Key takeaways
- The contract matters more than the pitch, because the pitch is written by the person who wants the deal and the contract is written by the person who expects the dispute.
- Three clauses decide how bad a bad engagement gets: notice period, data and account ownership, and who owns the content on termination. Check all three before the rate.
- Ask who specifically will do the work, by name, and how many other accounts they carry. UK agencies routinely pitch with seniors and deliver with juniors, which is fine if priced as such.
- A twelve-month minimum term is not automatically wrong, because the work genuinely compounds. A twelve-month term with no named monthly priority is, because it commits you and not them.
- UK and US search results differ enough that experience in one is not experience in the other. Ask for examples in UK results specifically.
- Google publishes its own guidance on hiring an SEO, including the warning signs. It is short, it is free, and almost nobody buying SEO has read it.
Most guides to choosing an SEO agency are about the sales conversation. This one is about the paperwork, because that is where the money and the exit actually live.
The UK market has its own quirks: shorter notice periods than the US norm, a freelancer tier that is genuinely competitive with small agencies, and data protection obligations that make account ownership a legal question rather than a courtesy.
What follows assumes you have already shortlisted on competence. These are the things that decide whether a good shortlist produces a good engagement.
What should a UK SEO contract actually specify?
Short answer: Four things that most contracts leave vague: the notice period and how it is served, who owns the accounts and the data, who owns the content and deliverables after termination, and what the monthly scope is in enough detail that a dispute about it is resolvable.
The fourth is the one that causes the most trouble and the least litigation, because it is too vague to argue about. A scope reading strategic SEO consultancy and content support commits the agency to nothing specific.
| Clause | What you want | What to watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Notice period | 30 days, either side, in writing | A 90-day notice on a 12-month term |
| Account ownership | You own, agency has delegated access | Agency-created accounts you cannot access |
| Content on termination | Yours, explicitly, including drafts | Silence, which favours the drafter |
| Monthly scope | Named deliverables, revisable in writing | Hours, or an unspecified retainer |
| Reporting | Stated cadence and contents | At the agency discretion |
None of this is unusual to ask for and a competent agency will have standard answers. Resistance to any of the four is itself the information.
Who will actually do the work?
Short answer: Ask for a name and a number: who is on your account, and how many other accounts they carry. The common UK pattern is a senior in the pitch and a junior in delivery, which is not dishonest if it is priced accordingly and is a problem if it is not.
This is not snobbery about juniors. A well-briefed junior doing structured work under review is good value, and often better than a stretched senior doing it between calls.
What you are testing is whether the agency will tell you the truth about its own staffing. An agency that will not name the person is managing your expectations rather than your account.
The follow-up question is who reviews the work. An unreviewed junior is the arrangement that produces the templated output nobody intended to buy.
Does UK experience matter, or is SEO the same everywhere?
Short answer: The mechanics are the same and the results are not. UK result pages carry different competitors, different directory ecosystems and different spelling conventions, so a portfolio built entirely in US results is evidence of competence rather than evidence of fit.
The spelling point is more consequential than it sounds. Search volume splits across optimisation and optimization, and a content plan built on one spelling quietly ignores the demand attached to the other.
There is also a structural difference in the competitive set. Several UK verticals are dominated by directories and comparison sites that have no direct US equivalent, which changes what ranking even looks like.
So ask for two examples in UK results, and check them yourself. Search the terms, from the UK, and look at who is actually there.
Is a twelve-month minimum term reasonable?
Short answer: It can be, because authority work genuinely compounds and an agency that rebuilds a programme every quarter cannot do it. What makes a long term unreasonable is the absence of anything on the agency side of the bargain, which is a named priority per month.
The fair version of a long term is a long commitment with short accountability. You commit to the programme, they commit to telling you each month what this month is for.
The unfair version is a long term with a long notice period and a vague scope, which is three ways of saying the same thing. Any two of those is worth negotiating; all three is worth walking away from.
The test that cuts through this: ask what happens in month seven. If the answer sounds like month one, the programme is a subscription and the term length is doing the work the strategy should.
What are the warning signs?
Short answer: Google publishes its own list in its guidance on hiring an SEO, and the headline item is a ranking guarantee. Add two more from the UK market specifically: a quote given before anyone looked at your site, and a link building offer with a price per link.
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls the ranking systems, and Google says so on its own documentation page about hiring an SEO.
- A quote before a look. Price tracks the state of your starting point, so a number produced without seeing it is a guess with confidence attached.
- Price per link. Paying for links is covered directly by the spam policies, and the offer is usually to buy placements on sites built to sell them.
- No access to your own data. Treat this as disqualifying rather than negotiable. It is your property and the data is yours.
- Monthly reports with no decisions in them. A report that shows charts and names nothing for next month is a timesheet with a brand on it.
The pattern connecting these is that each one moves risk from the agency to you while appearing to do the opposite. That is what makes them effective sales tools.
Frequently asked questions
Should I hire an agency, a freelancer or an in-house person?
A freelancer suits a defined scope and one person worth of capacity. An agency suits a programme needing several skills at once. In-house suits a business where search is a permanent function rather than a project, and it is usually the most expensive option once you count recruitment.
Do I need an agency in my own city?
No. The work is remote regardless, so proximity buys easier meetings and nothing else. Understanding your market matters far more than being in it, and a firm with real experience in your trade elsewhere usually beats a nearby firm with none.
What is a reasonable notice period?
Thirty days either side is the UK norm and it is fair to both. Ninety days attached to a long minimum term is where it becomes a lock-in, because it turns a bad engagement into a quarter of paying for work you have stopped valuing.
Who owns the content the agency writes?
Whatever the contract says, and a surprising number say nothing. Ask for it in writing, including drafts and briefs, because silence on the point favours the party that drafted the agreement.
How do I verify an agency case study?
Ask for the client name and search the terms yourself. A case study with the client anonymised and the numbers unverifiable is the weakest evidence in this industry, and it is also the most common.
Sources and further reading
- Google Search Central, do you need an SEO?
- Google Search Central, getting started with Search Console
- Google Search Central, spam policies for Google web search
- Google Search Central, creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Office for National Statistics, regional economic activity by gross domestic product, UK
Want our answers to all of this in writing?
We will send our standard notice period, our position on account ownership and the name of the person who would run your account, before you ask. If a clause of ours looks wrong to you, say so and we will discuss it.