How to Choose a Local SEO Agency: 8 Checks Before You Sign

You’ve probably seen it before. A confident pitch, a 12-month contract, monthly reports full of green arrows, and a phone that rings no more often than it did. Then you try to leave and find out the agency set up your Google listing on its own account.

This guide shows how to choose a local SEO agency without relying on anyone’s sales pitch, including ours. We’re a local SEO agency, so read it with the scepticism you’d give any of them. The difference is that it includes the checks we’d lose points on, and it doesn’t rank anyone.

There are eight checks, in the order you’d actually do them. They work the same whether you’re comparing agencies, freelancers or solo specialists.

Step 1: Decide What a Good Result Looks Like for Your Business

Before you speak to a single agency, write down the result you want in one sentence. It becomes the yardstick for every pitch and every monthly report.

Make it about enquiries, not rankings. “More emergency call-outs in Warrington and Widnes” is a goal. “Rank higher on Google” isn’t, because an agency can deliver it without your phone ringing once. As HubSpot’s guide to hiring a local agency puts it, “rankings don’t pay the bills.”

1. Name the services that make you the most money.
2. Name the towns you want that work to come from.
3. Note roughly where enquiries come from now (phone, contact form, your Google listing). Our guide to tracking local SEO leads and rankings shows how.

You now have a one-line goal and a rough baseline. Any agency that doesn’t ask about either in the first conversation has already told you something.

Step 2: Build a Shortlist and Run the Free Background Checks

Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO says: “Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.” Wary, not never, but that unsolicited “your website isn’t ranking” email starts a lot of bad relationships.

A few free checks weed out poor fits before any sales call:

• Name the people. Find who’s behind the business and their track record. No names on the website? Ask why.
• Search Companies House. For a limited company, the free register shows the incorporation date, the directors and whether filings are up to date. Sole traders aren’t listed at all, which isn’t a red flag in itself.
• Weigh years trading fairly. Google suggests asking “How long have you been in business?” A long history is a genuine plus. A short one gives you less to verify, so lean harder on Step 5. By this measure Local Magnet is a young business.
• Read reviews on more than one platform, not just the testimonials on their own site.
• Test the local fit. Ask Google’s “What’s your experience in my country/city?” Do they know your area and trade, or is “local” just a page title?

Best for: getting to a shortlist of two or three providers.

Skip if: you can’t put a name to anyone behind the business.

Step 3: Choose the Right Size of Provider: Solo Specialist or Team

Every provider will tell you their size is the right size. It’s a trade-off, not a quality ranking, and each has a weak spot.

Solo specialist or freelancer. The person who pitches does the work, usually with less overhead in the price. But one person is a single point of failure: illness, holidays and a full diary all land on your account. There’s also less breadth if you need a new website or lots of content.

Team or agency. You get cover, broader skills and internal checks. But your main contact may be an account manager rather than the person doing the work, and every handoff loses context. Our local SEO cost guide covers who actually does the work in detail.

For fairness: Local Magnet is one person. That means no handoff, and no team depth. If you need guaranteed same-week cover or an in-house web build team, a larger agency may suit you better, and that’s a fair reason to choose one.

Pick the weak spot you can live with, then ask the question that covers it.

Step 4: Ask the Questions That Show How They Actually Work

Most lists of questions to ask an SEO agency include things a roofer or dentist can’t judge. Google’s “Do you need an SEO?” page has better ones. Use a 30-minute call to ask:

• “Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?”
• “What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?”
• “What’s your experience in my industry?”
• “Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site…?”

Then listen for four answers that should end the call:

1. A guarantee. “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” A claimed “special relationship” with Google is just as bad.
2. A secret method. “Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.” Proprietary is fine. Unexplainable isn’t.
3. Links they’ll buy or build automatically. Google’s spam policies name “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes” and “Using automated programs or services to create links to your site”. Sites that break them “may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all”. Google’s hiring guidance adds: “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire”. The penalty lands on you, not them.
4. Changes to your Google listing you didn’t ask for. Google’s Business Profile guidelines say “Including unnecessary information in your business name isn’t permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile.” Town names stuffed into your business name put your profile at risk, and so does a virtual office address.

Good answers sound different: a first-90-days plan tied to your Step 1 goal, and a timeframe given as a range with reasons.

You’re not judging the technique. You’re judging whether they’ll explain it.

Step 5: Check the Proof You Can Actually Verify

Every agency has a case study with a graph going up. Could you check any of it? Ask for:

• Dates and a before-and-after window. Undated results, or suspiciously short windows, can’t be judged.
• Screenshots from the source (Search Console, the Google Business Profile performance screen), not a designed graphic.
• A reference you can phone, ideally at a business like yours. Google suggests asking past clients whether the SEO “provided useful service, was easy to work with, and produced positive results”. If every client is under an NDA, ask why none will talk.
• Failures as well as wins. A provider with nothing to hide will tell you about tactics that didn’t work.

