What to Look for Before Hiring a Web Design or SEO Agency

Start by asking what "done" actually looks like and when you'll see it — a vague timeline is often the first sign of a vague process. A serious agency can tell you, roughly, what week you'll see a homepage draft, what week the site goes live, and what happens if either of you misses a deadline. If the answer is some version of "it depends," ask what it depends on specifically, and get that in writing. Part of that same conversation should cover which platform they intend to build on — picking the right platform for your store is one of the first real decisions in the process, and it affects both the cost and how much control you'll have over the site later.

Ask to see examples of real work for businesses similar in size to yours, not just their flashiest client. A portfolio full of large national brands doesn't tell you much about how they'll handle a small local business with a modest budget and a much smaller team behind it. You want to see a restaurant, a salon, a clinic, a small retail shop — something that looks like your business, not a Fortune 500 landing page built by a team of twelve.

If SEO is part of what you're paying for, ask specifically what they'll do, not just what results they promise. "We'll improve your rankings" isn't an answer. A legitimate consultant can describe concrete work:

• Fixing technical issues on your site
• Writing content around what your customers actually search for
• Building out and verifying your Google Business Profile
• Earning links from other legitimate local sites and directories

Ask how they'll report progress and how often — you should be able to see what changed and why, not just receive a monthly invoice with a screenshot of a graph going up.

SEO gets used as a catch-all term, and that vagueness is exactly what lets weak agencies get away with doing very little. Real search engine optimization work falls into a few concrete buckets:

• Making sure your site loads fast and works on a phone
• Making sure Google can actually find and read every page
• Writing content that answers the specific questions your customers are already typing into search bars
• Building your business's presence and reputation across the web — your Google Business Profile, your listings on directories, your reviews

It helps to already know what a website actually needs to do its job for a business like yours, so you can tell whether an agency's plan actually covers the basics or just repeats the buzzwords.

Ask an agency to walk you through which of these buckets they're actually working on for you, this month, not in general. If they can't name a specific page they improved, a specific keyword they targeted, or a specific technical fix they made, they may be billing you for SEO in name only. It's fair to ask for a short written summary each month: what was done, why it was done, and what's planned next. That single habit — a plain-language monthly note — separates agencies that are actually working from ones that are just collecting a retainer.

Don't just look at portfolio screenshots — visit the actual live sites they claim to have built, on your phone, not just your laptop. A beautiful desktop screenshot can hide a site that's slow, cluttered, or broken on mobile, which is how most of your own customers will actually find you. Search for the business by name and see if it shows up, search for what that business sells and see where it lands. If an agency's own past work doesn't show up in basic searches, that tells you something about their SEO claims specifically.

When possible, ask for one or two references you can actually call — not just testimonials written for the website, but a real business owner willing to talk for five minutes about what it was like to work with them. Ask that reference two things:

• Did the agency deliver what was promised on the timeline that was promised
• Would they hire them again today

Owners are usually candid about this, especially with another small-business owner asking. If an agency hesitates to give you even one reference after months or years in business, that hesitation is worth noting.

• Be cautious of anyone who guarantees a specific ranking or a specific timeline for SEO results — no one controls a search engine's algorithm closely enough to promise that honestly. "Page one in 30 days" is a sales line, not a real commitment, and it's often followed by tactics that can get a site penalized once Google notices them.
• Be equally cautious of pricing that seems far below everyone else's for the same scope of work. Low-cost web design often means a barely-customized template with stock photos that dozens of other small businesses are also using. Low-cost SEO sometimes means buying cheap backlinks or stuffing pages with keywords — tactics that can give you a short bump and then a real penalty months later, one that's much harder and more expensive to undo than it would have been to avoid.
• Watch for pressure tactics too: a "limited-time discount" that expires the moment you hang up the phone, or a salesperson who wants a signature today and can't explain why waiting a week would change the price. A legitimate agency built on real work doesn't need artificial urgency to close a deal — the work speaks for itself, and a good offer for your business will still be a good offer next week.

Ask who will actually own your website, domain, and hosting account once the project is done — it should be you, in your own account with your own login, not locked inside the agency's platform where leaving them means starting completely over. This is one of the most common and most costly mistakes small business owners make: paying for years of "maintenance" on a site they never actually had the keys to, then discovering they'd have to rebuild from zero to switch providers. This matters regardless of platform — even the Wix vs. WordPress comparison usually comes down to which one actually hands you full ownership of your own site, rather than just access to edit it.

Before you sign, get the domain registrar, the hosting account, and any content management login set up in your own name, even if the agency manages day-to-day updates for you. Ask what happens to your Google Business Profile and analytics accounts too — those should also be under your own business's ownership, not the agency's, so you keep your review history and search data if you ever part ways.

Ask what happens if you want to stop working together. A contract that makes it difficult, vague, or expensive to leave is worth reading twice, ideally with a second set of eyes, before you sign it. Watch for:

• Long auto-renewing terms
• Steep early-termination fees
• Unclear language about who keeps the design files

A good agency should be confident enough in its work that it doesn't need to lock you in to keep you as a client.

Pricing for web design and SEO varies a lot depending on scope, and there's no single right number — but there is a useful way to sanity-check a quote. Ask exactly what's included:

• How many pages
• Whether copywriting is part of it or extra
• Whether photography or product listings are included
• How many rounds of revisions you get before more changes cost more money

Two quotes that look far apart on price often turn out to include very different amounts of actual work once you compare line by line. If you want a feel for that scope firsthand, spending your first week on Shopify's free trial building a rough version yourself is a cheap way to see how much work is actually involved before you pay someone else to do it.

For ongoing SEO or marketing retainers, ask what specifically increases in scope as the price increases — more content written per month, more pages optimized, more time spent on technical fixes. A retainer that costs the same every month regardless of how much work gets done is worth questioning, especially once your site is in decent shape and the easy wins are already done.

It's also reasonable to get quotes from two or three providers before deciding, the same way you would for any other significant business expense. You're not obligated to go with the cheapest one or the most polished sales pitch — you're looking for the one whose answers to your actual questions were the clearest and most specific.

A web design or SEO agency that has actually worked with businesses in your community — whether that's other Hmong-owned businesses, other family-run shops, or just other businesses in your city — tends to ask better questions upfront, because they already understand things a national template can't account for. They know that a restaurant's busiest hours might not match what a generic template assumes, that a family business's story is part of what customers are searching for, that bilingual content or accurate transliteration of names matters more than it looks like it would from the outside.

This doesn't mean you need to rule out every larger or more general agency, but it's worth asking directly: have you built sites for businesses like mine before, and can I see one? An agency that's worked with restaurants, salons, insurance agencies, or retail shops serving a specific community will usually have concrete, relevant examples ready. One that goes quiet or pivots to generic reassurance is telling you something too.

Once you've hired someone, the same questions from before you signed don't stop mattering — they become the standard you hold the ongoing work to. Ask for access to see your own site's analytics directly, in your own account, rather than only receiving a summary the agency put together. Being able to check your own traffic and search performance whenever you want is a basic transparency check, and any agency confident in its work will set this up for you without hesitation.

Watch for whether the monthly updates stay specific over time or start to get vaguer the longer the contract runs. In the first few months, there's usually a lot of concrete, visible work — the site launches, technical issues get fixed, a Google Business Profile gets built out. After that initial push, it's fair to ask what the ongoing work actually consists of, and to expect just as clear an answer months in as you got on the very first sales call. If those answers start getting thinner while the invoice stays the same, that's the moment to ask the same direct questions you asked before you ever signed the contract.