Hiring an SEO
choosing an SEO agency / SEO guarantees / is this SEO legitimate / SEO scams
Google publishes its own advice on hiring an SEO, and it is blunter than most agency marketing. No one can guarantee a number one ranking, a claimed special relationship with Google is a warning sign, and you remain responsible for what anyone you hire does to your site.
The useful thing about this subject is that the search engine wrote the buyer's guide itself, and did not soften it. Google states that no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google, and says to beware of SEOs who claim to guarantee rankings, allege a special relationship with Google, or advertise a priority submit to Google. It adds a plainer test: be careful if a company is secretive or will not clearly explain what it intends to do.
On access it is specific about sequence rather than principle. When an audit is being scoped, it says to grant read access to Search Console and, at that stage, not write access. Access can always be widened later by somebody who has seen the work.
Then it names where the risk lands, which is the sentence an owner should read twice. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index, and ultimately you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire. Responsibility does not transfer with the work.
There is one more claim worth knowing before reading any agency report. Google says it does not evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools and that those tools do not have access to Google's internal ranking data, and warns against tools describing themselves as acceptable or approved by Google. Bing points the same way from its own side, describing its free webmaster tools as giving direct access to indexing insights, keyword performance and crawl diagnostics, and its site scan as running technical audits with no third-party tools required.
In practice
Both engines are saying that the authoritative numbers come from their own free tools, which you can connect yourself. That is a reasonable thing to ask for. A report built entirely on third-party estimates is not wrong or useless, but it is an estimate of your performance rather than a record of it, and the engines have said so themselves.
Not the same as
- Account ownership
- That is about who holds the account at the end. This is about what to check at the beginning.
- An audit being wrong
- A good audit gives realistic estimates of improvement and of the work involved, which is Google's own description of what one should contain.
Why it matters to you
Almost every warning sign in this field is a claim about certainty: a guaranteed position, a special relationship, a submission that skips the queue. The reason those are warning signs is not that they are ambitious. It is that the company being invoked has published, in writing, that they are not available. Checking a pitch against the platform's own words takes a few minutes and does not require knowing anything about search.
What to ask or check
- 01Is anything in this proposal guaranteed, and if so, by whom?
- 02Do the numbers in the report come from Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, or from a third-party estimate?
- 03If we grant access, does it start at read only, and who decides when it widens?
What people get wrong
That a strong agency can secure a position. Google states plainly that no one can guarantee a number one ranking, and lists guaranteed rankings among the claims to beware of.
Red flags
- A guaranteed position, a special relationship with Google, or a priority submission.
- A company that will not clearly explain what it intends to do.
- A tool described as approved by Google, which Google says it does not do.
Who owns it
You do, and Google says so directly: you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, and deceptive content created on your behalf can remove your site from the index entirely.
Where you will see it
In proposals, cold outreach, and the first monthly report.