Anonymised case studies are legitimate, as many clients don’t want to be named. You just can’t check them, so ask for a reference call instead. Our own case studies page has one anonymised result for exactly that reason.

One offer should end the conversation. Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024 has banned fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews. The CMA’s guidance gives this example of a banned practice: “Offering a search engine optimisation service that promises to improve a trader’s rating, when one of the means that will be used is generating fake reviews.” Commissioning fake reviews is banned too, so your business would be in breach as well.

Keep the providers whose proof you can check. Drop the ones whose proof exists only as a PDF.

Step 6: Make Sure You Own Your Google Business Profile, Website and Data

On Google Business Profile, “Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership.” If your agency is the primary owner, only your agency can hand your listing back.

Every account the agency touches should belong to your business, with the agency added as a user:

• Google Business Profile: you as primary owner, on a Google account your business controls. The agency is a manager, with “mostly the same access” as an owner, except managers “can’t add or remove users or remove the profile”. Everyone uses their own Google account. No shared passwords.
• Search Console: you as owner, the agency as a user. When they leave, remove them and delete their verification tokens, or Google warns the removed owner “will be able to re-verify ownership if they choose to”.
• Google Analytics: you hold the Administrator role. The agency gets Editor or lower, so it can’t manage users (see Google’s GA4 roles help page).
• Domain name: registered to your business, in a registrar account you can log into. Check a .uk domain with Nominet’s lookup, or ask your registrar.
• Website and hosting: an admin login in your own name.

If an old agency still holds your listing, ask in writing first. Then request ownership at business.google.com/add. The current owner “has three days to respond”, and you can appeal a refusal. Claiming it after no reply “isn’t always available”, Google notes.

Get this set-up agreed in writing before you sign. An agency that resists it has told you how the exit will go.

Step 7: Agree What the Monthly Report Will Show Before You Start

A report can improve every month while your phone rings no more often than it did. So agree what goes in it before the work starts.

Google suggests asking “How do you measure your success?” and “How can I expect to communicate with you?” A good answer covers:

• Your Step 1 goal first: calls, form enquiries and bookings.
• Google Business Profile actions. Google reports calls, website clicks, direction requests and bookings from your profile directly.
• Rankings and traffic as explanation, not the headline.
• A monthly cadence, with a named person you can reach.

Ask to see an anonymised sample report from another client, and check whether it says what didn’t work as well as what did. Our guide to tracking local SEO leads covers how to track enquiries properly.

If the sample report never mentions an enquiry, the monthly ones won’t either.

Step 8: Read the Contract for the Way Out, Not the Way In

The 14-day right to cancel you get as a consumer doesn’t apply here. As Trading Standards guidance puts it, “There is no right to cancel business to business contracts.” Whatever the contract says about leaving is all you’ve got.

Find the answer to each of these in writing:

• Minimum term and notice. Can you give notice from day one, or only once the minimum term ends? Does the contract renew automatically for another fixed term if you miss a date?
• Content ownership. Do the pages, posts and images written for you belong to you once paid for, and stay live if you leave?
• Handover. Does it list what you get back: your accounts returned with their access removed (Step 6), copies of reports and data, logins for anything they set up?
• Anything paid for on your behalf. Tools, directory listings, subscriptions. Whose name are they in?

For typical contract lengths and pricing, see our local SEO cost guide. Our own plans carry a six-month commitment, so we’d expect you to ask us these same questions.

If the exit terms aren’t clear in writing, ask for them to be, before you sign rather than after.

FAQ

What are the biggest red flags when choosing a local SEO agency?

Guaranteed rankings, methods they won’t explain, setting up your Google listing or domain in their own name, offering to boost your reviews, and a contract with no clear way out. Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and offering fake reviews to businesses is banned under UK law. Any one of these is reason enough to keep looking.

Can an SEO agency guarantee first-page rankings?

No. Google’s own guidance says “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”, and warns against anyone claiming a special relationship with Google. A fair agency will give you a realistic timeframe as a range and explain what it depends on, such as your competition and the state of your website.

What should I do if my old agency won’t hand over my Google Business Profile?

Ask in writing first. If that fails, request ownership at business.google.com/add. Google emails the current owner, who has three days to respond. You can appeal a refusal, and you may be able to claim the profile if there’s no reply, though Google says that option isn’t always available.

Is a freelancer or an agency better for local SEO?

Neither is better by default. A freelancer or solo specialist usually means the person you meet does the work, but there’s no cover if they’re off. An agency has cover and broader skills, but the work may be handed to someone you’ve never met. Choose the model whose weak spot you can live with.

If you’d like to put us through the same eight checks, tell us what you do and where. We’ll give you a straight answer on whether we can help, and if we can’t, we’ll say so.