Including us. Google publishes its own advice for business owners thinking about hiring an SEO. It is short and it is blunt. Here is what it says, and our answer to every question it tells you to ask.
Google’s words, quoted and datedOur answers, including the unflattering ones
First: you may not need anyone
Google says it plainly: “If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself.” It points owners to its own SEO Starter Guide, and suggests that even if you do hire someone, it’s worth knowing the basics so you can tell when an SEO “wants to use a technique that’s not recommended or, worse, strongly discouraged.”1
We agree. A good audit should leave you knowing what to do, in what order, and why — whether you do it yourself, hand it to your web person, or pay someone. Ours is written so any of the three can act on it.
Nobody can promise you a ranking
In Google’s and Bing’s own words:
“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.”1
“there’s no guarantee that changes you make to your website will result in noticeable impact in search results, and that positions in Google Search results aren’t static or fixed in place.”2
“Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results.”1
“SEO does not guarantee rankings or traffic, and GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences.” — Bing3
So we don’t promise a position, a date, a traffic number or an AI mention — not in our sales, not in our reports, not when a client asks us directly. If someone else does, that is the most useful thing they will tell you about themselves.
The red flags Google names
They won’t explain what they’ll do.
“Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.” Google adds that “you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire.”1
They talk about link schemes, or submitting you to thousands of search engines.
Google calls these “typically useless exercises.”1 Buying links is worse than useless: Google’s spam policies list “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes” as link spam.4
They emailed you out of the blue.
Google’s advice is to be wary of firms that do, and it admits it gets the same emails itself.1
Their tool is “approved by Google”.
“Google doesn’t evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and these tools don’t have access to Google’s internal ranking data.”1
Their audit asks for more access than reading.
For an audit, Google says to “only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don’t grant them write access).”1 We ask for exactly that: a Restricted user, which Google describes as having “simple view rights on most data.”5 We never ask for a password.
Google’s questions, and our answers
Google suggests questions to ask a prospective SEO.1 Here they are with our answers, including the ones that don’t flatter us. We’ve left out the one about international sites, because we don’t build them.
“Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?”
Not yet, and we won’t pretend otherwise. We launched in September 2026, and our first five audits are free, in return for honest feedback. What we can show you is a complete audit for a demonstration business — every page of it, the same document you would get. Read it before you decide anything.
“Do you follow the Google Search Essentials?”
Yes, and you don’t have to take our word for it: every finding in our report names the published rule it rests on, quoted, with the date we read it. Anything that rests on professional opinion rather than a published rule is labelled as opinion and kept off your to-do list.
“What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?”
We don’t predict rankings, traffic or dates, because Google’s own documentation says nobody can (below). What we measure is what we can actually check: whether each fix reached your live site, and what Search Console reports afterwards against the starting line we record on day one — with the source and the date on every number.
“What's your experience in my industry? What's your experience in my country/city?”
Our audit is built for US small businesses, particularly ones that serve a local area. We are a small practice operated from Ontario, Canada. The rules we work from are Google’s, Bing’s and each AI company’s published documentation, which is the same for every industry; what is particular to your business comes from asking you — your most profitable jobs, the towns you actually serve, and what has been done to the site before.
“How long have you been in business?”
Since 2026. This site went live in September 2026. We would rather tell you that than dress it up.
“How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?”
By email, and on a call when we deliver. We make no changes to your site during an audit — the audit is the reasoning: each recommendation comes with what we saw, the date we saw it, and the rule it sits against. The document is yours to keep and to hand to anyone else.
Google also says a good SEO should be interested in you — “what makes your business unique, who your competitors are, how search results can help, and how your customers find you.”1 That is why our setup ends with four questions only you can answer, and why the first one is your three most profitable jobs, not your most common ones.
If you have already been misled
It happens, and it isn’t a reflection on you. Google’s page notes that in the United States, “the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices,” and gives the number, 1-877-FTC-HELP.1 If a previous provider did something to your site that you’re unsure about, tell us when we start — much of the value of an audit is finding out what’s already there.