A What question

What's the cost of switching to a new SEO company?

3 min read Cites 1 source

The cost has three parts: what you pay directly during the change, the time your own staff spend handing the work over, and the results delayed while the new company learns the site. One cost can be avoided entirely if you act before giving notice: losing data and assets held in the old company’s accounts. Add up all three parts, then compare the total with the cost of staying with a company that is not delivering.

What you pay directly

Your current contract sets the notice period, any early termination fee, and whether work stops on the day you give notice or continues until the end of the period. If the old contract runs on while the new one starts, you pay both for that overlap; a short overlap can be worth paying for, because it avoids a gap in the work. Then ask the new company whether its audit and onboarding are included in the first month or billed separately, and get the answer in writing.

The data held in the old company’s accounts

Check where each of your accounts lives before you give notice: domain, hosting, Search Console, Analytics, Business Profile, and the content itself. Analytics deserves particular care, because the old company may have created your property inside its own Analytics account. Google’s help page on how to move a property in Google Analytics names this situation among the reasons to move one: “You might be reorganizing after a merger, after an internal restructuring, or after hiring a new agency.” It also sets the condition: “To move a property, you need the Administrator and Editor roles for both the source and destination accounts.”

In practice that means the move needs the old company’s cooperation, which is easiest to arrange while the relationship is still in place. The move keeps your history: “All reporting data associated with a property is moved (not copied) to the destination account.” It also avoids retagging the site, since “The Tracking ID (for example, G-123ABC) does not change, so there’s no need to retag anything.” Starting a new property instead leaves the history behind in the old account. For the content, check the contract for who owns what was written.

Staff time and lost knowledge

The old company knows what it changed, what it tried, and which pages matter, and much of that leaves with it unless it is written down. Ask it for a handover document: changes made with their dates, work in progress, open issues, and the list of accounts and access it holds. Then budget the hours your own team will spend briefing the new company and answering its questions.

Delayed results

A new company that audits before it acts starts charging before its own changes reach the site. A second risk is rework: changing pages that were performing well before there is evidence that they need it. Ask the new company what it will leave alone during its first phase, and how it will decide what to change.

Weighing the total

Add the overlap payments, any termination fee, the new setup fee, your staff time, and the value of results delayed. Set that against the cost of staying: continued spending on work that is not producing results, or on tactics that put the site at risk. Switching can be worth its cost; the aim is to make the switch with the full figure in view.

This is general information, not legal advice. If the notice terms or the ownership of content or accounts are disputed, a lawyer can review the contract with you.

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