Phase 4 · OperateModule 15 of 15
When to hire
The last module, and the one I have the most obvious interest in. So it is built almost entirely from Google’s own published guidance on hiring an SEO rather than from mine.
What this actually costs you
- Hours to learn
- 2
- Hours / month
- 0
- Tools
- Free
- Difficulty
- Low
What this looks like when it is done badly. A business signs a twelve-month agreement on a discovery call, having asked nothing from the list below, because the deck had a chart in it. Eight months later they cannot say what was changed on their own site, and nobody wrote down what success would look like at the start.
Hours and tool costs are RedSEO’s own estimates from client work and from teaching this material, not industry survey data. They assume a business owner doing the work themselves on a site under about 50 pages.
This is the last module and the one where my interest is most obvious. I sell SEO. A page called “when to hire”, written by an agency, is exactly the page you should read most sceptically.
So most of it is not mine. Google publishes its own guidance on hiring an SEO, including the questions to ask and the warning signs, and it is better than anything I would have written because it has no stake in your answer.
Google’s position on whether you need one at all
Worth starting here, because it undercuts the premise of the page. Google’s guidance says: “If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself.”
That is the honest default for a large share of the people who will read this. If you have one location, a straightforward service, and ten hours a month, the fourteen modules above are most of what you need and hiring anybody is optional.
Google adds that a good time to hire is when you are considering a redesign or launching a new site, which matches what I see: the expensive mistakes cluster around structural change, not around ordinary publishing.
The red flags, in Google’s words
These are quoted, not paraphrased, because the wording matters:
- “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 wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.”
- “Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.”
- “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.”
The unsolicited-email one deserves emphasis because it is the most common contact most small businesses have with our industry. If the first thing an agency did was cold-email you about errors on your site, Google’s own advice is to be wary, and I would go further.
Talk to us, with those questions in hand
What a retainer should actually buy
Since module 1 established what the market charges, here is what the money should be attached to.
Named deliverables, not hours. “Twenty hours a month” is not a deliverable. “Four pages published, technical fixes shipped, monthly report and a call” is. If you cannot tell from the agreement what will exist at the end of the month, the agreement is not finished.
A written definition of success and a date. Your payback month, agreed at the start. Anyone who will not commit to what good looks like is reserving the right to redefine it later.
Visibility into changes. Google’s own question. You should be able to see what changed on your site and when.
Month-to-month, or a good reason. Long agreements are defensible when there is genuine upfront work. They are not defensible as a retention mechanism, and the difference is whether the agency will explain which it is.
Where we are the wrong choice
Since I would rather you found this out here than three months in:
If your payback math only works at DIY cost, hire nobody, including us. That is arithmetic and I cannot argue with it.
If you need results inside ninety days, this is the wrong channel entirely, and the honest recommendation is ads while SEO compounds underneath.
If you need someone in your office, or in your CMS every day, or working an hour ahead of your team, a boutique agency is the wrong shape and an in-house hire or a contractor is better.
And if what you actually need is one specific fix, a redirect map, a technical diagnosis, a schema rollout, buy that fix rather than a retainer. A monthly agreement for a one-time problem is a bad trade for you and I will say so on the call.
How to decide, in one paragraph
Take your payback month from module 1 and run it twice: once with an agency fee as M, once with your own hours priced honestly. If DIY works and agency does not, do it yourself. If both work, choose on whether the constraint is knowledge or hours, because this curriculum solves the first and cannot touch the second. If neither works, the answer is that SEO is not your next investment, and that is a legitimate outcome of reading fifteen modules.
That is the whole curriculum, and the point of it. You now know enough to make this decision yourself, and to tell whether whoever you talk to next knows what they are doing.
Get the answer for your own situation
Eight questions. Two of the answers are hard gates that override the score and tell you to hire nobody, including us, which is the only way a tool like this on an agency site is worth anything.
DIY or hire?
Free, no signup, nothing stored. It can return “do it yourself” and it can return “this is the wrong channel for your timeline”.
