✦The sentence that ends the meeting
If the first page of a proposal promises a guaranteed number one ranking on Google, you can stop reading there.
Google wrote this into its own documentation: no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. An agency that puts the thing Google calls impossible into a contract either does not know that, or knows it and is selling it anyway. Neither is a reason to hire them.
Companies looking for help in Korea usually start by asking who the good agencies are. It is a fair question and it is also the slow way around. Finding a good partner takes weeks. Ruling out the ones you should walk away from takes about thirty minutes in a first meeting.
This started as a conversation with Jaeseung Pi of Ascent Korea, recorded for the first episode of my podcast, in a stretch about fake SEO automation tools. What follows lines that conversation up against what Google has actually published.
✦Seven warning signs Google published
Google Search Central has a document called Do you need an SEO? Nearly everything you need in order to screen a proposal is already in it. I still open it when I review someone else's quote.
They guarantee a number one ranking
Google's own wording is that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. Once the word guarantee is in a contract, the agency is selling something Google says cannot be sold.
They claim a special relationship with Google
Priority submission rights, a contact on the inside, that family of claims. Google names this one specifically. Appearing in organic results costs nothing, and there is no channel for buying a position.
They say their tool is Google approved
Google does not evaluate or endorse third party SEO tools, and those tools have no access to Google's internal ranking data. A score of ninety means ninety on that tool's own scale, not in Google's view.
They contacted you first
An unsolicited email saying your site is not registered with the major search engines. Google notes in the same document that it receives this kind of spam too.
They will not explain what they are changing or why
Google's advice is to avoid agencies that do not make their intentions clear. If content an agency places on your site is judged deceptive, the site can be dropped from the index, and the site owner is the one who carries that.
They ask you to link to their own site
A clause asking for their link in your footer is not a clause written for your benefit.
They offer submission to hundreds of search engines
Google says plainly that no positive effect can be expected from this. Registering with the engines people actually use, Bing and Naver among them, is something you do directly and it does not take long.
One of the seven is enough to drop a candidate. In my experience the ones that trip a single item usually trip two or three.
If you are hiring from outside Korea, this screening matters more than it would at home, for a simple reason. You cannot read the deliverables. A Korean landing page full of confident sentences looks identical whether it was written well or generated in bulk. The seven signs above are the part you can judge without the language.
Press this and my new posts show up more often in your Google results.
✦Why meta tags are not a plan
The most common problem is not fraud. It is shallow work. Title tag, meta description, image alt text. Some agencies fill in those three fields and report technical SEO as complete.
Meta tags are worth doing. Leaving them empty costs you, and writing them well lifts click through rate. But that all happens on pages that already appear in results. A site with no content worth showing has nowhere to move up from.
Adding one technical element does not dynamically change the whole result. Building good content steadily across multiple channels matters more than filling in a few data fields.
Tag work now takes minutes with the help of AI. If a proposal sells those minutes as a multi month retainer, it is worth asking again what you are paying for.
Tool reports deserve the same caution. Google does not evaluate or endorse third party SEO tools and those tools cannot see Google's ranking data, so a sentence beginning with our tool scores your site at is a reference point, not evidence. Google's own advice is to check any large change against its official guidance first.
✦Eight questions to ask
The same document lists the questions Google suggests putting to an agency you are interviewing. Copied across, they are these.
- Can you show me examples of previous work and share some success stories?
- Do you follow Google Search Essentials?
- What results can I expect, in what time frame, and how do you measure them?
- Do you have experience in my industry?
- Do you have experience with companies in this country or region?
- Do you have experience developing sites in multiple languages?
- How long have you been in business?
- Will you share all the changes you make, and explain why you made them?
I would add one more. Watch whether they ask you anything. Google's document makes the same point: a competent SEO should want to know what makes your business different, who your competitors are, and how customers currently find you. An agency that fills a first meeting entirely with its own credentials is not interested in your business.
And if you did not follow an explanation, do not let it pass. What are you changing, why, what are the side effects, and who do I talk to when something breaks. Those need answers. SEO is not solo work, so the ability to explain shapes the outcome about as much as the ability to execute.
Running this in house, or hiring out?
The list above is enough to screen a proposal if your team is doing the work internally. If you are looking for someone to hand it to, I have written out how I actually run a project.
See how I work✦Do not hand over every account at once
One line in Google's document is easy to skim past. If an agency is providing an SEO audit, grant read only access to Search Console and hold back write access at that stage. It is short, and it is where I see accidents most often.
What goes wrong after a full handover is usually one of a few things. A redirect is set incorrectly and existing traffic disappears. A removal request goes in and pages drop out of the index. The sitemap is replaced with the wrong file. Discovered after a contract ends, any of these takes months to unwind.
This is not about being stingy with access. It is about ending up with a record of when each level was raised and why. A good agency does not find the request awkward.
✦When GEO and AEO appear on the same quote
Proposals now tend to carry GEO or AEO as line items next to SEO, promising that your brand will be cited inside answers from ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Google addressed this in the same document. If you are given advice about optimizing for AI experiences, check whether that advice matches Google's official guidance. Newer territory attracts unverified claims.
My own position is that search is not being replaced so much as layered, and that generative visibility sits on top of the same foundation rather than beside it. So when you read a quote, keep the two items separate.
- For the SEO line: what will change, by when, and measured with which numbers.
- For the GEO line: what the approach is based on, and how the effect will be confirmed.
If the answer to the second question is anything other than we will find out, the agency at least understands what it is selling.
✦You are choosing a person, not a vendor
SEO is not a job you finish once. Sites change, markets change, algorithms change. Which makes the question of whether you can work with this person for a long time more important than the length of the initial contract.
Use the list above to remove the candidates you should remove. For the ones left, one question does most of the work. Is this person trying to solve my problem, or trying to sell me their service.
I ask it of myself fairly often. The answer gets blurry sometimes, which is exactly why I keep asking.
How I got here is on the about page, and the rest of the conversations are in the episode list.
Sources and notes
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO? Official Google documentation. Read it
- The Insung Song SEO Podcast, EP 01, with Jaeseung Pi of Ascent Korea, 20 April 2026. Recorded in Korean. Watch it
The warning signs and the interview questions are drawn from Google's official documentation. The access ladder and the way I read a quote are my own working practice and will vary with the situation.
✦Common questions
Google states in its own documentation that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. Promising it is a signal that I take seriously, and I drop those candidates. An agency that says instead that it is aiming to move a specific set of queries into a specific range within a stated period, and explains how it will measure that, is behaving normally.
They need access to do the work. The order matters though. Google advises granting read only access during an audit and holding back write access until it is actually needed. When submission or removal work genuinely comes up, discuss it and raise the level then.
Meta tags are worth doing. The title becomes your headline in search results and the description becomes the text under it. But tidying tags does not create pages that can rank. Check whether content and site structure are in the scope as well.
Ask for the change log in English, ask which queries each change is meant to affect, and keep Search Console access on your side so you can see impressions and clicks yourself. Anything that cannot be shown in your own analytics is not something you can verify later.
I help companies grow in search, mostly on Google, in Korea and across borders. Since 2021, the field has taught me to look at content and structure together rather than chasing one technical fix.
