Start with your business goal, not an agency's ranking promise
A good SEO engagement should connect search visibility to a business goal: qualified enquiries, product sales, calls, bookings or another measurable outcome. Before comparing agencies, define the pages and actions that matter most to your business.
1. Ask for the actual strategy
A useful proposal should explain which pages will be targeted, which search intents matter, what technical issues will be addressed and what content will be created. A list of keywords without a page strategy is not enough.
2. Check technical SEO competence
Ask how the agency handles crawling, indexing, canonicals, redirects, internal links, structured data and page experience. Google recommends validating structured data and using URL Inspection to check how Google sees deployed pages.
3. Look at content quality
Ask who writes the content, how first-hand expertise is added and how claims are checked. Google says its systems prioritize helpful, reliable, people-first content and warns against producing large amounts of search-engine-first content simply to attract traffic.
4. If you serve Delhi, discuss local search separately
Ask whether the strategy includes your Google Business Profile, authentic review generation, local relevance and the specific service areas you genuinely serve. Do not let an agency create dozens of near-identical locality pages with little useful information.
5. Ask what reporting looks like
A useful monthly report should show what changed, what work was completed, which pages and queries are gaining visibility, and what happens next. Search Console provides query, page, click and impression data that can help make those decisions.
6. Understand link building before you approve it
Ask where links will come from and why those sources are relevant. “10,000 backlinks” is not a strategy. Relevance, editorial context and the quality of the referring site matter more than a giant number.
7. Ask for evidence, but verify it
Case studies are useful when they explain the starting point, work performed and evidence of the outcome. Ask which parts of a result came from SEO, paid media, seasonality, a website redesign or other changes.
A simple agency comparison scorecard
Compare proposals across six categories: strategy, technical SEO, content quality, local SEO, authority building and reporting. Choose based on the fit between the proposed work and your business model, not on a single headline metric.