If your last experience was paying for a 12 month contract only to receive a monthly PDF that nobody on your team opened, this checklist was written for you.
By the end, you will have the right questions to ask before signing and the warning signs to watch for in the first 90 days.
What Defines a Good SEO Agency
A good SEO agency takes responsibility for business results, not just rankings. That means answering for qualified traffic, leads and revenue, with a named method, proven execution and full client access to what is being done. If the delivery stops at the word "planning," or if the report is a monthly PDF nobody reads, the central criterion has already been violated.
Let me be straight with you: I have seen plenty of companies switch agencies three times in two years for the same reason. They hired a promise and received a slide deck.
What separates those who deliver from those who present is quite observable. A serious SEO agency puts in the contract who executes each front (content, technical, authority), shows deliverables in progress and connects every action to a metric your CFO recognizes.
Method matters too, and method has a name. Here at Netlinks we work with Response Marketing, our 8 pillars that cover everything from structured data to GEO, the optimization to appear in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. When an agency cannot name its own process, it is usually because the process does not exist.
And proof is measured in numbers. In our documented cases you will find Nobre with +300% organic traffic and Leo's Marble & Granite going from 46 to 118 ranked keywords in four months. Ask any candidate for the equivalent.
In the next sections, I turn these criteria into warning signs and objective questions for the proposal meeting.
Signs That Your Current Agency (or the Candidate) Will Not Deliver
If you have hired an agency before, some of these symptoms will sound familiar. Each one has a name and each one costs revenue.
Reports That Only Show Keyword Positions
Ranking is a means, not an end. If the monthly report does not connect position to qualified traffic, leads and sales, you are paying to follow a scoreboard that never closes the register. Ask: how much of this turned into pipeline?
Planning With No One to Execute
The classic symptom: the agency delivers a beautiful document and hands execution back to your lean team. Three months later, nothing has left the page. Planning without delivery attached is a cost, and the result stays in PowerPoint.
Guaranteed First Place Within a Fixed Deadline
"First page in 90 days, guaranteed." Nobody controls Google's algorithm, and whoever promises this usually compensates with techniques that risk penalties. Be suspicious of position guarantees, demand execution guarantees.
No Answer About Generative AI and GEO
Ask how the agency handles presence in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. If the answer is vague, they are optimizing for the 2019 landscape. A growing share of your buyer's searches already happens inside AI tools, and anyone not measuring that is blind to a chunk of the funnel.
Recognized two or more signs? The problem is not SEO, it is the vendor.
12 Questions to Ask Before Signing the Contract
Print this list and take it to the sales meeting. The good answer and the suspicious one are marked in each.
Method and Diagnosis
- What is your method? Good: a name, defined stages and pillars. Suspicious: "every client is unique."
- What has the diagnosis already revealed about my site? Good: concrete findings before the contract. Suspicious: "we analyze after closing."
- What happens in the first 90 days? Good: deliverables with dates. Suspicious: an entire quarter of "planning."
Execution and Team
- Who executes the project? Good: names, roles and track records. Suspicious: "our internal team," with no faces.
- Do you implement or only recommend? Good: hands on the code and the CMS. Suspicious: a task list for your dev.
- Where do I track what has been done? Good: live dashboard, 24h access. Suspicious: a monthly meeting.
Content and Link Building
- Who writes and who reviews? Good: a subject matter specialist with technical review.
- How do you acquire backlinks? Good: press and relationships. Suspicious: a fixed link package per month.
- Do you show cases with numbers? Good: open results, like these documented cases. Suspicious: logos with no context.
Measurement, GEO and Contract
- How do you measure citations in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?
- Does the report connect ranking to leads and revenue?
- Is there a lock in penalty? Good: retention based on results. Suspicious: 12 months locked into a contract.
When an Agency, a Freelancer or an SEO SaaS Makes Sense
Not every scenario calls for an agency, and I say that coming from one.
A freelancer works well when the site is small and demand fits one person: occasional technical fixes, half a dozen pieces of content per month, a blog that is just starting. It is the cheapest and fastest model to hire. The risk lies in dependency: if they get sick, travel or land a bigger client, your project stops. And stalled SEO regresses.
An SEO SaaS (Semrush, Ahrefs and the like) is a tool, not a strategy. It shows what is wrong, but it fixes nothing on its own. It makes sense when you have an internal team with the capacity to execute. Without that team, you pay a subscription to accumulate diagnoses nobody implements.
An agency comes in when the game demands several fronts at once: technical, content, link building and GEO running in parallel, with senior people on each. It costs more and requires a contract, but it scales without depending on a single person. Before closing, ask for documented cases with numbers and validate whether their operation has already solved a scenario similar to yours.
Rule of thumb: does revenue depend on organic, or will it in the next 12 months? Agency. Still an experiment? Start smaller.
