Yes — this one needs a more substantial cleanup than the last page.

The biggest issue is that it currently overlaps heavily with the page we just optimized about how to choose an SEO company. I’d keep this URL much narrower: the questions a business owner should actually ask during an SEO sales call, plus what a strong answer sounds like and what should make them cautious.

I’d also remove or soften a few older claims, especially the fixed 30–60/90–180-day expectations, “weekly” GBP optimization, “SGE answer cards,” and the anecdotal ranking/conversion numbers unless you have documentation you want to keep behind those specific claims.

Because the pasted version doesn’t expose the existing WordPress hrefs, keep any internal links already attached in WordPress and add the verified links below.

SEO title

7 Questions to Ask an SEO Company in San Diego Before Hiring

Meta description

Hiring an SEO company in San Diego? Ask these 7 questions about strategy, results, Local SEO, technical SEO, backlinks, content, reporting, and who does the work.

7 Questions to Ask an SEO Company in San Diego Before Hiring

Hiring an SEO company is a bigger decision than choosing someone who can write a few blog posts or change your title tags.

You’re giving someone influence over your website, search visibility, content, technical setup, and potentially one of your most important sources of new customers.

So before you sign an agreement, ask questions.

After more than 20 years working in SEO, I’ve found that the quality of an SEO provider becomes much easier to evaluate when you stop asking:

“Can you get me to #1?”

and start asking:

“How do you decide what my website actually needs?”

Below are seven questions I would ask any SEO company in San Diego before hiring them.

Quick Answer: What Should You Ask an SEO Company Before Hiring?

Ask an SEO company:

1. Can you show me real SEO results?
2. What would your Local SEO strategy be for my business?
3. Who will actually be doing the work?
4. How do you approach technical SEO?
5. How do you build legitimate authority and backlinks?
6. How do you decide what content should be created?
7. How will you measure whether SEO is working?

The quality of the answers matters more than hearing exactly what you want to hear.

A strong SEO provider should be able to explain their reasoning in a way that makes sense.

1. Can You Show Me Real SEO Results?

Case studies are one of the first things I would ask for.

But I wouldn’t stop at:

“We increased organic traffic by 200%.”

Traffic growth can be impressive, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you whether the SEO created business value.

Ask:

• Which pages improved?
• Which searches improved?
• Were those searches commercially valuable?
• Did important service pages gain visibility?
• Did impressions and clicks increase?
• Did leads or inquiries improve?
• What work contributed to those results?
• How long was the company working on the account?
• What did not work as expected?

I care much more about the story behind the numbers than a giant percentage in a sales deck.

A strong case study should help you understand:

Where the business started → what was changed → why it was changed → what happened afterward.

You can see examples of my own work on my SEO case studies page.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

A good SEO company should be able to walk you through specific examples and explain the strategy behind the results.

They should also be comfortable acknowledging that not every experiment works exactly as expected.

SEO involves testing, measuring, and adapting.

Red Flag

Be cautious if the only evidence you see is:

• Huge traffic percentages with no context
• Screenshots without dates
• Rankings for irrelevant keywords
• Claims with no identifiable strategy
• Results that cannot be reasonably explained

2. What Is Your Local SEO Strategy for My San Diego Business?

If your customers are primarily local, this question matters.

Local SEO is much more than submitting a company to directories or adding “San Diego” throughout a website.

A local strategy may involve:

• Google Business Profile
• Google Maps visibility
• Reviews
• Service pages
• Location relevance
• Local backlinks
• Citations
• Website content
• Internal linking
• Service areas
• Business categories
• Accurate business information
• Local authority

And the strategy should depend on the business.

A dentist in La Jolla does not necessarily need the same Local SEO strategy as a contractor serving most of San Diego County.

A business with one storefront has different geographic considerations from a service-area company.

San Diego itself is also not one uniform search market.

Competition may differ across:

• La Jolla
• Hillcrest
• North Park
• Pacific Beach
• Point Loma
• Santee
• Encinitas
• Carlsbad
• Chula Vista
• Other surrounding communities

A knowledgeable local SEO provider should understand that geography can affect what potential customers see.

