Why most SEO engagements disappoint
Not usually fraud. Usually a mismatch: the business expected sales and bought activity. Monthly reports arrive full of numbers — keywords tracked, backlinks built, pages optimised — and none of them is enquiries. Six months later nobody can say whether it worked.
The way to avoid it is to ask questions that are hard to answer with a template. The eighteen below are grouped by what they protect.
Access and ownership (ask these first)
If these are wrong, nothing else matters, because you can be left unable to see or keep your own work.
- Will Search Console and Analytics be created under my company’s email, with you added as a user? This is the correct answer. An agency that creates them under its own account controls your historical data.
- Who holds the domain registrar and hosting logins? The business, always. Add the agency as a user.
- Will you work on my site directly, or send changes for my developer to apply? Both are workable; what matters is that it is agreed, because unclear ownership is where months get lost.
- If we part ways, what do I keep? Content, pages, accounts and reports should all remain yours. Get it in writing.
This is the same discipline as handing over a website, and it fails for the same reasons. The recovery process, if you are already in that position, is in how to take back your website from an agency.
Diagnosis before prescription
- What do you think is wrong with my site right now? Ask before they quote. An agency that cannot name two or three specific problems from a quick look has not looked.
- Which pages will you work on first, and why those? The answer should reference your existing impressions or your commercial priorities, not a generic “homepage and services”.
- Which keywords are realistic in six months, and which are not? A good answer includes keywords they will not chase yet. Everything-is-achievable is a sales answer.
- Is my problem technical, content, or authority? These need different work. A site that is not indexed has a technical problem; one that is indexed and invisible usually lacks links or depth.
The actual deliverables
- What specifically will be delivered each month? Numbers: how many pages written, how many technical fixes, how much outreach. “Ongoing optimisation” is not a deliverable.
- Who writes the content, and can I see three samples of published work in my industry? Published, with URLs — not a PDF.
- Do you build links, and how? Acceptable: original research, digital PR, genuine directory and association listings, client and partner mentions. Not acceptable: private blog networks, bought link packages, bulk gigs. These carry a real penalty risk and the recovery takes longer than the engagement.
- Will you fix technical issues or only report them? Many retainers quietly exclude implementation, which means your developer’s availability becomes the bottleneck.
- What do you need from me, and how often? A good agency needs approvals, product knowledge and photographs. One that needs nothing from you is producing generic work.
Reporting that means something
- Which three numbers will we judge this by? Agree them on day one. Impressions and clicks from Search Console, enquiries from the site, and rankings for a named shortlist is a reasonable set.
- Will reporting come from my own Search Console, or your tool? Your Search Console is the source of truth; third-party rank trackers disagree with it routinely.
- What will you tell me if it is not working? Listen to how they answer. The useful answer describes what they would change and when they would tell you.
Set the baseline before anyone starts: today’s impressions, clicks, average position and monthly enquiries, saved as a screenshot. Without it, month-six arguments are unwinnable in both directions.
Money and exit
- What is the contract length and the notice period? Six months is a fair ask for SEO because the work genuinely takes that long. Twelve months with no exit is not.
- What happens in month seven? If the plan is the same retainer forever, ask what changes. Mature engagements shift from fixing to publishing and earning links.
Promises that should end the conversation
- “Guaranteed first page” or “guaranteed number one.” Nobody controls Google. The guarantee is either empty or it is for a keyword with no searches.
- “Results in 30 days.” Technical fixes, maybe. Commercial rankings, no.
- “We have a contact at Google.” There is no such thing for organic rankings.
- “500 backlinks for ₹5,000.” This is the single most common way Indian small businesses get themselves penalised.
- “Unlimited keywords.” Means nothing, and signals the pricing is detached from the work.
- A proposal with no diagnosis. If they did not look at your site before quoting, they are selling a package, not a service.
What a fair price buys in India
Rates vary widely, and the honest summary is that you are buying hours of skilled attention. At the low end a retainer covers a few hours a month, which realistically means reporting and small fixes. In the middle it covers content production plus technical work. At the top it includes outreach and PR, which is the expensive part because it depends on people rather than tools.
The useful question is not the price but what the price contains: how many hours, on what, by whom. Our own breakdown of local rates is in SEO cost in Pune and the national view in SEO package prices in India.
Before you hire anyone
Two things worth doing yourself, because they change what you need to buy:
- Check whether your site is even indexed. A site Google cannot see needs a technical fix, not a retainer. The method is in how to get a new website indexed.
- Run the free audit checklist. You will find at least three fixable things, and you will be a far better buyer for having looked: SEO audit checklist for Indian business websites.
How to read the proposal you get back
The questions matter less than what you do with the answers. Four things to look for in any proposal, in order:
- Does it mention your site specifically? A proposal that could have been sent to any business in your category was written before anyone looked at yours. This alone eliminates most of them.
- Are the deliverables countable? “Four articles of 1,500 words, eight technical fixes, ten outreach emails” can be checked at the end of the month. “Ongoing optimisation” cannot, and that is usually the point of the phrase.
- Is there a month-one list that is different from the month-six list? Real plans front-load technical and indexing work because nothing else works until that is fixed. A plan where every month looks identical is a retainer, not a strategy.
- Does it say what success looks like, in numbers? With a baseline. If it does not, you will have the same conversation in month six with no way to resolve it.
The first 30 days of a good engagement
Knowing what should happen early is the cheapest way to tell whether you hired well. In a healthy engagement, by day thirty you should have received:
- A technical audit with a fixed list, separating what they will fix from what needs your developer.
- A baseline report — today’s impressions, clicks, average position and indexed page count, saved so month six can be compared with it.
- A keyword map, showing which existing page targets which term, and where a page is missing. This is also where cannibalisation gets caught: two of your own pages competing for one query is common and quietly expensive.
- The first content or fixes actually live, not in a document awaiting approval.
- Access confirmed in your accounts, with them added as users.
If month one produced a slide deck and nothing on the site, that is the pattern for the rest of the engagement. Raise it in month one, when it is still a conversation rather than a dispute.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I ask an SEO agency before hiring them?
Ask who will own your Search Console and Analytics accounts, what exactly will be delivered each month in countable terms, which pages they will work on first and why, how they will report results and from which source, whether they build links and by what method, and what you keep if you leave. An agency that answers all six clearly is already better than most.
Is a guaranteed number one ranking possible?
No. Nobody controls Google’s ranking, so a guarantee is either meaningless or it refers to a keyword nobody searches. Treat a ranking guarantee as a reason to end the conversation rather than as a selling point.
How long before SEO shows results in India?
For a new or low-authority site, expect three to six months before meaningful movement on commercial terms, and longer in competitive categories. Technical fixes and local search work can show results in weeks. An agency promising commercial rankings in thirty days is describing something other than organic search.
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency for SEO?
A skilled freelancer is often better value for a focused problem such as a technical fix or a content programme, because you are paying for one person’s attention rather than an account layer. An agency makes more sense when the work spans content, development and outreach at once. In both cases the questions above apply unchanged.
What is the single biggest red flag?
A proposal written before anyone looked at your website. It means you are being sold a package rather than a solution, and the monthly work will be whatever that package contains regardless of what your site actually needs.
Want a second opinion on a proposal you have received? Send it to us on WhatsApp and we will tell you what we would ask before signing.
Also read: understand the timeline in how long SEO takes, compare the alternative in SEO versus Google Ads, and see what the data says about Indian business websites in our India Business Website Report 2026.
