Salomé Sperling
Lead Creative Webdesigner
Summary of the article
- A verifiable case study gives the starting situation, the actions taken, the timeframe, and the measured results. A wall of logos is not proof.
- Google states in its documentation that no one can guarantee a first-place ranking: a provider who promises one should be ruled out.
- In 2026, the ability to get a brand cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews becomes a selection criterion on par with technical skill and content.
- Your domain name, Search Console, Google Analytics, your Business Profile, and your CMS should all be created in the company's name, with the agency invited in as a guest.
- An agency suits projects that need several skills at once; an independent consultant suits a targeted need or a team already in place.
Summarize with AI
Choosing an SEO agency comes down to checking three things before you sign: what it has already achieved for companies comparable to yours, how it works, and how much autonomy it leaves you with afterward. In 2026, a fourth point matters just as much: its ability to make you visible in AI-generated answers, not just in blue links.
What does an SEO agency do, and why do some now do GEO too?
An SEO agency works on your site's visibility in organic search results. Its job covers three fronts: technical (indexing, speed, site structure), content (what you publish, for which queries, at what depth), and authority (the links and mentions pointing to you from other sites).
Since ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews started answering questions directly instead of returning a list of links, some agencies have widened their scope to include GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): making sure your company gets cited in those answers, not just ranked well. The two disciplines share a lot of groundwork, but they don't overlap entirely. If the definitions aren't clear, we've broken them down in our article on the difference between SEO, GEO, and AEO.
One nuance before you compare quotes: an agency that tacks "and GEO" onto its offer isn't necessarily doing GEO. Criterion four below gives you the questions that tell the difference.
Get clear on what you need before you start looking for an agency
A vague brief produces proposals that are impossible to compare against each other. Three questions are enough to frame the search, and they'll also serve as your reading grid during meetings.
What's the goal: more traffic, more leads, or getting cited by AI?
These three goals don't call for the same plan. Gaining traffic usually runs through top-of-funnel informational content. Gaining leads runs through offer pages, comparisons, and decision-stage content, with far less volume involved. Getting cited by AI asks for something else again: short, factual formats, sourced data, and a presence on the sites these models actually read.
In the guide published by France Num, the French public service that supports business digitalization, John Mueller from Google's Search team points out that SEO results should be measured by their real impact on business objectives, not just by traffic or rankings. So tell the agency what you want to see grow, rather than the rank you're chasing.
Local market, national, or both?
Targeting Brussels, Belgium as a whole, or France calls for neither the same agency nor the same strategy. Locally, the game is mostly won on your Google Business Profile, reviews, local citations, and a handful of well-built pages. Nationally, competition is won on content depth and links, a longer and more expensive undertaking. A Belgian agency knows the directories, press, and trade media that matter in Belgium, and that knowledge doesn't automatically carry over to the French market.
If you're targeting both markets, ask explicitly how the budget splits between them. That's often where proposals turn vague again.
What budget to plan for
The market spread is wide: between a one-off audit and a year of monthly support, the gap easily exceeds a factor of ten. Rather than fixating on a single number, look at what it actually buys in pages, articles, links, and hours. We've broken down the ranges by type of service in Belgium and France in our article on what an SEO strategy costs.
The 7 criteria for choosing a good SEO (and GEO) agency in 2026
Here's the grid we'd use ourselves to evaluate a provider, from the most verifiable to the most structural.
1. Verifiable case studies, in a context close to yours
A wall of logos proves nothing. What does prove something is a case study that names the starting situation, the actions taken, the timeframe, and the measured results. In its documentation for businesses hiring an SEO provider, Google advises asking for examples of past work, the provider's experience in your industry and country, and how it measures results, then contacting past clients to check their satisfaction.
Context matters as much as the number. A spectacular jump on a brand-new site, in a low-competition sector, says nothing about what will happen at your company. Ask for a case whose starting point looked like yours.
To show what verifiable proof actually looks like, two of our SEO and GEO engagements are published in full detail: the Linker case study, a Paris-based PR agency whose ranking keywords went from 214 to 640 between January and September 2026, with over 50% of leads now coming from Google or AI, and the Sparagus case study, a Brussels recruitment firm that recorded 80% more applications through its site. Both pages give the timeframe, the scope, and the method. That's the level of detail to demand, from us as much as from anyone else.
2. A visible method: audit, roadmap, priorities
A good agency can describe how it starts before it even knows what its audit will find, because its method doesn't change from one client to the next. The France Num guide is clear on this point: the initial audit cannot be skipped, and it has to lead to usable deliverables: a strategy, detailed recommendations, and a roadmap.
What separates a method from a pitch is prioritization. A plan that lists forty recommendations without ranking them by impact and effort leaves you exactly where you started. Ask to see a roadmap that was actually delivered, anonymized if needed.
3. Technical skill, not just content skill
Plenty of agencies sold as SEO are, in practice, content agencies: they publish articles and wait. Content matters, but it doesn't make up for a site that's poorly indexed, slow, or badly structured. France Num actually lists versatility among the qualities to expect, across three fronts at once: technical, semantic, and link building.
The question to ask is simple: who on the team can actually read a crawl report, fix a markup issue, or make the call on a migration or a redirect plan? If the answer always comes back to "our developer can take a look," you're buying content, not SEO.
4. The ability to make you visible in AI, not just on Google
This is the criterion that has shifted the most in two years, and the one most selection guides haven't caught up with yet. A growing share of searches end without a visit: according to the study published by SparkToro in June 2026, based on Similarweb data, 68% of Google searches in the United States between January and April 2026 resulted in no click at all.