You can read my full Local SEO guide for San Diego businesses.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

I’d want to hear the SEO company explain how they would evaluate:

• Your current Google Business Profile
• Website rankings
• Search demand
• Competitors
• Service areas
• Reviews
• Local pages
• Maps visibility
• Local backlinks
• Your actual geographic customer base

Red Flag

I’d be cautious if their entire Local SEO strategy is:

“We’ll build 300 citations.”

or:

“We’ll create a page for every city in San Diego County.”

Neither is automatically a strategy.

3. Who Is Actually Doing the SEO Work?

This is one of the most important questions and one of the easiest to forget.

Ask:

“Who will actually be working on my website?”

The person who sells you SEO may not be the person who manages the campaign.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

Large agencies often have:

• Salespeople
• Account managers
• SEO strategists
• Writers
• Developers
• Link-building specialists

But you should know who is responsible for your strategy.

Ask:

• Who makes the SEO decisions?
• Who will I communicate with?
• Who writes or edits my content?
• Is any work outsourced?
• Who makes website changes?
• Who reviews performance?
• How often will we communicate?

I personally work directly with my clients.

That means the person evaluating the Search Console data, determining priorities, making recommendations, and discussing the strategy with you is me.

That direct relationship is part of how I prefer to work.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

The provider should be able to tell you exactly who handles your account and how responsibilities are divided.

Red Flag

Be cautious if you cannot get a clear answer about who actually does the work.

4. What Is Your Technical SEO Process?

Technical SEO matters because even strong content can be limited by technical problems.

I generally want to know whether an SEO provider evaluates issues such as:

• Crawling
• Indexing
• Canonical tags
• Redirects
• Broken links
• XML sitemaps
• Robots directives
• Website architecture
• Internal linking
• Mobile usability
• Page performance
• Duplicate URLs
• Structured data

But technical SEO should not become a checklist for making changes simply because a tool produced warnings.

The provider should understand which issues actually matter.

For example:

A minor diagnostic warning may be much less important than an important service page accidentally set to noindex.

Prioritization matters.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

A good provider should explain how they identify technical problems, determine severity, and prioritize the fixes that could have the largest impact.

Red Flag

Be cautious if every technical issue is presented as an emergency or if the company relies entirely on an automated audit score.

An SEO audit tool can find problems.

It cannot always determine which problem matters most for your business.

I explain this distinction in my guide to what an SEO audit should reveal before you invest in SEO.

5. How Will You Build Legitimate Backlinks and Authority?

Links still matter.

But link building is one of the areas where businesses can receive particularly bad advice.

I would ask:

“Where will the links come from?”

A good answer should be more specific than:

“We’ll build 100 backlinks every month.”

I care more about:

• Relevance
• Legitimacy
• Editorial context
• The source
• Why the link exists
• Whether the business belongs there
• Whether a real audience could encounter it

Useful authority-building opportunities can come from things such as:

• Industry publications
• Local organizations
• Professional associations
• Digital PR
• Partnerships
• Community involvement
• Expert commentary
• Newsworthy resources
• Legitimate directories
• Editorial references

The goal should not simply be increasing the backlink count.

The goal is building a legitimate presence beyond your own website.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

The provider should be able to explain the types of links they pursue, how opportunities are evaluated, and why those links make sense for your business.

Red Flag

Be cautious of promises such as:

“200 backlinks in 30 days.”

Quantity by itself tells you almost nothing about quality.

6. What Content Will You Create, and Why?

This question has become increasingly important.

Ask:

“How do you decide what content my website needs?”

I would not be satisfied with:

“Your package includes four blogs per month.”

Why four?

Which topics?

What do those articles support?

Which search intent do they target?

Does the website already have content covering those subjects?

Could the new article compete with something that already exists?

A content strategy should connect to the larger SEO strategy.

A new page might exist to:

• Support an important service
• Answer a meaningful customer question
• Target a distinct search intent
• Strengthen topical depth
• Earn links
• Address a competitor gap
• Improve a page already close to ranking

And sometimes the correct answer is:

Don’t publish anything new.

