What should a good SEO agency actually do?
A good SEO agency fixes what stops search engines crawling and understanding your site, targets the searches your buyers make, improves or creates the pages that answer them, earns legitimate links and mentions, and reports results you can verify yourself.
If an agency's proposal covers only one of these areas, such as links or blog posts, it is selling a tactic rather than SEO. That can still be useful, but price and judge it as a tactic.
- Technical SEO: crawling, indexing, site speed, Core Web Vitals, redirects, duplicate content and structured data
- Keyword research and mapping: matching each important search to one page on your site
- On-page optimization: titles, headings, internal links and copy that answers the query
- Content: service pages, location pages, guides and FAQs
- Authority: reviews, business listings, digital PR and links from relevant sites
- Measurement: GA4, Google Search Console, rank tracking and a monthly report
The SEO agency selection checklist
Score each agency on these points before comparing prices. An agency that fails two or three of them is unlikely to be cheap in the end.
It also helps to check the agency's own search presence. An SEO agency whose own site is slow, thin or hard to find for its own services is asking you to trust work it has not done for itself.
- They ask for Search Console and analytics access, or run an audit, before proposing a plan
- They can explain what they will do in the first 90 days, in plain language
- They show live client sites and will put you in touch with a client
- They tell you what they need from you: approvals, content input, developer time
- They explain how they earn links and can show recent examples
- Reports use data from your own GA4 and Search Console, not only their own tools
- You own every account, and the contract says what happens to content and links if you leave
- They understand your market: local SEO for one city is a different job from national e-commerce SEO
- They can talk sensibly about AI search: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity
What questions should you ask an SEO agency?
The best questions force specifics. A vague answer to any of these is a warning sign, however polished the pitch deck.
- Which of your current clients is most like us, and what did you do for them?
- What are the three biggest problems on my site right now?
- Which keywords or topics will you target first, and why those?
- How many hours or deliverables do I get each month?
- Who will actually do the work, and where are they based?
- How do you get links, and can I see some you built recently?
- What will the monthly report contain, and can I see a sample?
- When should I expect movement, and what will you measure in the meantime?
- What happens to the content, links and accounts if I cancel?
Which SEO agencies waste your money? The red flags
Walk away from guaranteed rankings, secret methods and cheap bulk links. Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO states that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and link schemes can lead to a manual action against your site.
One red flag can be a misunderstanding; several together usually mean the agency earns its fee from volume, not results.
- Guaranteed #1 rankings: no agency controls Google's results, and guarantees usually cover obscure keywords nobody searches
- Secret or proprietary methods: legitimate SEO is not secret, and refusing to explain the work usually hides risky tactics
- PBNs (private blog networks): networks of sites built only to link to clients; they break Google's spam policies on link schemes and can be devalued without warning
- Bulk links at a low fixed price: "500 backlinks for $99" means directories, comment spam or hacked sites
- Mass AI content with no editing: Google's spam policies on scaled content abuse target pages produced at scale mainly to manipulate rankings
- Reports with only rankings: no clicks, leads or revenue, or rankings for terms you never asked about
- Agency-owned accounts: your analytics, Search Console or Google Business Profile held in the agency's name
- Long lock-ins: a 12-month contract before any work is visible
- Pressure tactics: prices "valid today only", or unsolicited emails claiming your site has urgent SEO errors
What should a monthly SEO report show?
A useful SEO report shows what was done, what changed in your own data and what happens next. It should take ten minutes to read and connect back to leads or sales.
In the first three months, judge progress on work completed and leading indicators such as indexed pages and impressions, because clicks and enquiries usually lag behind.
- Organic clicks, impressions and average position from Google Search Console
- Organic sessions, conversions and revenue or leads from GA4
- Rankings for an agreed set of target keywords, with movement since last month
- Work completed: pages created or improved, technical fixes, links and listings earned
- Issues found and their status
- AI visibility: referrals from AI assistants and the results of a fixed set of prompt checks
- The plan for next month
What should the first 90 days with an SEO agency look like?
The first 90 days should produce an audit, a prioritized plan and visible fixes, not just a promise of future rankings. If you cannot point to concrete changes on your site by the end of month three, something is wrong.
- Weeks 1–2: access to Search Console, GA4 and the site, a technical audit, and a baseline of current traffic, rankings and leads
- Weeks 3–6: a keyword map agreed with you, plus critical technical fixes such as indexing, redirects, speed and structured data
- Weeks 6–12: priority pages rewritten or created, internal linking improved, Google Business Profile and listings cleaned up, and first outreach for links and mentions
- End of month 3: a review comparing results with the baseline and agreeing the plan for the next quarter
How much does an SEO agency cost in 2026?
Monthly SEO retainers typically run from about $300 to $1,500 with offshore agencies and $1,000 to $5,000 with small US and UK agencies, and higher for enterprise or highly competitive work. One-off audits often cost $500–$5,000.
These are typical ranges, based on what we see when clients share competing proposals, not a survey. Price should follow scope: the number of pages and locations, competition in your niche, how much content and link building is included and how much development work the site needs. Be cautious of retainers far below these ranges; at $100 a month there is little time for real work.
- Local SEO for one location: often the lower end of each range
- National or e-commerce SEO: mid to high end, because of more pages and stronger competitors
- Multi-market or multilingual SEO: the highest, since each market needs its own research and content
- Hourly consultants: US and UK specialists often charge $100–$250 an hour
- One-off technical audit: worth buying on its own if you have an in-house team to implement the fixes
How does AEO change your SEO brief?
In 2026 an SEO brief should also ask how the agency will get your business cited in AI answers. The foundations are the same as SEO, but a few extra tasks now belong in scope.
Ask each agency to show how one of its clients appears today in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews for a few buyer questions. Agencies already doing AEO work will have a process for this; others may not.
Our guide What is AEO? explains each of these in detail.
- Structured data (JSON-LD) for your organization, services, products and FAQs
- Answer-first page copy and FAQs written the way buyers ask questions
- Indexing in Bing as well as Google, since Bing powers Copilot and is a key source for ChatGPT search
- Checking robots.txt and firewall rules so AI search crawlers are not blocked
- The same business name, address and description across the web
- Reviews and third-party mentions that AI engines can find
- Monthly tracking of AI referrals and a fixed set of buyer prompts
How does Devmenta approach SEO?
Devmenta's SEO service covers technical audits, keyword research and mapping, on-page optimization, content, indexing, GA4 and Search Console setup, rank tracking and monthly reports, with AEO built in.
SEO is part of every Devmenta plan at a different depth: basic on-page SEO on Starter ($399 a month), advanced on-page SEO and Google indexing on Growth ($699 a month), and monthly SEO reporting with ad management on Scale ($1,199 a month). Larger and multi-market campaigns are quoted separately.
For Fine Art Production, a luxury wedding photography and cinema studio in the US, Devmenta built venue pages and a full SEO and AEO implementation. Devmenta does not guarantee rankings, for the reasons above, but every plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee and no lock-in. Tell us about your site.