European figures aren't directly comparable, and the trend is still more advanced in the United States. The direction, though, is the same: your brand needs to exist inside the answer, not just in the list of links underneath it.
Four questions are enough to tell whether an agency actually knows this terrain. Does it bring the topic up on its own, or only because you said the word? Can it show a case where a brand went from absent to cited? Can it explain simply why an AI cites one source over another? And above all: what does it measure, on which specific questions, how often, and from what starting point?
Be wary, though, of anyone who promises a guaranteed citation in ChatGPT. No one controls a model's answer, and two sessions rarely produce the same response. What you can actually work on is the probability of being cited, and that's measured against a panel of questions tracked over time. We've described that work in our article on how to show up in ChatGPT.
5. Regular, understandable reporting
A monthly report that a non-specialist can't make sense of serves no one. France Num stresses clarity: a competent provider knows how to explain technical concepts in plain terms, so the client follows the actions taken and buys into them.
The test is easy to run before you sign. Ask for a sample report and read it yourself, with no explanation attached. If it's just an export of rankings and charts, with no interpretation, nothing on what was done, what didn't work, and what's planned for next month, you'll be paying for a tool subscription, not for guidance.
6. A clear price, tied to a defined scope
"Quote on request" isn't a problem in itself, a quote with no defined scope is. A good quote separates the line items: analysis and execution on one side, content on another, links kept apart, and states how many pages, how many articles, and how many hours per month. It also builds in a checkpoint, at three or six months, where the plan can be redirected without drama.
Comparing two proposals on monthly price alone is the surest way to get it wrong. Compare them at equal scope, and if you're missing a sense of the going rates, our detailed price ranges by service will give you a benchmark.
7. Autonomy that stays with you, after the engagement
Check who actually owns the accounts. Your domain name, Search Console, Google Analytics, your Business Profile, and your CMS should all be created in your name, with the agency invited in as a guest. Google even recommends granting only read access to Search Console at the preliminary audit stage. An agency that sets up accounts under its own address builds in dependency, sometimes without any bad intent, and you'll discover it the day you try to leave.
The other half of this criterion is your team's skill growth. Is it trained to publish a page, review a title tag, or update content without opening a ticket? At We-R, that training is part of the delivery, and it's not unique to us: plenty of good providers do it, because an autonomous client team produces more and has better conversations.
Agency or independent consultant: how to decide
Both profiles are equally legitimate, and the right choice depends on the nature of the project more than the size of your company. An agency suits projects that need several skills working at once. A consultant suits a targeted need, a tighter budget, or a company that wants to keep a hand on the wheel while getting support.
| SEO Agency | Independent Consultant | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical situation | a redesign, several workstreams in parallel, multiple markets or languages | a specific need, an audit, support for a marketing team already in place |
| Skills involved | a full team: technical, content, link building, GEO | deep expertise in one area, the rest outsourced or out of scope |
| Who you deal with | sometimes different from the person you met in the sales meeting | the person you meet is the one doing the work |
| Budget | higher, structure and tools included | more flexible, often a flat fee or billed by the day |
| What to check | who actually works on your account, and how many hours a month | capacity to absorb a spike in workload or an absence |
Nothing stops you from combining the two: a consultant for the audit and strategy, an agency for execution, or the other way around. This setup works as long as responsibility for results is clearly assigned to one of them.
The warning signs to watch for
Some warning signs take no expertise at all to spot. The first is a ranking guarantee. Google is explicit in its documentation: no one can guarantee a first-place result, and a provider who promises one should be ruled out. The same goes for anyone claiming a privileged relationship with Google or priority access to indexing, neither of which exists.
Cold outreach by email, with an automated audit attached flagging forty critical errors, is another signal Google calls out by name. Opacity is a third: an agency that won't clearly explain what it's going to do, or refuses to say where the links it's selling you come from, puts you at risk.
Aggressive practices, buying links in bulk, mass-generated pages, misleading content, sometimes produce a short-lived effect before costing you dearly. Google points out that a site can be removed entirely from its index over misleading content created on your behalf, and that you remain responsible for the actions of the provider you hire.
Two quieter signals remain, which France Num also lists among its own warnings: the absence of regular reporting, and a price quoted with no scope attached.
The questions to ask before you sign
The seven criteria turn into eight questions, best asked in the same meeting and, ideally, to several agencies, so you compare answers rather than brochures.
| Question to ask | What a good answer contains |
|---|---|
| Can you show me an audit and a roadmap you've actually delivered? | A real document, anonymized if needed, with actions ranked by impact and effort |
| Which case study is closest to my starting situation? | A named case, with its timeframe, scope, and measured results |
| Who will actually work on my account? | First names, roles, and the time allocated each month |
| How do you measure whether my company is cited by AI? | A tracked panel of questions, a frequency, and a measured starting point before work begins |
| What does your monthly report contain? | What was done, what didn't work, what's planned next |
| What exactly does this price cover, and what's excluded? | Volumes, not intentions, with content and links priced separately |
| Whose name will the domain and the accounts be created under? | Yours, with the agency invited in as a guest |
| What happens if we stop after six months? | What stays with you, what your team can pick up, and on what timeline |
That last question is often the most telling. An agency that answers it without hesitation has already framed its work as a system that belongs to you, not a subscription it needs to protect.
Comparing several agencies for your visibility strategy? See how we work, what we measure, and what we leave with your team on the We-R SEO & GEO page.
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