The website may need:

• Existing content updated
• Overlapping pages consolidated
• Stronger internal links
• Service pages improved
• Thin content removed or redirected

That’s why I don’t believe publishing more blogs automatically improves SEO.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

The SEO company should connect content recommendations to:

• Search demand
• Search intent
• Business priorities
• Existing website content
• Commercial opportunities

Red Flag

Be cautious if content production appears to exist mainly because the package requires a certain number of monthly deliverables.

7. How Will You Measure Whether SEO Is Working?

Ask exactly what you will receive each month.

Rankings matter.

Traffic matters.

Impressions matter.

Clicks matter.

But I would not evaluate SEO using any one of those metrics by itself.

Depending on the business, I may look at:

• Relevant search impressions
• Organic clicks
• Important keyword rankings
• Ranking distribution
• Service-page visibility
• Google Maps visibility
• Landing-page performance
• Calls
• Forms
• Leads
• Conversions
• Technical improvements
• Backlink growth

The most important question is:

Are we becoming more visible for searches that could actually help the business?

A website can dramatically increase traffic without meaningfully increasing qualified leads.

That’s why context matters.

What a Strong Answer Sounds Like

A good SEO provider should explain:

• What they measure
• Why they measure it
• What changed
• What they learned from the data
• What they plan to do next

Reporting should lead to decisions.

Red Flag

Be cautious if you receive a giant automated report every month but nobody can explain what the numbers mean.

Bonus Questions to Ask an SEO Company

The seven questions above are the ones I consider most important, but I’d ask a few others too.

Do You Require a Long-Term Contract?

Understand:

• Contract length
• Cancellation terms
• What happens to your content
• Who owns website changes
• Whether there are setup fees
• What happens if you stop service

I offer month-to-month SEO services because that structure fits the way I prefer to work with clients.

How Do You Use AI in Your SEO Process?

AI can be useful for:

• Research
• Organizing information
• Brainstorming
• Drafting
• Data analysis
• Content support

But the final strategy still needs judgment.

I care about:

• Accuracy
• Firsthand expertise
• Search intent
• Original value
• Brand voice
• Business context

Publishing large volumes of generic AI content is not a substitute for a strategy.

How Long Will SEO Take?

I would be skeptical of anyone promising an exact ranking timeline.

SEO timelines depend on:

• Competition
• Existing rankings
• Website history
• Authority
• Technical condition
• Search intent
• Resources
• The queries being targeted

Some improvements may appear sooner than others.

Competitive commercial searches may require much more work.

You can read my full explanation of how long SEO takes to start showing results.

How Are You Adapting SEO for AI Search?

Traditional search is no longer the only way people discover businesses.

Potential customers can also encounter brands through:

• ChatGPT
• Google AI experiences
• AI-powered recommendations
• Maps
• Other discovery platforms

I’d ask the provider how they are thinking about these changes.

But I’d also be cautious of anyone presenting AI SEO as completely disconnected from normal SEO fundamentals.

Strong websites still benefit from:

• Clear information
• Expertise
• Reputation
• Authority
• Technical accessibility
• Strong site structure

I explain my approach in How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT and AI Search.

What Should the First Few Months of SEO Look Like?

There is no universal monthly checklist.

But early in a campaign, I generally want to understand the website before making major decisions.

That may include reviewing:

• Google Search Console
• Analytics
• Rankings
• Indexed pages
• Service pages
• Existing content
• Competitors
• Backlinks
• Technical problems
• Internal linking
• Keyword opportunities
• Conversion paths
• Potential cannibalization

Then I prioritize.

Sometimes the biggest opportunity is technical.

Sometimes it is a service page.

Sometimes there is a valuable page already ranking around positions 8–15 that deserves improvement.

Sometimes the website has too many overlapping articles and needs cleanup instead of more publishing.

SEO should become more specific as we learn more about the site.

What a Good SEO Relationship Should Feel Like

SEO can be technical.

The relationship should not feel mysterious.

You should generally understand:

• What is being worked on
• Why it matters
• What changed
• What the data is showing
• What comes next

You do not need to become an SEO expert.

But you should not feel like you’re paying for a black box.

That’s one of the qualities I discuss in What Makes a Great SEO Company?.

Questions That Should Make You Cautious

Here are some statements I would question:

“We guarantee #1 rankings.”

No SEO company controls Google.

“You need 100 backlinks every month.”

Why 100?

Where are they coming from?

