SEO proposals look alike on paper: an audit, some content, some links, a monthly report. The hard part is not finding a supplier. It is knowing what you are buying and why. That question is settled before the first meeting, using data you already hold.
What follows is what you can record yourself in about an hour, what those numbers say about your real need, and how to use them to compare quotes side by side. Read it alongside our notes on choosing an SEO provider, which covers the proposal itself and the evidence worth asking for.
None of this requires a paid tool or a technical background. It requires an hour and a willingness to write down numbers that may be disappointing.
Where you actually stand
Being online and being visible in search are not the same thing, and most businesses conflate them. One indication of the gap comes from France, where the France Num 2025 barometer — run by Crédoc for the Direction générale des Entreprises, 11,021 responding small and medium businesses surveyed between 26 March and 18 April 2025, self-reported answers weighted to represent French SMEs — found that 84% of firms had at least one online visibility solution, 65% a website presenting their activity and 50% a listing in a free directory (France Num, 2025). Those are French figures describing a French market, so treat them as an illustration rather than a benchmark for your own country.
The practical point travels, though. Having a site, a social page and a few directory entries tells you nothing about whether you appear in search results. Only your own data tells you that, and it costs nothing to read.
Seven numbers to collect before you call anyone
Almost everything sits in Google Search Console — free, provided the property is verified — and in whatever analytics tool you use. Record the values for the last three complete months, and compare them with the same period a year earlier.
| Indicator | Where to read it | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Indexed pages | Search Console, Page indexing report | How many pages are genuinely eligible to be shown, and why the others are excluded |
| Impressions and clicks | Search Console, Performance report | Whether your site is already being seen on queries, and how often |
| Queries and average position | Performance, Queries tab | The phrases sitting just off page one, which are your most reachable gains |
| Share of branded queries | Performance, filtered on your company name | Whether your visibility rests only on the reputation you already have |
| Pages that receive the clicks | Performance, Pages tab | Whether they are your commercial pages or peripheral content |
| Organic sessions and conversions | Analytics tool (GA4, Matomo and similar) | What the visit produces: an enquiry, a call, an order, or nothing |
| Local views and direction requests | Google Business Profile | How much of the demand plays out on the map rather than on the site |
Three manual checks complete the picture. Type site:yourdomain.co.uk into Google and look at what actually comes back. Then search your five core commercial queries the way a customer would phrase them, in a private window, and note who holds the top places. Finally, open your three most important pages on a phone: title, content, contact details, loading time. Those fifteen minutes are worth a great deal of talk.
What your readings say about the need
Three situations come up again and again, and they do not call for the same work.
- Few or no indexed pages. The subject is technical before it is editorial: crawl access, tags, redirects, duplication. That is the ground covered by an indexing check and an audit, not by a content subscription.
- Indexed pages, impressions, very few clicks. You are visible, but on badly targeted queries or behind titles nobody wants to click. The work is on targeting and on the pages you already have.
- Clicks, but no enquiries. The problem is probably not search at all: the journey, the offer, the form, the proof. A supplier who proposes link building at this stage has not read your numbers.
A fourth case exists. Your visibility is confined to queries containing your own name. That means you capture the customers who already know you and nobody else. It is a common starting point, and a piece of work whose progress can be measured clearly.
What I have seen since 2012
I have worked on search visibility since 2012, and one case has stayed with me as a reference point. It was a French SME I began supporting in 2013, with no link acquisition campaign at all — query targeting and on-page work only, with one person trained internally to keep it going. After a year, a third-party tool was reporting several hundred phrases ranked inside the top twenty results.
Two caveats matter more than the headline. Tool readings of this kind are estimates, and should never be confused with revenue. And the first three months produced almost no traffic at all, which is exactly why the question of timescale belongs in any budget conversation, early and in writing.
The questions to ask, and the answers that should worry you
Google publishes its own guidance on whether you need an SEO and how to hire one, including a list of interview questions: examples of previous work and client references, adherence to Google Search Essentials, expected outcomes and timescales, how success will be measured, experience in your sector and your area, how long they have been trading, how they will communicate, and whether they will tell you about every change made to your site. Add one question drawn from your own readings: here are my numbers, where would you start and why.
The warning signs are documented in the same place. Nobody can guarantee a first position in Google's results. Treat a claimed special relationship with Google, a priority indexing scheme, or an unsolicited email announcing that your site "does not appear in the major search engines" with the same suspicion. Google also makes clear that you remain responsible for what a supplier does on your behalf: deceptive content created in your name can get your whole site removed from the index.
On links, Google's spam policies treat links bought or sold for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges and content created mainly to manipulate ranking signals as link spam. Sponsorship remains possible provided the link carries rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". A link-building proposal should therefore explain where the links come from and how they are marked up. If it cannot, the answer is no.
What a written promise is worth
A sales promise is not a costless piece of rhetoric. Misleading commercial practices are regulated in most markets, including in business-to-business dealings, and the detail varies by jurisdiction — check your own rather than take a supplier's word for it. What matters practically is simpler and entirely in your control.
Ask for the commitments to appear in the written proposal: the scope, the deliverables, the reporting rhythm, and explicitly what is not included. A verbal guarantee of results that quietly fails to survive into the quote tells you everything you need to know about how it would be honoured later.
Access, ownership and follow-up
For an audit, Google's own advice is to grant read-only access to Search Console, without write permissions at that stage. Check as well who owns the domain name, the hosting, the advertising accounts and the analytics properties. They should stay in your name, with access handed back at the end of the engagement.
Once the work begins, go back to exactly the same indicators you recorded at the outset, on the same rhythm, and add the enquiries you can attribute to search. That is the substance of proper traffic management: rankings alone will not do, because they shift with device, location and the searcher's own history. If you are still deciding what an engagement should cover, our guidance on planning an SEO audit sets out how to frame the scope before money changes hands.
The best engagement, in the end, is the one that leaves you able to read your own data and make your own decisions without waiting for a monthly report.
Common questions
Can I tell how well my site is doing in search without a paid tool?
Yes, for the essentials. Google Search Console gives you indexed pages, impressions, clicks, queries and average position. It is free and only requires you to verify ownership of the site. An analytics tool completes the picture by showing what those visits actually produce.
Can an agency guarantee the first position on Google?
No. Google's own documentation states that nobody can guarantee a first position in its results. A ranking guarantee, a claimed special relationship with Google or a priority indexing scheme are all warning signs.
Should I give a supplier access to Search Console?
Yes, but Google advises granting read-only access for an audit, with no write permissions at that stage. Ownership of the account should stay in your name, as should the domain name and the analytics properties, with access returned when the engagement ends.
Are bought links against Google's rules?
Google's spam policies treat links bought or sold for ranking purposes, and excessive link exchanges, as link spam. A sponsored link remains acceptable if it carries the rel sponsored or rel nofollow attribute, which excludes it from ranking calculations. A proposal should say which applies.
How long should I wait before judging an SEO engagement?
No timescale can be guaranteed. It depends on the competition, the technical state of the site and the volume of work actually carried out. Set review points on the same indicators you recorded at the start, with a first serious review after several months of real implementation.
What should I do if I am cold-emailed about SEO?
Google advises treating unsolicited approaches with caution, particularly those claiming your site does not appear in search engines. Check the claim yourself in Search Console before deciding anything, and ask for a written quote setting out the scope.
Do I need an audit if I have never done any SEO at all?
Often a short technical check is enough to start. If nothing has ever been done, the first constraints are usually indexing, site structure and page titles rather than anything sophisticated. A full audit makes more sense once the obvious problems are cleared and you need to decide where to invest next.