How to Hire an SEO Agency & Not Fumble Your Marketing Budget

Hiring an agency is tough.

With countless agencies vying for your attention, knowing what to look for—and what to avoid—can save you from costly mistakes and wasted time.

I’m writing this article to outline my own personal experience in hiring agencies over the years, as well as how Rock The Rankings is different than most other SaaS SEO agencies out there.

In this article, we’ll uncover the must-ask questions when hiring an SEO agency, helping you spot red flags, identify specialists, and set yourself up for success so you don’t fumble the bag when it comes to your marketing.

TL;DR

• Focus on agencies that excel in one core service, like SEO, rather than trying to do it all. Avoid scattergun approaches that dilute expertise.
• Partner with an agency that understands your specific industry, as specialization leads to better frameworks and proven results.
• Ensure you’ll work with experienced professionals, not junior account managers, and verify the agency’s commitment to long-term client success.
• The best agencies provide tailored forecasts, granular analysis, and a transparent roadmap to achieve measurable results.

What You MUST Look for in an SEO Agency (My Opinion)

I’ve had to hire agencies, working full-time at a SaaS company and as a founder of an agency.

We’ve worked on outsourcing marketing areas in the past where we didn’t have internal expertise at the time, for example, outsourcing our LinkedIn paid ad campaigns.

These are my personal questions I’d consider what you should ask yourself and keep in mind when looking at hiring an agency:

1. Does the agency offer ONLY SEO, or are they scattered across dozens of services?

Running an agency is hard – and scaling is even harder.

This is one of the areas where most agencies fall apart – trying to add too many services, and not being great at one single service.

I believe that the best agencies focus on solving one specific problem for one specific type of client.

Sure, huge agencies are doing 20-50M ARR+ with multiple service lines, but they are few and far between.

Even if you look at their G2 reviews, a common complaint is one or multiple of the items from this list.

When I started Rock The Rankings, I wanted to make sure we didn’t give into the temptation of offering multiple services yet stick to what we’re best at.

Rock The Ranking only does SEO with a core focus on:

• SEO-Focused Content Strategy
• Content & Graphic Creation (where it’s a right fit – you should be working to hire a content writer and building a team in-house, not relying on agencies over the long term)
• Advanced Technical SEO
• Link Building

We’re not the right fit if you’re looking for an agency that can handle SEO and other marketing channels, or website design, outreach, etc..

We only do what we do best, so we have a 100% focus on leveraging SEO to build customer acquisition engines.

Hiring one single agency, in most cases, to do ALL of your marketing efforts and then some is likely going to set you up for failure.

2. Are they niched down and only work with clients in your vertical/niche?

It should go without saying, but different industries and different verticals require knowledge that’s built up over time through repetition of execution and successful results.

No great agency can offer SEO to 5-10+ different spaces and get results.

It just doesn’t work that way.

There are agencies that do it, sure, but check their Glassdoor reviews.

They’re mostly churn and burn agencies where employees come and go due to the high-stress level of not having a productized service focused on one client type.

How can you be great at what you do if you’re not specialized and a jack-of-all-trades?

Rock The Rankings only works with SaaS companies with a product-market fit and ready to build a customer acquisition engine leveraging our expertise and framework.

We make this crystal clear in our positioning – and you’ve likely noticed it even if you’ve landed on our homepage:

We often hear that prospects are tired of telling an agency what to do and when to do it.

The reason why this happens is simple.

The agency doesn’t know what it’s doing because it doesn’t specialize in SaaS and likely hasn’t worked with hundreds of SaaS businesses over the past decade.

Here’s our approach – we only work with SaaS/Tech clients.

This has allowed us to develop the framework and playbooks to execute that get real results, scaling demos, trials, and revenue.

3. What is their team makeup, and who will you be working with on a weekly basis on their team?

Let’s be honest – if you’re hiring an agency – you want to work with their best.

That’s by far the number one problem I’ve had.

Everything was great, and then suddenly, I’m working with a 2-month-old hire who has 7 total months of experience under their belt.

You know, you went through the sales pitch, and everything seemed great, but once you signed up and kicked off, everything went downhill and fast.

Where do things normally go wrong? Why does it always seem to be this way?

Junior account managers to cut costs and employee churn are big reasons why things generally aren’t so great after signing up with an agency.

And exactly for that reason – that is why the traditional agency model is broken.

You don’t want to spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, just to work with a junior account manager who has no vested interest in your success, do you?

At Rock The Rankings, you can expect that:

• You’ll work one-on-one with our founder from start to finish.
• We only work with a set number of clients each quarter.
• Our average employee tenure is 3.9 years.

You want to work with and are paying for true expertise – and your partner should deliver on that promise.

4. Do they have expectations set from the get-go, and can they forecast and provide conservative conversion goals to work against?

For most agencies, the normal process from expressing interest to getting a proposal goes like this:

Book an intro call, request and proposal, and then on another 1-hour call reviewing the proposal – all while falling asleep as a sales rep reads through a non-customized, canned deck.

Your standard, polite response? “We’ll think about this, review internally with the team, and come back..”

Hard pass.

There’s nothing worse than being sold to – let alone with a generic analysis and proposal.

Here’s how we consistently get stellar feedback from our proposal process:

1. Listening—What are the prospect’s core pain and problems? Can we help solve them, or at least advise them on how to push themselves in the right direction towards success?
2. Granularity—We can afford to get granular with our research and analysis because we’re not a churn-and-burn operation that juggles dozens of clients simultaneously. We look to build long-term relationships, and that’s reflected in the initial effort we put in.
3. Forecasting—By getting granular, we can also properly conduct forecasting across different scenarios and speak to those depending on how fast we run with our efforts. This gives a clear path and idea of ROI vs. our efforts.

Sitting through boring proposal calls sucks – and finding a service provider that cares about your success seems to be becoming a rarity.

My suggestion while being on both sides of the coin?

Get a good feel for what you’re in for off the bat and whether the provider on the other side is going to put in the work.

Final Thoughts on Hiring an SEO Agency

Choosing the right SEO agency can make or break your marketing success, and it all starts with asking the right questions.

Specialization, industry expertise, a strong team, and clear expectations are non-negotiable when evaluating potential partners.

Don’t settle for a jack-of-all-trades or a flashy sales pitch that falls apart after the contract is signed.

By focusing on these core principles, you’ll set yourself up for a partnership that drives real, measurable business (not SEO) results.