“You need four blogs every month.”

Why four?

Which searches are they targeting?

“Traffic increased, so the campaign is working.”

Which traffic?

Did it support the business?

“Your Domain Authority needs to reach 50.”

Domain Authority is a third-party metric, not a Google ranking score.

“We have a proprietary relationship with Google.”

Be very cautious about claims suggesting special organic-ranking access.

“We can rank you in 30 days.”

For what query? Starting from where? Against which competitors?

The details matter.

Questions to Ask During the SEO Sales Call

If you want a simple checklist to keep open during your call, use this:

• Can you show me real case studies?
• What would you evaluate first on my website?
• Which SEO opportunities do you currently see?
• How do you choose keywords?
• How do you approach Local SEO?
• Who will actually work on my account?
• Is any work outsourced?
• How do you handle technical SEO?
• How do you build backlinks?
• How do you decide what content to publish?
• How will you measure success?
• How often will we communicate?
• What happens if the strategy isn’t working?
• How are you adapting to AI search?
• What should I realistically expect from the first several months?

You do not need perfect answers.

You need answers that make sense.

How This Differs From Comparing SEO Companies

This page is specifically about what to ask during the evaluation process.

If you’ve already spoken with several providers and are deciding between proposals, pricing, experience, and different service models, read my guide to comparing SEO companies in San Diego.

And if you want a broader framework for choosing the right provider, read How to Choose an SEO Company in San Diego.

That keeps each resource focused on a different stage of the hiring decision.

Why I Believe Direct Access Matters

One of the questions above deserves special emphasis:

Who will actually manage your SEO?

I work directly with my clients.

There isn’t a salesperson handing your website to someone you’ve never met after you sign.

I want to understand:

• Which services matter most
• Which customers you want
• What your website is currently doing
• What Google is showing us
• Where opportunities exist
• What we should prioritize next

That knowledge becomes more valuable over time.

SEO should not reset every month.

The strategy should become smarter as we learn what works for the business.

Final Thoughts: Ask About the Strategy, Not the Promise

The best questions to ask an SEO company are the ones that reveal how they think.

Ask for proof.

Ask who is doing the work.

Ask why they recommend particular keywords.

Ask where backlinks come from.

Ask why new content needs to exist.

Ask what they will measure.

Ask what happens when something doesn’t work.

And listen carefully to whether the answer sounds like a real strategy or a sales script.

You don’t need the SEO company that makes the biggest promise.

You need one that can explain what your website needs, why it matters, and how they will determine whether the strategy is working.

I’m Jen Ruhman, and I’ve worked in SEO for more than 20 years.

I work directly with businesses on Local SEO, technical SEO, content, authority, internal linking, and AI search visibility.

If you’d like me to take a look at your website before you decide what to do next:

GET YOUR FREE SEO ANALYSIS →

Or call/text me at (619) 719-1315.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I ask an SEO company before hiring them?

Ask about their strategy, case studies, Local SEO approach, technical process, backlink strategy, content strategy, reporting, communication, and who will actually perform the work.

Should an SEO company guarantee rankings?

No.

An SEO company can improve your website and search strategy, but it cannot control Google’s organic rankings.

How can I tell whether an SEO company is legitimate?

Look for transparent communication, verifiable experience, real case studies, client reviews, a clear process, realistic expectations, and an ability to explain recommendations.

Should I ask an SEO company about backlinks?

Yes.

Ask where backlinks will come from and how opportunities are evaluated.

Avoid focusing solely on the number of links promised.

Should I ask who writes my SEO content?

Yes.

You should understand who creates, edits, and approves content and whether any part of the process is outsourced.

How often should an SEO company report to me?

The exact cadence can vary, but reporting should be regular enough that you understand what is changing, what the data shows, and what the provider plans to do next.

Is Local SEO important when choosing a San Diego SEO company?

It can be very important if your business depends on customers within San Diego or nearby communities.

Local SEO involves more than website rankings and may include Google Business Profile, Maps visibility, reviews, geographic relevance, citations, and local authority.

Should I choose the cheapest SEO company?

Not necessarily.

Compare what is included, who performs the work, the experience involved, the strategy, and whether the investment makes sense relative to your business opportunity.