? “What do I own, and how quickly can I take it, if I leave in six months?” The answer reveals how the whole relationship is structured, and nobody rehearses it.
- What answer should end a meeting? A guaranteed ranking position, a guaranteed spot in an AI answer, or any promise with a date attached. Nobody controls those systems, and offering a guarantee on one means either not knowing that or not minding.
- Should prices be published? Not necessarily, but a refusal to give a number before a discovery call is worth noticing. We publish ours, which is a position rather than an industry rule.
- What is the most overlooked question? Who holds the logins. Plenty of businesses find out they do not own their own domain or Business Profile at the exact moment they try to leave.
The four we would rather you did not ask
These are the ones with teeth. They are uncomfortable for any agency, including this one, which is the reason to lead with them.
- If I leave in six months, what do I own and how fast can I have it? You want a specific list and a timescale. A vague answer, or a pause, usually means the exit has never been designed. Ours is a full export within five business days, including credentials, schema files and the content.
- Whose name is on the domain, the hosting and the Google Business Profile? It should be yours, with them as a manager. If any of the three is in their name, you are renting your own business identity. See who owns your website.
- What happens in a month when nothing improves? Flat months happen to everyone. What you are listening for is whether they will tell you, and what they do next. An agency that has never had a flat month is an agency that reports selectively.
- Which of these numbers would you still report if they went down? Ask it about the specific metrics in their proposal. It separates reporting from marketing faster than any other question.
What should I ask about scope and ownership?
- What exactly is in the price, and what is quoted separately? You want the second list to exist and be short. "Everything is included" usually means the boundaries have not been thought about yet.
- Who does the work? The person in the meeting, a team, or a subcontractor. Any of the three can be fine. Not knowing which is not.
- Will you write content with AI? Most will. The real question is who checks it and against what. We draft with AI and a marketer checks every page against eight published points before it goes out, and we say so rather than implying everything is hand-typed.
- Who owns the content if we part company? It should be you, outright, including the drafts.
What should I ask about measurement and reporting?
- What will the first report look like? Ask to see a real one with the client name removed. A sample that is all green charts and no commentary is a template.
- Where do your numbers come from? Search Console and analytics are your own data. A tool's estimated traffic is a model. Both are useful; being told which is which is not optional.
- How do you measure AI visibility? Listen for a method: an agreed question set, run on a schedule, recorded with dates. If the answer is a single screenshot of an assistant naming them, that is one sample from a system that varies by person and location.
- What will you stop doing if it is not working? A good answer names something specific. It means they expect to be judged.
Risk, and the three answers that should end a meeting
- What is the notice period, and is there a cancellation fee? Month to month with notice is clean. A twelve-month lock on maintenance work needs a reason beyond their cash flow.
- Have you worked in my industry, and can I speak to someone? Fair to ask. Also fair for them to decline on confidentiality, as we do under Quiet Client, as long as they offer something else: anonymised work, a method, a written scope.
- What could go wrong? Everyone has an answer to this if they have done the work for a few years. Nobody has an answer if they have not.
And the three that should end it: a guaranteed position in Google, a guaranteed mention in an AI answer, or a price that expires at the end of the call. The first two are not in anyone's control. The third is a sales technique, and it tells you what the rest of the relationship will feel like.
More on choosing an agency
Different risks rather than fewer. Larger firms have cover when someone is away and process behind the work; smaller ones give you the person who actually does it. What matters more than size is whether the person answering your questions is the person doing the work.
Per project for building something, monthly for keeping it alive and improving it. Be careful with monthly fees that are really paying off a build in instalments, because leaving usually triggers the balance. Ask what happens at month four if you stop.
Ask them the ownership question and the reporting question from this list. Both are reasonable for any client to ask, and the reaction tells you a great deal. A good agency answers them in a sentence each.
For technical and profile fixes, often weeks. For content and authority, months. Anyone giving you a confident date for a ranking is guessing, and the specific trap is a short contract sold on a timeline that the work cannot meet.
No, but you need to be able to tell work from activity. Every question on this page is answerable without technical knowledge, and the reports you get should be too. If you cannot understand the report, ask for a different report rather than assuming the fault is yours.
Because the clients we lose on those questions were going to be unhappy anyway, and because a buyer who asks them is a buyer who knows what they are getting. It is the same reason our prices are published rather than quoted after a call.
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