What criteria should I use to select an SEO company?

Use two kinds of criteria, and keep them apart. The first kind is a short set of conditions every candidate must meet before you compare anything else: you keep ownership of your accounts, the methods stay inside Google’s spam policies, and nobody promises you a ranking. The second kind is the set of qualities you score among the companies that pass: relevant experience, the quality of the work itself, how clearly the process and pricing are explained, communication, interest in your business, and, where the company offers it, advice on AI features in search. For every scored criterion, decide in advance what evidence will settle it. What a company tells you while you are choosing is a claim until something confirms it, and a scorecard only works when it scores what you can check.

Set the pass-or-fail conditions first

These conditions do not belong on the scorecard, because they are not matters of degree.

The first is ownership and access. Your website, domain, analytics, Search Console property, and Business Profile stay in your name, and the company is added as a user. Search Console makes this practical: its user and permission levels separate an owner, who has full control over the property and can add and remove other users, from a full user, who can view all data and take some actions, and a restricted user, who has simple view rights on most data. The company can do its work under a user role while you remain the owner.

The second is method. The company commits in writing to work within Google Search Essentials and the spam policies, and can tell you what it will not do.

The third is the absence of a ranking promise. Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO is direct about this: it says no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google.

Treat a company that fails one of these as out of the running, however well it scores on everything else. A scorecard that averages a missing condition against a polished presentation lets the presentation win.

The scored criteria, and the evidence that settles each one

Relevant experience

The claim you will hear is “we work with businesses like yours.” The evidence is an account of a comparable problem: a site with your business model, what was different about it, and what the company changed as a result. Google’s own list of questions to ask an SEO includes “What’s your experience in my industry?” and “What’s your experience in my country/city?”, and it suggests asking past clients “if they felt that this SEO provided useful service, was easy to work with, and produced positive results.” A reference you have spoken to counts as evidence. A logo on a slide does not.

Quality of the work itself

Two companies can propose the same strategy and deliver very different work, and the difference only shows in work product. Ask each candidate for a sample deliverable with client details removed: an audit, a content brief, or a monthly report. Read it for specifics. Does it name pages and problems, explain why one fix comes before another, and say what was done and what changed?

Look at how its recommendations are supported. Google suggests asking: “Do they cite official Google documentation as supporting evidence for their recommendations?” A recommendation backed by Google’s documentation is one you can check yourself. Be careful with tools described as approved by Google: Google states that it “doesn’t evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools.”

Process and pricing in plain language

You should be able to read, before signing, what the first months of work will involve, what the fee includes, what counts as extra, and how billing works. One of Google’s suggested questions covers the ongoing side: “Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?” Score the written proposal, not the verbal answer. A commitment that appears only in conversation is hard to hold anyone to later.

Communication and reporting

The evidence here is concrete and easy to request: the name of your contact, how often you will hear from them, whether significant changes need your approval, and a sample report. A useful report ties the work to traffic and inquiries measured in your own analytics, explains what was done and why, and says what will change next. A dashboard with no interpretation tells you what happened without telling you what the company did about it.

Interest in your business

Google puts this plainly: “See if the SEO is interested in you and your business. If they’re not interested, find someone who is.” It also says what that interest looks like: questions “about what makes your business unique, who your competitors are, how search results can help, and how your customers find you.” Count those questions in your first conversation. The sales process is the only sample of working together you get before you sign, so score what it shows.

Advice on AI search features

If a company offers advice on AI features in search, sometimes sold as “AEO” or “GEO”, Google’s hiring guidance gives you the test: “is their advice aligned with Google Search’s official guidance on optimizing for generative AI features?” Ask the company what it would change on your site for these features and why, then compare the answer with Google’s guidance. A specific answer that matches the guidance scores well. An answer built on steps the guidance does not mention deserves a follow-up question: where do those steps come from?

Weight the criteria before the first call

Decide how much each criterion matters to you before you speak to anyone, so that a strong pitch cannot rearrange your priorities. For example, a business with a serious technical problem might weight experience with that problem and the quality of work highest, while a small company without in-house marketing staff might weight communication and plain-language process more heavily.

Score each company as strong, adequate, or weak on every criterion, and write down the evidence beside each score. A score with nothing written beside it counts as weak. This rule is what makes the scorecard useful: it moves the comparison from how each company made you feel to what each company showed you.

If a candidate offers an audit before you hire anyone, use it as evidence for the scorecard rather than as a sales step. Google’s advice for that stage is to “only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don’t grant them write access)”, and it describes what the audit should deliver: “realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved.” The audit then shows you the quality of the work and the way the company communicates, using your own site.

When two companies end up close

Look at the evidence column, not the totals. The company whose scores rest on things you saw, read, or confirmed with a past client is the safer choice over one whose scores rest on what you were told, even when the second total is slightly higher. If the evidence is thin on both sides, ask both companies for the same thing, such as a sample report or their written plan for your first months, and score again.