12 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO or AEO Agency

Choosing the wrong SEO or AEO agency is an expensive mistake. You can spend thousands of dollars a month for a year and end up with nothing to show for it — or worse, with Google penalties that actively hurt your rankings. The marketing services industry has more than its share of firms that sell with confidence and deliver little. Before you sign any contract, these 12 questions will help you separate agencies that can genuinely move the needle from those that can't.

Questions About Their Process and Strategy

1. What specifically will you do in the first 90 days? Vague answers like "optimize your website" and "build your online presence" are red flags. A credible agency should be able to describe specific deliverables: a technical SEO audit, competitor analysis, content gap assessment, Google Business Profile optimization, citation cleanup, specific pages to be created or updated. If they can't tell you what they'll do in concrete terms, they likely don't have a defined process.

2. How do you approach AEO and GEO, not just traditional SEO? In 2026, an agency that can only talk about keyword rankings without addressing AI search visibility — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — is operating with an incomplete picture. Ask specifically how they help clients appear in AI-generated answers. If this is unfamiliar territory to them, their strategy is outdated.

3. Can you walk me through a recent client's results and exactly what caused them? Stories matter less than attribution. Ask not just "did your client rank better" but "what specifically did you do that caused that improvement?" An agency that can trace results to specific actions demonstrates genuine expertise. One that offers vague attribution ("we worked hard") should raise concern.

Questions About Reporting and Transparency

4. What metrics will you report on monthly, and how do they connect to revenue? Rankings and traffic are means to an end. Ask how the agency connects their work to business outcomes: leads, phone calls, form submissions, bookings. An agency measuring vanity metrics (impressions, raw traffic) without connecting them to leads is less valuable than one that tracks the full customer journey.

5. Will I have direct access to my Google Search Console and Analytics accounts? You should always own your own data. Any agency that requires you to go through them to access your performance data, or that sets up accounts in their own name rather than yours, is creating unhealthy dependency. Your accounts, your data — full stop.

Questions About Their Track Record

6. Do you have experience with service businesses in my category? A strong record in e-commerce doesn't automatically translate to local service business SEO. Ask for examples of other service businesses — HVAC, plumbing, roofing, landscaping, etc. — they've worked with and can point to measurable results for.

7. Can you provide client references I can contact directly? Ask for references and actually call them. Ask the references: Did the agency deliver on their promises? Did rankings and leads actually improve? Was the communication consistent and transparent? Would you hire them again?

8. Have any of your clients ever received a Google penalty while working with you? The honest answer is often "yes" — but what matters is what happened next. How was it handled? What caused it? Agencies that swear they've never had a client penalized may be hiding something; agencies that can walk you through a penalty, the recovery, and what they learned are demonstrating genuine expertise.

Questions About Red Flags and Red Lines

9. Do you guarantee rankings? No one can guarantee Google rankings — and an agency that does is either lying or will use low-quality tactics that may get you short-term results but long-term damage. Rankings are an outcome, not a guarantee.

10. What link-building methods do you use? This is the highest-risk area of SEO. Legitimate link building means earning links through quality content, PR, partnerships, and community involvement. Illegitimate link building involves buying links from low-quality sites, link farms, or PBNs. Ask specifically — and if the answer is vague or evasive, walk away.

11. What happens to the work if we stop working together? You should own everything. Your website content, your links (to the extent links can be owned), your local citations, your Google Business Profile. Some agencies create content on platforms they control, making it disappear if you leave. Clarify ownership upfront.

12. How do you stay current with changes to search algorithms and AI search? The search landscape is evolving faster than at any point in the past decade. An agency with no clear process for staying current on AI search developments, Google algorithm updates, and platform changes is falling behind in real time. Ask what they read, what communities they're part of, and what recent changes have affected their strategies.

The right agency will welcome these questions — they're the conversations that serious professionals want to have. PaperClick Marketing builds transparent, results-driven SEO and AEO programs for service businesses. We're happy to answer every question on this list before we work together.