SEO & search
How to evaluate SEO partners without falling for guarantees
Rankings promises are a red flag. Here is how to brief SEO work with transparency, baselines and business outcomes.
By Nirmal Lashkari6 min read
No ethical team can guarantee page-one rankings or a fixed number of leads. Search results move with competition, algorithms and your own site quality.
Ask for a system, not a slogan
- Baseline of technical health, content gaps and conversion paths
- Prioritised roadmap with impact vs effort
- Clear ownership between strategy, content and engineering
- Reporting that separates vanity traffic from qualified opportunity
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings in a fixed number of days
- Secret tactics that cannot be explained in writing
- No discussion of page experience or conversion
- Identical strategy for every industry
A healthier success definition
Define success as improved discoverability for commercial intent, cleaner technical foundations, and more qualified enquiries over time—measured against a documented baseline.
If you want a starting baseline for your own site, request the free website scorecard. We review structure, speed and enquiry path, and send the findings by email—so any SEO work you commission later can be measured against something honest.
#seo#procurement#measurement