What should you ask before hiring an SEO or GEO agency?
Before hiring an SEO or GEO agency, ask what they will measure and how you will see it, who will own your domain, content and lead data, how they track where each lead came from, what results they expect and over what timeframe, and what they will change on your site. Treat any promise of a set ranking position or of an AI recommendation as a warning sign.
Ten questions worth asking
- What will you measure, and how will I see it each month?
- How will I know which leads your work produced, and which came from somewhere else?
- Who owns the domain, the website, the content and the lead data, during the work and after it ends?
- What results do you expect, and over what timeframe?
- What will you change on my site, and will you tell me about every change?
- What have you done for businesses like mine, and can you show it?
- Will you write or publish anything in my name, and will I see it first?
- How do you handle AI answers as well as Google search?
- Who will I talk to, and how often?
- What happens to my site and my data if I stop working with you?
What a good answer sounds like
A good agency answers in terms of your customers: inquiries, where they came from and what happened to them. It is specific about what it will measure, honest that results take time and vary, and clear that you own your domain, content and data. If it cannot show past work, it says so, and tells you what it will show you instead.
Warning signs
Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO is blunt: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." The same holds for AI answers, since no one controls what a model says. Be wary of an agency that promises a position, will not say what it changes on your site, keeps your domain or accounts in its own name, reports only traffic and rankings with no link to inquiries, or offers fake reviews or bulk links as part of the package.
How Ascent Vision answers them
Ascent Vision's answers: every lead tagged with its source and a monthly read of what each channel produced; the domain, content and data stay with the client; every change to the site is shared; no promised rankings or AI recommendations. It is a new company, formed in October 2026, and it says so: there is little past work to show yet.
Sources
Related answers
SEO for service businesses
Get found on Google by the people already looking for what you sell, in the places you serve, and see which searches turned into inquiries.