How to choose a contractor and not lose money
Vetting a marketing contractor is harder than vetting a builder: the result is not visible straight away, and by the time it is clear there is no money, six months have passed. Below are the questions, documents and signals that show it in advance.
Watch three things: whether they talk about your money or their own work, whether they give you access to your own accounts, and whether they name timelines without promising guarantees. A guarantee of first place means they either do not understand how search works or are counting on you not to. A sound contractor shows a three-month plan and states what they will count as a result.
In this article6 sections
Five phrases after which you can end the conversation
- «We guarantee first place». Positions are set by the search engine's algorithm, not by a contractor. You can guarantee scope and methods, not a place in the results.
- «We have contacts inside Yandex». They do not exist. This is either selling air or pre-emptively excusing a future failure.
- «Results in two weeks». In organic search nothing happens in two weeks beyond new pages being indexed.
- «We do not disclose our methods». You pay for the work and have a right to know what is being done to your site. Secrecy usually covers bulk link buying.
- «We will hand the site over after full payment». The domain and hosting must be registered in your name from day one, not after the final invoice.
Promising a specific position is the most reliable sign that you are dealing either with a beginner or with someone counting on you not knowing better. An honest answer sounds different: «we will show you the plan and a traffic forecast; positions cannot be guaranteed».
What to ask before signing
- «Show me work in my niche»Not logos on a website but a specific project: what the situation was, what was done, what came of it. Ask for the client's contact — a decent contractor will provide it after asking permission.
- «What is included in the first month?»«Site promotion» is a poor answer. A good one sounds like a list: audit, keyword research, this many pages, these technical fixes, with rough timings.
- «How will you report?»Ask whether the report will contain the number of enquiries, not only positions and traffic. Positions without enquiries are a pretty but useless figure.
- «What stays with me if we part ways?»Access, texts, keyword research, ad settings, accumulated statistics. If the answer is evasive, you are renting the result rather than buying it.
- «Who exactly will run the project?»Often an experienced person sells and a junior does the work. Ask for a name and to speak with them before signing.
- «What will you do if there is no result in six months?»The answer shows whether the person has thought about risk at all. «That does not happen» is a bad answer.
Whose name the accounts must be in
This is the clause that most often costs people the whole business. Parting with a contractor is ordinary. Losing the domain your customers know you by is a disaster that money cannot fix.
| What | Registered to | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | You only | Without it you lose the address people find you at |
| Hosting | You, contractor gets access | Otherwise the site can be switched off in one move |
| Ad accounts | You, contractor gets access | They hold the history and statistics of every year |
| Analytics | You | This is your customer data, not the contractor's |
| Map listings | You | Reviews and rating take years to build |
| Domain email | You | Recovery of every other account is tied to it |
Checking is easy: ask to be shown where exactly the domain is registered and confirm your details are in the owner field. It is a five-minute conversation that saves years.
What an honest report looks like
A report that says only «optimisation work performed» is not a report. A proper document shows three layers.
- What was done — a specific dated list, not general phrases. «Wrote 4 service pages, fixed 12 technical errors, added markup to product cards».
- What changed — positions, traffic and enquiries in comparison with the previous month and with the start of the work.
- What comes next — the plan for the next period and why that rather than something else.
And most importantly: the report must contain bad news too. If everything is excellent every month, either you are very lucky or you are being shown only the convenient figures. A normal report reads as «this grew, this dropped, here is why and here is what we are doing».
What it should cost
Too cheap is also a signal. Work on search is dozens of specialist hours a month: audit, keyword research, texts, technical work, analytics. If the price is below the cost of those hours, the work is either not being done or being done from a template on a conveyor where your project is one of a hundred identical ones.
A market guide, ours included: an audit with strategy from $190 one-off, ongoing work from $190–390 a month depending on scope. The ad budget is always separate and always yours — it should not pass through the contractor without you having access to the account.
How to check the work if you are not an expert
You cannot check it fully without a specialist, but a few simple actions filter out the openly dishonest.
- Look at how the contractor's own site looks and how it ranks.
- Type a few of your queries into search and see whether you appear at all.
- Open the pages written for you and read them aloud. If the text is unreadable, it was written for a robot, and those texts stopped working long ago.
- Once every six months, order an independent audit from a different specialist. It is inexpensive and immediately shows whether work is happening or being imitated.
Frequent questions
Agency or freelancer?
It depends on scope. One person is cheaper and closer to the work, but they are alone: if they fall ill the work stops, and they rarely do everything equally well. A team costs more but covers more ground. Bad ones exist on both sides.
Can I vet a contractor myself?
Partly. Look at how their own site ranks, ask for access to a client's analytics with that client's permission, check whether they buy links in bulk. Only an independent audit gives the full picture.
What if there is no result after six months?
Do not switch contractor immediately — ask for facts: what exactly was done, what changed in positions and traffic. If there is no substantive answer, part ways. If work was happening and the niche is genuinely hard, that can be normal.
Do we need a contract if it is someone we know?
Especially then. A contract is not for court but so both sides understand the scope, the timings and what happens if you part ways. Most conflicts come from different understandings, not bad intent.
Should we pay for an audit before the work starts?
Usually yes, and that is normal: an audit is several days of a specialist's time. A free audit is most often a short sales presentation rather than an analysis of your situation.
Can we work with several contractors at once?
Yes, if their areas differ: one runs advertising, another handles search. Two on the same task almost always ends in mutual blame, because the result is shared and responsibility is not.
The materials answer general questions. We will look at your specific case — free and without obligation.