Look for a plan you can understand and assess.

Begin with your commercial priorities

Give the agency a concise account of what you sell, where you serve and which enquiries are valuable. Explain capacity limits and any services you do not want to promote. A useful recommendation should reflect those priorities. If the proposal could be sent unchanged to a restaurant, a manufacturer and a home service company, ask how it will become specific to your business.

Listen to the questions the team asks. They should need to understand your customers, service delivery and existing website before describing a detailed implementation. You can start with public information and a business brief. Later access should be proportionate to an agreed task and provided through the account’s own permission controls.

Ask for a clear chain from problem to action

Ask the provider to explain one representative recommendation in plain language. What issue have they observed? Which page or system does it affect? What change do they propose, and what will show whether it worked? You do not need to become a technical specialist, but you should be able to understand why a task belongs in the plan.

Separate findings based on your actual website from assumptions and ideas that still need validation. An initial conversation can identify likely opportunities without claiming a complete audit has already occurred. Ask for a prioritized first phase, including what your team must provide and which work depends on another supplier or platform.

Establish implementation and ownership responsibilities

Find out who will edit the site, write content, review business claims and check the enquiry path. A technically sound recommendation can remain unfinished if nobody owns implementation. Agree on how changes will be reviewed and how urgent issues will be handled. For a rebuild, include launch checks and responsibility for redirects, analytics and contact delivery.

Keep your business in control of its domain, website and reporting accounts. Clarify ownership of commissioned content, access to completed work and the process for ending or changing the arrangement. Ask whether work is subcontracted and who is accountable for its quality. These are practical operational questions, not indicators that a partnership needs to become adversarial.

• Name the person responsible for each implementation task.
• Document who approves business claims and content.
• Confirm account ownership and handover arrangements.

Examine claims and evidence carefully

Google’s hiring guidance warns against guaranteed first-place rankings and claims of a special relationship that controls search placement. Ask a provider making a strong claim to explain its basis. If a case study is relevant, understand the starting point, work completed, measurement period and limits. A result from another business is not a forecast for yours.

Ask how the agency evaluates links, city pages and content quality. You should receive an explanation of the method, not a requirement to trust secret tactics. Recommendations should be consistent with current search guidance and your real operation. Do not accept fabricated branches, invented reviews or unsupported credentials as substitutes for useful evidence.

Agree on a report that leads to decisions

A useful report explains completed work, relevant observations, unresolved issues and the next priorities. Choose a small group of business questions: Are the intended service pages being discovered? Are relevant visitors contacting us? Are those requests suitable? Search visibility, website interactions and lead outcomes answer different parts of that journey and should be labelled accordingly.

Set a review rhythm that gives your team time to act on findings. Require context for changes, including seasonality, a redesign or a shift in the services you promote. If something underperforms, the discussion should explain what can be checked next. A transparent process makes it easier to improve the plan and to decide whether the working relationship remains useful.