How to Evaluate the Proposal and the First 90 Days
A good proposal reads in ten minutes and is held accountable in ninety days. Follow me, the yardstick is simple.
What the Scope Must Put in Writing
Demand it on paper: monthly deliverables (how many pieces of content, how many technical fixes, how many backlinks), who executes each front with name and role, deadlines for each stage and where you track everything in real time. Here that runs in the Netlinks App, with live reports, but the format matters less than the rule.
If it is not written, it does not exist.
Metrics Worth Tracking
In the first 90 days, rankings still fluctuate. Hold the agency accountable for what it controls: deliverables published versus promised, technical errors fixed, pages indexed, AI citations monitored.
From month 4 onward, the conversation shifts to qualified traffic and leads. To calibrate expectations, compare with documented and verifiable cases: Leo's Marble went from 46 to 118 ranked keywords in four months. That is a realistic curve, so be suspicious of anyone promising faster.
Exit Terms Without Abusive Penalties
A serious contract accounts for the exit. A 12 month lock in with a full penalty is the mark of someone retaining clients through contractual handcuffs. What is reasonable in the market: 30 to 60 days notice and a penalty proportional to what remains to be executed. Those who trust their own delivery sign that without drama.
Your Next Conversation With an Agency Starts Differently
You made it this far because you have lived this movie: a PDF report nobody opens, "strategic planning" that never becomes a live page, rankings climbing while the pipeline stays flat. Now that problem has a name, and it has a checklist.
If you take three things from this guide, take these:
- Who executes matters more than who sells. Demand the name and role of every person responsible before signing, and check whether those people appear in the cases published by the agency, with numbers you can audit.
- Real time access is non negotiable. If the only window into the work is a monthly call, you are buying narrative. Work that is actually done can withstand a dashboard open 24 hours a day.
- A named method, with GEO inside. In 2026, an SEO agency that does not monitor citations in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity is measuring only half the game.
The practical step fits into your schedule this week: print the 12 questions, book conversations with two or three candidates and ask for a diagnosis before the contract. Those with concrete findings show them in the first meeting. Those without will stall.
A good agency does not ask for trust, it delivers evidence.
Want to test this yardstick on your own site? Talk to an Expert and get a diagnosis of your case, with no commitment, with concrete findings before any proposal.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an SEO agency cost in Brazil?
As a market reference, serious B2B projects typically start at R$ 3,000 to R$ 5,000 per month for smaller operations and exceed R$ 15,000 for enterprise accounts, with technical scope, content and link building combined. Be suspicious of figures well below that: someone is cutting execution. The right number depends on competition, site size and revenue goals, so ask for a no commitment diagnosis before discussing price.
How long does SEO take to produce results?
Technical fixes show effects within weeks, consistent gains in qualified traffic usually appear between 4 and 6 months, and authority consolidation takes 6 to 12 months. What you should demand from month one is visibility into execution: what was delivered, by whom and under what hypothesis. An agency that asks for "trust" without showing work is asking for time, and time in SEO is money.
How do I know whether an SEO agency is good before hiring?
Run three tests. Ask for the method with a name and stages (if the answer is "every client is unique," be suspicious). Ask for cases with verifiable numbers, like those in real client results, with metric, period and context. And ask where you track execution in real time. If access to the work depends on a monthly meeting, control will never be yours.
What is the difference between an SEO agency, a freelancer and an SEO tool?
A freelancer handles small, occasional demand, at low cost and with the risk of depending on a single person. A tool (Semrush, Ahrefs and similar) delivers data, not execution: someone still has to do the work. An agency combines a multidisciplinary team, technical, content and authority, and answers for business results. For a mid sized or large B2B company with revenue targets tied to organic, an agency is usually the model that scales.
Does the agency need to work on GEO in addition to SEO?
Yes. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the optimization to appear in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, which already handle a growing share of your buyer's searches. Ask in the sales meeting how the agency monitors your brand's citations in AI tools and what it does to earn them. If the answer is vague or if GEO is not even in the proposal, you are hiring a strategy with an expiration date.
Can an SEO agency guarantee first page on Google?
No, and anyone who guarantees it should be cut from your list immediately. Nobody controls Google's algorithm or AI answers. What a serious agency can guarantee is execution: deliverables defined in the contract, deadlines, named owners and full transparency about what was done. Results come from the consistency of that execution, and that is what you hold them accountable for in the first 90 days.
What should be in the contract with an SEO agency?
Four non negotiable points: quantified monthly deliverables (content, technical fixes, backlinks), the name and role of whoever executes each front, a real time tracking channel and an exit clause without abusive penalties. Avoid 12 month contracts with locked in retention and generic scope such as "ongoing optimization." If the paper does not say what you receive each month, you have no way to hold anyone accountable later.
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Still have questions about any of these criteria, or want to apply the checklist to your scenario? Talk to an Expert and get a no commitment diagnosis of your SEO and your presence in AI tools.
