Nine Questions and the Answers That Should Worry You

Why portfolios tell you almost nothing

A screenshot of a ranking proves that a business ranks. It does not prove who made it rank, or whether it ranked before the engagement started.

Case studies have the same problem. The honest ones include a before, and most do not.

What does predict competence is how someone talks about causes, limits and measurement. That is testable in a twenty minute call.

Below are the nine questions I would ask, with the answer that suggests the person knows the work and the answer that suggests they do not.

1. How will you measure whether this worked?

A good answer names a baseline taken before any work, and a measurement repeated the same way afterwards.

A worrying answer talks about rankings without saying from where. Local results change with the location of the searcher, so a rank with no location attached is not a measurement.

The best answers mention a grid of points rather than a single position, because that is the only way to see how far visibility reaches.

2. What is the first thing you would change?

A good answer is boring and specific: the primary category, a duplicate listing, inconsistent details, a missing page.

A worrying answer is a package. If the first thing is the same for every client regardless of what is wrong, nobody looked.

You can test this easily. Ask what they noticed about your profile before the call, and listen for whether they actually opened it.

3. How long until I see a change?

A good answer separates the fixes from the accumulation. Structural errors can show improvement in weeks; prominence takes months.

A worrying answer promises first position in thirty days. Nobody controls that, and anyone who claims to is describing something they cannot deliver.

Equally worrying is an answer with no timeline at all, because that makes the engagement impossible to judge.

4. What do you need from me?

A good answer asks for things only you have: the real business details, photos, access to the profile, and which enquiries turned into customers.

A worrying answer is that they need nothing. Local SEO without your conversion data measures activity instead of results.

If a provider never asks which calls became jobs, they cannot tell you whether the work paid for itself.

5. Who will own the Google Business Profile?

A good answer is that you own it, they are added as a manager, and access returns to you when the engagement ends.

A worrying answer is that they will set it up under their own account. This is how businesses lose control of their listing, and it is one of the most common reasons I get called in.

Ask explicitly what happens on the last day of the contract. The answer should take one sentence.

6. How many citations will you build?

This is a trap question. A good answer pushes back on it and talks about correcting inconsistent records before adding new ones.

A worrying answer is a large number. Three hundred submissions is a sales figure, not a result, and most of those sources are read by nobody.

Citations corroborate what your profile claims. They are not a lever you pull for position, and a provider who sells them as one is selling volume.

7. How will you get me reviews?

A good answer is a process for asking every customer at the right moment, and a way for staff to do it without being reminded.

A worrying answer involves buying reviews, offering incentives, or filtering unhappy customers out before they can post. All three break the rules and the third is the one people think is harmless.

If the answer includes a review gating step, end the call. That is the practice most likely to get reviews removed and listings penalised.

8. What will I receive each month?

A good answer is short: a handful of numbers, what changed, and what happens next.

A worrying answer is a twenty page deck, because volume is easier to produce than judgement, and nobody reads it twice.

The specific lines worth insisting on are set out in my piece on what a monthly report should contain.

9. What would make you tell me not to bother?

This is the question that separates consultants from salespeople, and most people have no answer prepared for it.

A good answer exists. Mine is that if your market has two competitors with nine years of reviews and you are starting today, the honest advice may be to spend the money elsewhere first.

A worrying answer is that local SEO is right for everyone. Nothing is right for everyone, and a provider who cannot name the cases where they are the wrong choice has not thought about it.

Two things to check without asking

Look at their own profile and their own reviews. A local SEO provider with an incomplete listing has told you everything you need to know.

Then search their own business name and see where they rank locally. It is not the whole picture, because their market may be far harder than yours, but it is a data point they cannot spin.

If you want an independent reading of where your own profile stands before you hire anyone at all, that is what a GMB audit is for.

And if you want to put these nine questions to me directly, that is the conversation I prefer to start with.

Contract terms worth reading twice

The notice period. Three months notice on a monthly service is a way of keeping clients who have already decided to leave.

The ownership clause. Your profile, your analytics, your website and your content should all remain yours, named explicitly rather than implied.

The deliverables. A contract that promises effort rather than specific work is impossible to hold anyone to.

The exit handover. Ask what you receive on the last day, and make sure the answer includes access to everything and the master record of your business details.

Four claims that should stop the conversation

A guaranteed first position. Local results differ by searcher location, so there is no single position to guarantee in the first place.

A special relationship with Google. There is no such thing for local businesses, and the claim is a reliable marker of everything else being exaggerated too.

Hundreds of citations as the core offer. That is a volume product sold because it is easy to deliver and easy to invoice.

A review service that produces reviews quickly. Any mechanism that generates reviews faster than your customers naturally write them puts your existing reviews at risk.

How to run the call so it is actually informative

Ask your questions before they present. A presentation answers the questions it chose; your questions answer the ones you need.

Write down the answers rather than relying on memory, because the useful comparison is across two or three providers a week later.

Notice who asks you questions back. A provider who finishes the call knowing nothing about how your enquiries arrive has not been diagnosing anything.

Then wait a day before deciding. Competence sounds the same as confidence during a call and quite different in notes read the next morning.