How to Hire an SEO Agency: 6 Steps From Brief to Contract
Six steps to hire an SEO agency: a one-page brief, a budget you can hold for six months, three proposals compared line by line, proof, and the contract.
By Tyler Phan8 min readLast reviewed
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On October 5 a business owner asked r/SEO whether to hire an SEO expert or an agency. "If I hire a team member then I may need to train him/her," they wrote. "And if I hire an agency then I may have to look for massive budget." The thread drew 46 comments. One reply, at 1 point when we read it, put the order of operations in two sentences: "Pay for a one-off audit/roadmap before hiring either. Once you know whether the real work is technical SEO, content, links, local, etc., it's much easier to decide if you need an employee, a freelancer or an agency."
We agree with the order. We'd also rather you didn't let an agency write your brief for you, so the steps below start with your own page of notes and end with a contract you've read.
- 1Write a one-page briefBefore any call
- 2Set a six-month budgetMonthly fee times six
- 3Send it to three agenciesSame brief, no cold emailers
- 4Compare five linesWork, people, plan, measure, access
- 5Check proof and referencesSearch Console, past clients
- 6Read the contractThen set up month one
1. Write a one-page brief
Put five things on one page: what you sell and to whom, three to five competitors who show up where you'd like to, what's wrong now (a traffic drop, a new site, a redesign coming), your monthly budget, and the pages whose clicks you'll judge the agency by. The competitor list comes from another reply in the same thread, which said to "review your current website, tell them your goals, and then tell them 3-5 of your competitors."
A written brief also tests the agency. Google's advice on hiring an SEO says yours "should ask questions about what makes your business unique, who your competitors are, how search results can help, and how your customers find you." An agency that answers your page with its standard deck hasn't read it.
If you can't fill in the "what's wrong" line, you're at the stage the first reply described: find out before you hire. A paid audit is one way, and our post on SEO audit cost covers when a free check is enough.
2. Set a budget you can hold for six months
Two price surveys give different answers, probably because they asked different people. In Ahrefs' poll of 439 SEO providers (the page was last updated in August 2024), the most common monthly retainer is $501 to $1,000. In Neil Patel's survey of 500 U.S. professionals (published in April 2025), the most common monthly spend is $1,001 to $2,500. Our posts on SEO retainer cost and SEO cost per month for a small business go through both.
Whatever the monthly figure, multiply it by six before you sign. One reply in the same thread did the yearly sum the way its author says they explain it to home service owners: "if you hire an agency at 2,000 per month, that's $24,000 per year." The same reply advised: "only sign month to month." We'd add the reverse risk. A plan you cancel in month two never gets judged on results, so pick a monthly figure you could keep paying through month six. Our own refund check runs over six months too.
3. Send the same brief to three agencies
Three proposals are enough to see what's normal and what's padding. More than that and you're comparing sales decks.
Find them through people you know, the agencies behind sites in your field that you can see doing well, or the pages you read while researching. Be wary of anyone who found you first. Google's hiring advice says the same thing: "Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue." Our list of SEO agency red flags covers that one and eight more.
Send all three the same brief and the same deadline. If one replies without having looked at your site, that tells you how month four will go. Google puts it plainly: "If they're not interested, find someone who is."
4. Compare the proposals line by line
Put the three proposals side by side and fill in five lines for each. Blank lines are the answer.
| Line | What a usable proposal states | Ask if it's missing |
|---|---|---|
| Work each month | Numbers: pages, fixes, links, reports | How many, and where will I see each one? |
| Who does the work | Names, not "our team" | Who edits my pages, and will they still be on it in six months? |
| First three months | A plan, in order | What do you do first, and why? |
| How results are measured | Search Console clicks on named pages | What do you expect, by when, measured how? |
| Access | Read-only Search Console for an audit before you sign | Why do you need more than that now? |
Two of these lines come from a September r/SEO thread on what to look for when hiring an agency. A one-person agency owner, writing "on the seller side", said: "The senior who pitches you is often not the one editing your pages, and agency churn means the strategy you bought walks out the door. Put the names in the contract." Another reply said to "ask for a clear 3-6 month plan before signing anything." The other two come from Google's hiring advice. On measurement it suggests asking "What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?" On access, if an SEO offers an audit, "only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don't grant them write access)."
