Vetting an Enterprise SEO Agency Before You Sign

To evaluate SEO agency finalists properly once you have a shortlist, stop judging the pitch and start testing the work: commission a small paid task, speak to references the agency did not script, and ask for a sample audit of a slice of your own site. Those three checks show how the team thinks, writes and delivers before you commit to a long contract.

Shortlisting is a separate exercise. If you are still deciding which firms deserve a closer look, start with our guide to enterprise SEO agency fit criteria. This article picks up after that, when two or three agencies remain and the proposals all sound convincing.

Why pitches are a poor guide to enterprise SEO work

A pitch is usually prepared by senior people who may not work on your account, built from the agency's strongest results. It tells you how well the agency sells, not how it performs on a large site with slow release cycles and many stakeholders.

SEO agency due diligence closes that gap by showing ordinary output from the people who would actually run your account. It costs a few weeks and some budget, which is small next to a long retainer that disappoints.

How to evaluate SEO agency finalists: three tests

Test 1: a paid test task

Ask each finalist to complete a small, clearly scoped piece of real work and pay them for it. Paying lets you ask for the standard you would expect under contract.

Good test tasks for a large site include:

• diagnosing why one important template, such as category or product pages, underperforms;
• reviewing the internal linking of one section and proposing specific changes;
• checking how one market or language version is set up, including hreflang and canonicals;
• writing development tickets for three known issues, with acceptance criteria your engineers would accept.

Keep the scope, access and deadline identical for every agency so you compare like with like.

Test 2: reference calls you control

Ask for more references than you need and choose who to call. Speak to one client of similar size and, ideally, one who has left the agency; reasons for leaving reveal how it behaves when things go wrong.

Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO recommends checking with past clients about their results and experience.

Test 3: a sample audit of your own site

Ask each finalist for a short audit of a defined section of your site. Grant read only access to Google Search Console and analytics for the purpose; Google advises granting read access rather than write access during an audit. Ask the agency to show how it checked findings on the live site, not just what a crawler reported.

It also reveals whether the agency prioritises. A long list of tool warnings is easy to produce; a short list ranked by business impact and effort is what you will need every month.

Scoring the test task and sample audit

Agree the scoring criteria before the work arrives, and have at least two people score each submission separately. A simple weighted sheet works well.

Ask your developers to score the developer readiness line themselves.

SEO case study verification

Case studies are where pitches most often overreach. The result is usually real, but the agency's share of it may be unclear.

Questions that test a case study

• What exactly did the agency do, and what did the client's own team or other suppliers do?
• What else changed during the same period: a redesign, a new market, paid campaigns, seasonality, a competitor leaving?
• Which metric moved, and was it one that matters to the business, such as qualified enquiries, rather than impressions alone?
• Can the agency show the trend in Search Console or analytics, even anonymised, rather than a single highlighted figure?
• Can you speak to the client named in the case study?

If an agency cannot answer these, treat the case study as marketing rather than evidence and give more weight to the test task and references.

SEO references: what to ask on the call

Generic praise tells you little, so ask specific questions:

1. What was the agency hired to do, and did the scope change over time?
2. How did it work with your developers and release process?
3. Tell us about a time a recommendation was wrong or a deadline slipped. How was it handled?
4. How did the agency report progress, and did the reports help internal decisions?
5. Would you hire it again for the same kind of work?

Listen for hesitation and for what is left unsaid. A reference who praises the reporting but cannot describe a single change that shipped is telling you something.

SEO pitch red flags to watch for

Google's guidance on hiring an SEO lists several of these directly.

• Ranking guarantees. Google states that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. A promise of specific positions or timelines should end the conversation.
• Claims of a special relationship with Google. Google warns against SEOs who claim one or offer priority submission.
• Secrecy about methods. If the agency cannot explain what it will change on your site and why, you cannot judge the risk.
• Link volume as the headline offer. Link schemes break Google's spam policies and can damage visibility. Ask exactly how links would be earned.
• Requests for write access too early. An audit needs read access, not control of your properties.
• Contract terms that lock you in before results can be judged. Long minimum terms with no review points shift all the risk to you.

Before you sign: final checks

People and continuity

Name the account lead and the core team in the contract or statement of work, and agree what happens if someone leaves. Our article on choosing an agency or a freelancer for enterprise SEO covers why continuity matters so much on large sites.

Scope, deliverables and reporting

Write down monthly deliverables, how recommendations reach your developers and which business measures are reported, with an early review point to adjust scope.

Commercial terms

Make sure you understand what drives the fee: hours, seniority, number of markets, content volume and development support. Our guide to enterprise SEO pricing drivers in Dubai explains how to compare proposals that are structured differently.

Data and access

Confirm that your organisation owns the Search Console properties, analytics accounts and data the agency creates. If the work touches personal data such as CRM records, confirm your obligations under UAE data protection rules with your counsel.

Hypothetical example: a Dubai retailer with a large bilingual catalogue narrows its list to two agencies. In the paid test task, one returns a long crawler export; the other returns five tickets for the category template with acceptance criteria and flags a canonical issue on the Arabic pages. A former client of the first agency says reports were detailed but little was implemented. The decision becomes straightforward.

The same discipline applies to other suppliers. Many of the questions to ask a web design agency in Dubai work equally well for SEO partners.

Want a second opinion on your SEO shortlist?

Codeeo provides digital marketing and SEO, including technical and local SEO, alongside website design and development. Our team of 80+ across Dubai, Riyadh and Karachi has delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US, so we treat SEO as changes that need to be built, tested and released.

If you want an independent view of your site before signing with anyone, a technical SEO review or a website audit gives you a baseline to judge proposals against. You can read more about our digital marketing and SEO services, or contact the team to arrange a meeting at our Dubai office.