Nyah Eliud
1. What will you do in the first ninety days?
A real answer names actual work: a technical audit, specific fixes, keyword and competitor research, particular pages built or rewritten. A weak answer talks about optimising your online presence and building authority.
If they can’t describe the first month clearly, they haven’t thought about your business yet. You’re being sold a package, not a plan.
2. Can you guarantee a ranking?
The right answer is no. Nobody controls Google’s algorithm and nobody sells positions in it. An agency that guarantees a number one ranking is either lying, or planning to rank you for a phrase nobody searches. Those are the same thing in a better suit.
3. What do the reports look like?
Ask to see a real one with the client details removed. You want to know whether it explains what changed and why, or whether it’s a wall of charts dumped out of a tool.
If you can’t understand the sample report in five minutes, you won’t understand yours in six months either. And you’ll have no way to judge whether the money is working.
4. Who actually does the work?
Ask whether the person in the meeting is the person doing the work. If not, ask who is. Subcontracting isn’t automatically a problem. Not knowing about it is.
5. What happens to the work if we stop?
Content and technical fixes on your own website stay yours. Anything built inside the agency’s accounts or tools leaves with them. Find out which is which before you sign, especially for Google Ads accounts, analytics, and who owns the business profile.
Insist on this oneEvery account should be created in your name with you as the owner, and the agency added as a manager. It costs nothing at the start and it’s painful to fix later.
6. What is the minimum commitment, and why?
A minimum term is fair. SEO produces almost nothing in a single month, and an agency can’t do month-one work if you might leave in month two. What isn’t fair is a long lock-in with no explanation and no way out.
7. Have you worked in my industry or my market?
Useful, but less important than people assume. Method moves between industries easily. What doesn’t move is knowing the market. An agency that has never worked in Cameroon may not know how people search here, or that most of your traffic will be on mobile data.
Good answers and warning signs
The questions matter less than what you listen for in the answers. This is the short version to keep beside you on the call.
| You ask | A good answer sounds like | A warning sign sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| First ninety days? | An audit, then a prioritised list of fixes | “We start building links straight away” |
| Can you guarantee rankings? | No, and here is what we do commit to | “Page one in thirty days, guaranteed” |
| What do reports show? | What changed, why, and enquiries from search | A long list of rankings and impressions |
| Who does the work? | A named person who knows your account | Vague talk about “the team” |
| What if we stop? | You keep the pages, accounts and data | Content or accounts that stay with them |
| Minimum term? | A short initial term, explained, then monthly | A long lock-in with no reason given |
| What would you not spend on? | Something specific, even if it costs them a sale | “You need everything we offer” |
Ask the same questions of every agency you speak to, including us, and compare the answers side by side. The differences become obvious quickly.
8. What would you tell me not to spend money on?
This is the most revealing question on the list, and almost nobody asks it. An agency that has really looked at your business will have a view on what isn’t worth doing yet. One that answers by recommending everything on its price list is selling, not advising.
Our own answer to that question is free, whatever your situation. Run the SEO and AI visibility audit and we’ll tell you what we would do first, including the parts we would leave alone for now.
Go further: the SEO guide, our SEO and GEO service, SEO prices, or local SEO and Google Business Profile.
Questions people ask
Our retainers run from 75,000 FCFA a month for local SEO to 450,000 for competitive markets, with a 100,000 FCFA one-off local setup. Whoever you hire, compare what the fee buys in hours and work, not just the monthly figure.
Yes. Nobody controls Google's rankings, including Google's own advertisers. A guarantee usually means either a meaningless search nobody types, or tactics that risk a penalty later.
Always. They should be in your name, with the agency given access. If you stop working together, the history and the data stay with you.
Monthly is normal. The first one should explain what the audit found and what was fixed; later ones should show what changed and what it did to enquiries.
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