Do you need an SEO?

As with many business activities, sometimes hiring a professional can be helpful. Deciding to hire a company or person to do search engine optimization (SEO) for your website in Google Search is a big decision that can potentially improve your site's visibility and save you time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies
• Optimizing for generative AI

Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Resources such as Search Console, the official Google Search Central blog, and our discussion forum can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for Google's non-advertising search results (often called "organic search").

Deciding on whether you need an SEO

If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself. We recommend starting with the SEO starter guide, as it's a practical guide to improving your site's SEO and it describes much of what your SEO will do for you. If you decide to hire a professional to do the work for you in the end, it's also useful to be familiar with these techniques so that you can be aware if an SEO wants to use a technique that's not recommended or, worse, strongly discouraged.

If you think that you still need extra help from a professional, continue reading about hiring an SEO.

Things to consider when hiring an SEO

As with many business activities, sometimes hiring a professional can be helpful. For example, a great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign (the earlier, the better), or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Here are some things to consider if you're considering hiring someone to do SEO for your site:

• Interview your potential SEO. Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:
  • Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
  • Do you follow the Google Search Essentials (previously known as Webmaster Guidelines)?
  • What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
  • What's your experience in my industry?
  • What's your experience in my country/city?
  • What's your experience developing international sites?
  • How long have you been in business?
  • How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?
  • See if the SEO is interested in you and your business. If they're not interested, find someone who is. Your SEO should ask questions about what makes your business unique, who your competitors are, how search results can help, and how your customers find you.
• Check your SEO's business references. Ask past clients if they felt that this SEO provided useful service, was easy to work with, and produced positive results.
• If your SEO offers to do an SEO audit for you, be sure to carefully consider what's involved and only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don't grant them write access). An SEO audit should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved. If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.
  If your SEO uses a third-party tool, keep in mind that Google doesn't evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and these tools don't have access to Google's internal ranking data. Be wary of tools that claim to be "acceptable" or "approved" by Google Search.
• Evaluate your SEO's recommendations and tools they use. Before making significant changes to your site based on a third-party tool's audit, be sure to check their recommendations against official guidance from Google Search, think critically about any claims or recommendations you hear, and make your own informed decisions.
  • Do they cite official Google documentation as supporting evidence for their recommendations?
  • If they have advice on optimizing for AI experiences (also known as "AEO" "GEO" services), is their advice aligned with Google Search's official guidance on optimizing for generative AI features?
  • Do they use tools that are aligned with Google's guidance?
• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.

  Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.

  Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

  Avoid SEOs that talk about link popularity schemes or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines—at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

Important: While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye by using overly aggressive marketing efforts or using techniques that violate our spam policies, which may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index.

Reporting issues

If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit the FTC website to file a complaint online or call 1-877-FTC-HELP.

If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, file it at https://www.econsumer.gov/.