Most businesses paying for SEO know two things: the monthly figure and that a report arrives.
What they usually cannot say is why the numbers in the report moved, or why they did not, or what would have happened had they spent nothing at all. That is an uncomfortable position to occupy for two years, and it is extremely common.
To compare SEO providers usefully, you need questions that expose the difference between work being done and activity being reported. Here are the ones that do.
Compare SEO Providers in Gloucestershire: What to Ask
1. Why quotes vary so widely
Three things drive genuine cost differences, and understanding them explains most of the spread.
- How competitive your sector is locally. A specialist trade in the Forest of Dean and a solicitor in Cheltenham face entirely different fields. The second needs considerably more work to move.
- What state your site is in. A technically sound site with reasonable content needs different work from one with indexing problems, thin pages and a poor mobile experience.
- Whether content is included. This is the single biggest variable. Proposals that look similar frequently differ by whether anybody is writing anything.
Anything beyond those three is usually margin or scope you have not identified yet.
The eight questions
- What specifically will you do in the first three months? You want tasks, not phases. “Technical audit and remediation, six service pages rewritten, profile and citation cleanup” is an answer. “Foundation building” is not.
- Who writes the content, and what do they know about my trade? Content produced without subject knowledge reads that way, and increasingly reads as generated.
- Where will links come from, and can I see examples? Legitimate providers name sites. Others describe categories such as “authoritative publishers”.
- What does the reporting show, and does it connect to enquiries? Rankings alone are easy to select favourably. You want visibility connected to whether the phone rings.
- What happens if I stop? Technical fixes and content remain yours. Rented links disappear, and their disappearance can hurt.
- Can you guarantee rankings? The only correct answer is no. A yes tells you how every other unverifiable claim will be handled.
- What would you refuse to do? A provider with standards has an example. One who has never declined a request has been building whatever was asked for.
- What is the notice period, and who owns the accounts? Analytics, Search Console, and the Google Business Profile should be in your name, with the provider given access, not the reverse.
On AEO and GEO claims
Newer acronyms are appearing in proposals, sometimes at a premium.
Ask what specifically is being done that good SEO would not already cover. Clear early answers, structured data, accurate, consistent information and fast pages serve both ranked results and generated answers. A provider charging separately for AEO or GEO should be able to name the additional work.
Nobody can guarantee citation in AI answers. Selection sits with the systems and changes without notice, so a promise of it is a promise of something outside anyone’s control.
What good reporting looks like
Enquiries by source, with the attribution gaps acknowledged rather than filled with estimates.
Which pages and queries produce impressions and clicks, and whether impressions are rising while clicks are not, which usually means generated answers are resolving queries before anyone arrives.
Branded search volume, which shows recognition building and captures value that direct-visit attribution loses.
And a plain account of what was done and what it was expected to achieve. Reports that show only movement, without saying what caused it, are describing weather rather than work.
The technical floor worth checking
Ask whether they measure page weight and Core Web Vitals, and under what conditions. Where performance and environmental impact both apply, treat them as the same lever: reducing unnecessary data transfer and processing supports a faster experience while lowering estimated digital carbon, though environmental figures remain modelled rather than directly measured.
Google’s SEO starter guide is free and thorough. Reading it before commissioning anybody makes every conversation afterwards more productive.
Our search engine optimisation work starts with an audit, and every question above is one we would expect you to ask us.