A useful marketing proposal starts with what your business needs. A restaurant seeking weekday bookings and a machinery supplier need different plans, even if both want more website visitors. Before comparing agencies, decide what you want customers to do and whether your team can handle the resulting enquiries.
Give candidates the same brief
Describe your product or service, intended audience, locations, languages, available budget and main difficulty. Explain who answers enquiries and who can approve website changes. This avoids comparing a social media posting package with a proposal that also includes a redesign and advertising.
For example, you might want more quote requests for a particular service and a record of which requests become customers. Establish the starting position first. A follower count alone will not tell you whether the work brings useful enquiries.
Separate the services and costs
- Content: topics, formats, languages, revisions and image usage rights.
- Advertising: media spending shown separately from management fees.
- Website: included pages, maintenance, hosting and renewal costs.
- Reporting: agreed reports, meetings and a named person to explain results.
SEO concerns visibility in organic search results; search advertising buys adverts. Google explains that buying advertising does not itself improve organic placement. Ask for the spending and results of each activity to be reported separately.
Put the working arrangements in writing
Specify which accounts your business will own, what access the agency needs, which files you will receive and what happens when the relationship ends. Ask for an anonymised sample report. It should connect work to an objective and explain what is still not working.
Compare the total cost over the proposed period, rather than the introductory monthly fee alone. Ask about extra production, translation, licences and changes outside the brief. A clear scope lets you discuss priorities before paying for work you may not need.
How do you choose between two agencies?
Consider which has understood your problem, explained its limits and proposed a sensible order of work. Another client’s success story is not a forecast of your sales. A small initial project with defined deliverables and an agreed review can make the working relationship easier to assess.
If organic search is your main concern, read our guide to comparing SEO services.
Editorial note: the earlier recommendation of one agency as “the best” has been removed because the article did not provide a documented comparison. The header image is generic and does not identify a provider’s team.
Source: Google Search Central: hiring an SEO, consulted on 23 September 2026.
