Sometimes yes. Often not yet.
Most businesses that hire early are paying somebody to do the afternoon of work they could have done, and then paying monthly for reports about it.
We do not sell this work and we are not competing for it, which is the only reason this page is worth reading. Some businesses should hire and some should not, and the deciding factor is almost never budget.
When it is clearly worth it
- You need to be written about by other people, at scale, and nobody internally has the relationships or the time. This is the real product and it is genuinely hard.
- You have a technical problem you cannot diagnose — migrations, indexing collapses, a site that renders differently to a crawler.
- You are in a category where the top results are held by people spending seriously, and you have decided to compete there on purpose.
When it is not
- You have not done the free things yet. Directory profiles, one clear page per offering, answers to your customers’ actual questions.
- You cannot say what would count as success. An engagement without a defined finding is a subscription.
- You are buying it because traffic fell, without knowing why. If the cause is the answer box, more ranking work does not touch it.
Questions that separate the proposals
- Which five things on the audit change anything, and what happens if we ignore the rest?
- What would make you tell us to stop paying you?
- How will you tell a real change from ordinary variation?
- Do you measure whether assistants name us, and if so, how do you handle a brand name that is also a common word?
The last one is a fast filter. Substring matching on a brand that is also an ordinary word is a difference of orders of magnitude — we measured 2,420 mentions from an index against zero from the brand’s own domain on the same query — and a supplier who has not thought about it is reporting a number nobody can defend.
The short answers
Should I hire an SEO agency?
Worth it if you need to be written about by other people at scale, if you have a technical problem you cannot diagnose, or if you have decided to compete in a category where the top is held by heavy spenders. Not yet if you have not done the free work, cannot define success, or are buying because traffic fell without knowing why.
What should I do before hiring anyone?
The afternoon: one clear page per thing you sell, consistent business details everywhere, complete directory profiles, and written answers to the questions customers ask before buying. Then find out what is actually wrong.
What questions should I ask an agency?
Which five audit items change anything; what would make them tell you to stop paying; how they distinguish a real change from ordinary variation; and whether they measure assistant answers, including how they handle a brand name that is also a common word.
Is a two hundred item audit a good sign?
Usually it is the same issue counted two hundred times. Ask which five matter and what happens if the rest are ignored.
Can an agency get me recommended by AI?
They can do the work that makes it more likely — earned coverage, clear description, presence in the sources assistants read. Nobody can guarantee the placement, because there is no placement to buy.
How do I judge whether it is working?
Agree in advance what would count, measure the same questions the same way, and require intervals rather than point comparisons. A report that shows movement without a variance test is showing you noise.
Find out in under ten minutes
One free check, no account and no card. You get the answers the assistants gave, not a score.
Every figure quoted here comes from a real question put to a real assistant, saved with the date and the assistant that answered it. This piece was written to answer the search "should i hire seo agency".