Our 12 questions to ask an SEO agency go deeper on each line, with the proof to ask for.
5. Check proof and references
Ask each agency to show results in Search Console, on a date range that starts before their work did. Our guide to vetting SEO agency case studies lists what a real one includes and how screenshots mislead.
Then the references. Google's advice: "Ask past clients if they felt that this SEO provided useful service, was easy to work with, and produced positive results." Call two, and ask the second one what went wrong.
This is the step we can't pass yet. Elmrank has no past clients to put you in touch with. What we can show is the Search Console data of three sites we own and run, drops included, on our use cases page, and a sample monthly report filled in with one of them. It's weaker proof than a client who'll take your call, and you should weigh it that way.
6. Read the contract, then set up month one
Four things belong in writing: the minimum term, the notice period, any setup or exit fee, and who owns what. One reply in the September thread described agencies that register domains in their own names and keep the passwords, then put it this way: "The only thing that should make it hard to leave a digital marketing agency is the ROI they create for you. So check the contract. It should clearly spell out that you own everything the agency creates for you." Our post on retainer costs lists published contract terms from month to month up to 12 months.
Once you've signed, give the agency the access the proposal named, in accounts that stay in your name. Google's advice covers what to expect back: "If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site." At the end of month one, ask for the list of changes and check three of them yourself; our post on what an SEO agency does each month shows how in 15 minutes.
What hiring us looks like
Our process is shorter because the plan is fixed, so there's no proposal to negotiate. You send your site through the start page, and within 12 hours we email the first three things we'd fix. If you go ahead, we invoice $500 for the first month (PayPal, due within 7 days). That month covers an SEO and GEO audit, the technical fixes it finds, site design and a content plan. From month two it's $300 a month, billed at the start of each month, for up to 30 articles, ongoing fixes, hosting and a monthly report.
Here are our own answers to the five lines from step 4. The work: up to 30 articles a month plus the technical fixes, each listed in the monthly report. Who does it: our pipeline researches and drafts the articles with AI, and a person approves each one before it goes live; Elmrank is the trading name of an individual based in Vietnam, and our founder signs these posts. The first three months: the audit, fixes, design and content plan in month one, then articles and ongoing fixes. How we measure: Google Search clicks in your own Search Console. Access: Search Console, your domain account, and your repo or an admin account on your platform. The domain stays in your name, the code and content live in your repo, and we reply to email within 12 hours.
There's no minimum contract; cancelling takes effect at the end of the month you've paid for. The one result our terms promise is a refund if your Google clicks in the sixth month haven't grown compared with the first, after 6 paid months in a row, with Search Console shared with us the whole time and our published pages left up. We don't do link building, so if your market needs links, a retainer that includes them is the better hire.
Questions
Should I hire an SEO expert or an agency?
It depends on how much work there is and what kind. One reply in an r/SEO thread asking exactly this suggested paying for a one-off audit first, so you know whether the job is technical SEO, content, links or local before you choose who does it. Our post on in-house SEO versus an agency compares the monthly cost of each option.
How we know this
Written by Tyler Phan. Every source below was read on the date shown; the page was last reviewed on Oct 19, 2026.
- r/SEO, Should I hire an SEO expert or an agency? (post by u/Salman_Shk; comments by u/TrafficAcademySEO, u/burnermarketing, u/JunctionSEO), accessed Oct 17, 2026
- r/SEO, What to look for when hiring a new SEO(?) agency in today's time? (comments by u/kemalios, u/sridevira87, u/RankingsDotIO), accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?, accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Ahrefs, SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? 439 People Polled, accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Neil Patel, SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? (survey of 500 U.S. professionals), accessed Oct 16, 2026
- Elmrank, Terms of service (billing, cancelling, traffic guarantee), accessed Oct 17, 2026
Send us your site.
We reply within 12 hours with what we'd fix first. Then we run it for you, technical SEO and content: $500 for the first month, then $300 a month for up to 30 articles. You don't need any technical knowledge, and you can cancel any time.
