How to Challenge Your SEO/AEO Agency

"Do SEO for us" is not a goal. Neither is a list of deliverables: ten blog posts, a site review, a monthly report. Deliverables are how the work gets done. A goal is what the work is for.

In this channel a usable goal names specific searches and a target position: move these twelve customer needs from page two into the top three. For AI search: appear in the answers for these prompts where we are absent today.

Expect your agency to ask about your business goals early, ideally before you sign. Expect them to turn those into search goals you can measure. Expect them to push back when a goal is unrealistic and offer one that is not. "We can't win that term at your size, but here are five related ones we can" is a sign of a good partner.

In many engagements the work is the only thing ever discussed. The client becomes a taskmaster. The agency keeps shoveling documents back. Both lose sight of what they set out to do.

Set aside time, twice a year at least, to talk about how you are working together. Agencies are usually more flexible than clients assume about communication, meeting cadence and report format. They can only adjust if you tell them.

A one-hour account meeting agenda:

Goals (20 minutes)

• Are we all still clear on the main objective?

• Does everyone believe we are moving toward it?

• What is working? What isn't?

Communication (20 minutes)

• Is contact too frequent or not frequent enough?

• Do requests and recommendations arrive in a form you can act on?

• What should change?

Your agency was hired because they have a view on how to grow your visibility. You are entitled to know what it is and to check it is still there a year in.

A tactic is something being done: "we're optimizing title tags," "we're building links," "we're adding schema." A strategy explains why those things, on those pages, in that order. If you ask why and get a description of the task, ask again.

In SEO and AEO, a strategy should cover:

• How your customers search, organized by what they want

• Which of those searches come first, and the reasoning

• What is wrong today: is the page missing, off-topic, or relevant but lacking authority?

• The order of work. Relevance comes before authority. Links pointed at a page that does not answer the search are wasted.

• What result is expected, and by when

If you feel you are boring your agency with the nuances of your business, find another agency.

Good SEO starts from how your customers talk, and nobody outside the company knows that well. An agency that works only from keyword tools will find the searches you already rank for and miss the ones you should.

Tell them:

• What you sell, and which products or services earn the most

• Which customers you want more of, and which you don't want

• Who you compete with and how you differ

• What customers call things, especially where it differs from your internal names

• What is launching, what is being retired and what is seasonal

• Where you operate

Expect a good agency to ask for all of this before they open a tool, and to keep asking as your business changes. Changes in your business should move the strategy far more than algorithm news does.

Do not leave your agency in a marketing echo chamber. Put them in a room with your top salesperson and whoever knows the product best.

Salespeople hear the customer's language every day: the questions asked on first calls, the objections, the words prospects use before they learn your terminology. Those are the searches and prompts you want to win. I have seen whole keyword strategies change after one conversation with a veteran sales rep.

Thirty minutes is enough to start. Good questions for the agency to ask: What do prospects ask first? What do they call the product before they know its name? What were they looking for when they found us? Which competitors come up?

This one has two halves.

Say so when it doesn't make sense. There is a lot of jargon in this field, and people who live in it lose track of where an outsider's understanding stops. "What does that mean?" and "What do we do with this?" are welcome questions. They are far better than letting people work for months on something you never valued.

Apply this to reports in particular. A report should tell you where things started, what was done, what changed and what happens next. If yours is a set of charts without that story, ask for the story. Quarterly is usually the right rhythm. Month-to-month movement in this channel is mostly noise.

For AEO claims, ask to see the test. What was changed, on which pages, compared against what? "We did many things and visibility went up" does not show that any one of them worked.

Find a time to meet your account team face to face, at least once a year. Tie it to something substantive, like the annual plan or a quarterly review, and leave time to get to know each other.

It is easy to run everything through email and video calls. Relationships are stronger when people have met. Trust and accountability rise when your agency contact is a person you have had lunch with.

Video calls are a reasonable second best. Cameras on.

Any one of these is worth a conversation. Several together are worth a review of the relationship.

• You cannot say in two sentences what the strategy is

• No baseline was recorded before work began

• Reports show activity and charts, with no link between the two

• Work is described in tasks completed, not results expected

• Technical fixes dominate month after month with no ranking change

• Links are delivered without a plan for which pages or how many

• Questions are answered with jargon or with urgency about algorithm updates

• AI search results are claimed without tracked prompts or a described test

• You are discouraged from asking why

• Goals are written down and tied to specific searches and prompts

• There is a baseline, and every report compares against it

• Every piece of work is logged with a date, so results can be traced to it

• You can explain the plan to your boss without the agency in the room

• The agency tells you when something did not work and what they will do differently

• The agency tells you when a goal is not winnable

• Recommendations arrive in a form you can ship, and you ship them

These are the things I think every business should ask of its agency. We ask our own clients to hold us to them.

If you would like to see how we work, start with a free landscape assessment. We take one area of your business, map how customers search for it and show you where you stand in search and in AI answers.

Book a time: tangiblevalue.com/assessment