- DIY or Hire? SEO ScorerScores you across hours, payback, site size, access, timeline and accountability.
- SEO ROI CalculatorRun the payback math twice, once at agency cost and once at your own hourly rate.
Vet anyone before you sign, including us
The first seven are Google’s own questions, quoted from their guidance on hiring an SEO. The last is mine.
Ask: can you show me examples of your previous work and success stories?
Look for what they shipped, not only what the chart did. A results screenshot with no account of the work behind it is a claim, not evidence.
Ask: do you follow the Google Search Essentials?
A straightforward yes, and an ability to say what that rules out, tells you a lot. Hesitation here is the single most informative moment in the conversation.
Ask: what kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?
Compare the answer against your own payback month from module 1. If their timeline is shorter than the mechanism allows, they are selling to your hope rather than to your situation.
Ask: what is your experience in my industry, and in my country or city?
Not disqualifying if the answer is none, but it should change the price or the ramp, and they should volunteer that themselves.
Ask: how long have you been in business?
Google puts this on the list. It is a proxy for having been around long enough to have made mistakes on somebody else's site rather than yours.
Ask: how will we communicate, and will you share every change you make?
The answer should be yes without qualification. An agency unwilling to show you what it changed on your own site is telling you something.
Ask past clients whether the work was useful and the people easy to work with
Google recommends this explicitly. Ask for a client whose engagement ended, not only a current one.
Ask what would make them tell you not to hire them
Mine, not Google's. Anyone who has done this honestly has turned work away and can describe the shape of it. An answer of "nothing" means either no experience or no candour.
Can you do this yourself?
You can do this yourself if
- Your payback math from module 1 works at DIY cost but not at agency cost. That is a real answer and it means keep going yourself.
- You have the hours, you control your site, and the modules you actually need are 1, 2, 5, 10 and 14. Most local businesses are in this position and do not know it.
- You want to understand the channel before you buy it. Doing three months yourself makes you a far better client afterwards, and a much harder one to mislead.
You cannot do this yourself if
- You are the bottleneck. Fourteen modules in, you now know whether the hours exist. If they do not, no amount of knowledge substitutes.
- The work you need is link building, a restructure of a site that already ranks, or measurement someone else will audit. Those are the three places DIY most often costs more than it saves.
- You need this defensible to a third party, a board, a lender or a buyer, on a schedule you do not control.
Questions people ask about this
- When should I hire an SEO agency?
- Google says that "if you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself", and that a good time to hire is when you are considering a redesign or launching a new site. The practical test is to run your payback math twice, once with an agency fee and once with your own hours priced honestly, and see which version works.
- What questions should I ask an SEO agency?
- Google publishes its own list: can you show examples of previous work, do you follow the Google Search Essentials, what results do you expect and in what timeframe, what is your experience in my industry and city, how long have you been in business, and will you share every change you make to my site. Add one of mine: what would make you tell me not to hire you.
- What are SEO agency red flags?
- Google names several directly. Guaranteed rankings, since "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google". Claims of a "special relationship" with Google or a "priority submit". Unsolicited cold emails. Secrecy about what they intend to do. Being asked to link to the SEO. And talk of link popularity schemes or submitting your site to thousands of search engines.
- Can an SEO guarantee first page rankings?
- No, and offering to is itself the warning sign. Google states plainly that "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" and tells you to beware of anyone claiming otherwise.
- What should an SEO retainer include?
- Named deliverables rather than hours, a written definition of success with a date attached, visibility into every change made to your site, and either month-to-month terms or a clear explanation of why a longer commitment is necessary. If you cannot tell from the agreement what will exist at the end of the month, it is not finished.
- Should I hire an agency or do SEO myself?
- Run the payback math from module 1 twice, once with an agency fee and once with your own hours at a rate you would accept. If DIY works and agency does not, do it yourself. If both work, decide on whether your constraint is knowledge or hours: this curriculum solves the first and cannot touch the second.