Plain definition · nothing to buy here

What does an SEO agency do?

An SEO agency does 4 kinds of work: technical fixes to your website, content written to match what people search for, off-site work to earn links and mentions, and research and reporting. Most of it happens on your website, where you can see it. Some of it does not, which is where the arguments start.

The work

The 4 kinds of work an SEO agency does.

Names differ between agencies. The buckets do not.

Technical: making the site readable.

Crawling the site to find broken links, missing or duplicated page titles, pages returning errors, slow templates, absent structured data, and pages accidentally blocked from being indexed. Then fixing them, or telling your developer precisely what to fix.

You could be shown A list of issues with a status against each one, and the URL of every page changed.

Content: writing the pages people search for.

Deciding which topics are worth a page, then writing those pages, and rewriting existing ones that are close but do not answer the question. This includes the unglamorous half: titles, headings, links between related pages, and removing pages that compete with each other.

You could be shown The page itself, live, with a date. Content work is the easiest kind to verify.

Off-site: earning links and mentions.

Getting other websites to link to yours, correcting your business details across directories and maps, and placing mentions where your customers already read. This is the slowest bucket, because it depends on people outside the agency agreeing to something.

You could be shown The URL of each link or listing, the date it appeared, and which page of yours it points at.

Research and reporting: deciding and recording.

Keyword and competitor research, tracking positions, watching what shifts after a search engine update, and writing the monthly report. Half of this is data collection, which is mechanical. Half is judgement about where next month goes, which is not.

You could be shown The keyword list with reasoning attached, and a report that leads with work rather than charts.

The start

What the first 90 days usually looks like.

Shapes vary by agency and by how much of a mess the site is in. This is the common one, not a schedule anyone should promise you.

  1. Month 1: access, audit and a plan.

    Access to your website, analytics and search console. A crawl. A keyword and competitor review. A written plan. Very little changes on the site itself, which is normal, and which a good agency will tell you in advance rather than let you discover.

  2. Month 2: the fixes and the first pages.

    Technical items land: titles, redirects, broken links, structured data, the speed problems that do not need a rebuild. The first new or rewritten pages go up. This is the first month where you can open a URL and see a difference.

  3. Month 3: more pages, and the first real report.

    More content, internal links tying it together, and the beginning of off-site work. Positions may or may not have moved yet, and honest reporting says which. If you reach the end of month 3 unable to name a page that changed, something has gone wrong with either the work or the reporting.

The honest part

Which parts leave a trace, and which do not.

This is the split that causes most of the distrust between businesses and the agencies they hire, and almost nobody sets it out at the start.

You can check this yourself You have to be shown this
Page titles and meta descriptions Links earned on other websites
New and rewritten pages Directory and map listings corrected
Redirects and broken links fixed Research that led to a decision
Internal links between pages A keyword deliberately not chased
Structured data and image alt text Monitoring in a month where nothing needed doing
Robots and sitemap changes A change argued for internally and rejected

The right-hand column is not fake work. Some of it is the most valuable thing an agency does, and a decision not to spend your money on something can be worth more than a page. But it only exists for you if somebody writes it down, which is why the monthly SEO report carries more weight in this industry than in most.

One limit on the left-hand column, since it would be easy to leave out. Being able to see a change does not tell you it was the right change. A title rewritten badly is still a title rewritten, and it will show up in exactly the same way. Visibility is a floor, not a verdict.

The decision

Do you need an SEO agency.

There are 4 honest answers, and which one fits depends mostly on your time and how much of the work is repeatable.

Doing it yourself.

Workable if you have time and your market is small. The basics are learnable and the writing you can probably do better than anyone, because you know the business. The failure mode is not skill. It is that this is the first thing dropped in a busy month.

Hiring in-house.

Sensible once search is a main channel and there is enough work to fill a role. The trade is that one person is rarely strong at technical, writing and outreach at once, so you usually end up buying some help anyway.

Hiring an agency.

Sensible when you want the whole function handled and are willing to manage a supplier. The thing to manage is visibility. Agree in writing, at the start, what the monthly report will contain, while there is nothing yet to argue about.

Using software.

Handles the repeatable parts: audits, research, drafting, checking, publishing and tracking. It does not handle judgement or relationships. The real comparison is not software against people. It is how much of the work in your case is repeatable.

We make software of that kind. If the production half of this page is what you were about to buy, here is how it compares to hiring.

Questions

Questions.

What is an SEO agency?

A company you pay to make your business easier to find in search results. The work is a mix of changes to your website, pages written for what people actually search for, and effort spent getting other websites to link to yours. Most charge a monthly fee for it.

What does monthly SEO include?

Usually some mix of the 4 buckets: technical fixes, new or rewritten pages, off-site work, and research and reporting. The proportions move around from month to month, and the report is where you find out how. A month that is all reporting and no work is worth asking about.

What should I expect from an SEO agency in the first month?

Requests for access to your website and analytics, an audit, research, and a plan. Often very little visible change to the site itself, which is normal and should be said out loud rather than left for you to notice.

How long does SEO take to work?

It depends on the site, the market and who else is competing, and nobody can give you a reliable date. Treat a confident specific promise as a reason to slow down. What you can hold someone to in the meantime is the work, because work has pages and dates attached to it.

Do I need an SEO agency?

Only if people search for what you sell and are not finding you. If they do, the work has to happen somewhere: you, someone you hire, or software. If they do not search for it, no agency can manufacture the demand, and a good one will tell you so before taking the money.

Can I check my agency’s work myself?

Partly. On-site work leaves a trace: open the pages, read the titles, note the dates. Off-site work you have to be shown, as URLs. Research and judgement you cannot verify at all, which is exactly why they need writing down.

Is an SEO agency the same as a marketing agency?

Not usually. A general marketing agency covers ads, social, email and brand, sometimes with search as one line item. An SEO agency does only search and goes deeper into the technical and content work. Some businesses need both, which is worth deciding before buying either.

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