Hiring an SEO: Consultant, Agency or In-House, the Questions That Sort Them, and a Fair First 90 Days

Google wrote a hiring guide, and it is worth five minutes

Google keeps a page called Do you need an SEO?, last updated June 5, 2026. It is unusually candid for a company that sells ads beside the results. It says a small local business can probably do much of the work itself, starting with the SEO Starter Guide, and that learning the basics is how you spot an SEO recommending something Google discourages. Our learn SEO plan builds those basics in a month.

It also says when hiring pays most: when you are considering a site redesign, "the earlier, the better," or launching a new site, so it is built to be found from the start. And it lists what a legitimate SEO may do: review content and structure, advise on hosting, redirects, error pages and JavaScript, develop content, run keyword research, train your staff, bring expertise in a market or region, and optimize for generative AI. Nothing on the list is paying Google, because Google says it accepts no payment to include or rank sites in organic results.

Freelancer, consultant, agency or in-house: who does what

"Hire an SEO" covers four very different arrangements. Most bad hires start by buying the wrong one: a strategy deck when the site needed a developer, or a full agency when one afternoon of advice would have done. The comparison below is our practice, not a Google rule.

Mixes are common and sensible: an in-house marketer with an agency for technical work, or an owner with a consultant on call each quarter. If writing is the bottleneck rather than search skill, hiring a freelance writer may be the cheaper fix. And if you are choosing between agencies that also run ads, email or social, our guide to choosing a marketing agency applies the same tests across every service.

The interview: Google's questions, and the answers worth hearing

Google's page lists questions to ask any SEO you are considering. Here they are with what a good and a bad answer tend to sound like. The first column is Google's; the rest is our experience of hearing the answers.

Google adds two pieces of homework. Call past clients and ask whether the SEO was useful, easy to work with and produced results. And check any recommendation against Google's own documentation before making a major change; a good SEO welcomes that, because it is how they would check too. Add three questions of your own: who does the work day to day, what they need from you each month, and what they would not do for you.

Red flags, in the order you should hang up

1. 1.A guarantee. Google's page says it plainly: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." A guarantee is either a lie or a promise about a search nobody types.
2. 2.A special relationship with Google, or priority submission. Google warns about both claims by name. There is no back door to sell.
3. 3.An unsolicited email. Google says to be wary of firms that email out of the blue, and to treat those messages with the skepticism you would give any scam offer.
4. 4.Secrecy. If they will not explain what they plan to do, ask. If they still will not, leave. Deceptive changes made on your behalf can get your site removed from Google, and the domain is yours.
5. 5.Links as the product. Google says you should never have to link to an SEO, and warns against link popularity schemes. Our guide to buying backlinks explains what link packages really contain.
6. 6.Tools "approved by Google." Google says it does not evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and that those tools have no access to its internal ranking data.
7. 7.Owner access before anything is agreed. For an audit, Google advises granting read access to Search Console only, not write access, at that stage.

The SEO who promises first place has told you the one thing about Google that Google says is impossible.

If a firm misled you, Google's page points US businesses to the Federal Trade Commission for complaints about deceptive business practices. If the damage is already done, our white hat SEO guide covers penalties and recovery.

The account inventory to finish before day one

Every account an SEO touches should be registered to the business and shared with the SEO, never the other way around. Make the list before anyone starts, because it is far easier to set up correctly than to recover from a vendor who has left. A shared password is not access; it is a liability nobody can audit.

The contract clauses that make this stick, from term and exit to who owns the content, are laid out on our SEO retainer page, and our twelve questions for any web company cover the website side of the paperwork. If a previous agency still holds an owner seat in Search Console, our Search Console guide explains how to remove it properly.

A fair first 90 days, and the evidence at each checkpoint

Rankings are a poor way to judge a new SEO's first quarter. Google's starter guide says some changes show within hours and others take several months, and our page on how long SEO takes sets ranges by situation. Work, however, is visible from week one. This is what we would expect to be able to show an owner, and what any owner can fairly ask for.

1. 1

   Days 1 to 30: access, baseline, findings

   Accounts set up as in the table above. A written baseline of organic leads, non-branded clicks and indexed money pages. An audit with findings ranked by payoff, and the quick fixes from it already shipped, each dated.

2. 2

   Days 31 to 60: blockers cleared, first pages improved

   The technical faults that stop Google reading the site fixed. The first two or three money pages rewritten or built. Business listings corrected. A work log you can check against the live site.

3. 3

   Days 61 to 90: the first honest report

   Numbers compared with the day-one baseline and the same months last year. What moved, what did not, and why. A plan for the next quarter that changes because of what the first one taught.

If day 90 arrives with no work log, no baseline and a ranking report for phrases you never asked about, that is your answer. The numbers worth reading in that report are in SEO KPIs, and the longer plan they feed is in SEO strategy.

What hiring costs, and when DataCram is the right call

SEO pricing varies too much by market, scope and site condition for a national average to tell you much, so we quote only our own. DataCram's SEO programs start at $575 a month, depending on complexity, setup and budget, per our SEO pricing page. There is no long contract, the scope is written down, and the tier is set after a free audit. Fixed projects such as a recovery or a rebuild can be spread out with SEO financing.

Google now lists optimizing for generative AI among the services an SEO can offer, and in our programs it is part of the same monthly scope, as GEO vs SEO explains. For a first look before any conversation, the free site audit checks speed signals, SEO, mobile, security and content. The rest of the subject is mapped in the SEO guide, and a sensible way to test any hire is to ask them about the twenty checks in our SEO tips.