How to choose an SEO agency in Australia, including AI SEO

What does an SEO or AI SEO agency do?

An SEO agency works on the parts of your website and online presence that search engines use to decide what to show: technical health such as crawling, indexing and page speed, the content and structure of your pages, and signals from other sites and your Google Business Profile. AI SEO, also called answer engine optimisation (AEO) or generative engine optimisation (GEO), applies the same work to the answers written by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, so that your pages can be found, read and quoted.

The two overlap heavily. Google states that there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that no special optimisations are necessary beyond the fundamentals of search. An agency that sells AI SEO as a separate discipline should be able to explain which parts of its work differ from SEO and why. The explainer on AI SEO, AEO and GEO defines the terms in more detail.

Source: Google Search Central, AI features and your website

How to choose an SEO agency: which questions should I ask?

When you work out how to choose an SEO agency, Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO suggests asking to see examples of previous work, whether the provider follows Google Search Essentials, what results it expects and in what timeframe, what experience it has in your industry and location, how long it has been in business and how you will communicate. Add questions about who will do the work each month, who owns the accounts and what you keep if you end the contract.

Source: Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?

Questions that tell you how the work will run:

1. What did your audit of our site find, and what would you fix first?
2. Which changes will you make yourselves, and which will need our developer?
3. Who will do the work each month, and is any of it outsourced?
4. Which reports will we receive, and can we open the same data ourselves?
5. What is the minimum term, and what do we keep if we leave?

How can I check an agency’s past results?

Ask for examples you can verify: the site, what the agency changed, when it made the changes and what happened to search traffic afterwards. The strongest evidence is data from Google Search Console or analytics that a past client is willing to show or discuss, and a reference you can call. A screenshot of a ranking is weak evidence, because results differ by location and device, and a single position says nothing about traffic or enquiries.

Be careful with results claimed for keywords few people search for. A first-page ranking for an obscure phrase brings few customers. Ask how many searches a month the claimed keywords receive and how much traffic they produced for the client.

What should an SEO proposal include?

A useful proposal starts from an audit of your site and lists the specific work the agency will do: technical fixes, content to write or improve, local search work, and any link building or digital PR. It should say who does the work, how many hours or deliverables are included each month, how progress is reported, what the fees are, how long the contract runs and how either side can end it. If a proposal describes only outcomes, ask for the list of tasks behind them.

Get the scope in writing before any work starts. It is the document you will use to check what was delivered each month, and it makes quotes from different agencies comparable. The guide to what SEO and AI SEO cost in Australia explains how the pricing models differ.

Who should own the accounts and data?

Your business should own every account the work depends on: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, your Google Business Profile, the domain, the website's content management system and any content the agency produces for you. The agency should work through user access that you grant and can remove. If an agency sets these accounts up in its own name, ask for them to be transferred to your business before the engagement starts.

Ownership matters most at the end of a contract. When your business holds the accounts, you keep your data and history when you change agencies, and the next provider starts from the same records. Check who owns content the agency writes for you, and whether any listings or links it creates would be removed if you leave.

How should an agency report results?

Reports should use data you can check yourself, mainly Google Search Console for impressions, clicks and search queries, and your analytics for visits, enquiries and sales from organic search. Each report should list the work done that month next to the numbers, so you can see what was delivered as well as what changed. For AI search, ask how visibility is measured: which questions were asked, in which assistants, how often, and how the answers were recorded.

Answers from AI assistants vary between sessions, so a single screenshot of an assistant naming your business proves little. A sound method asks a fixed set of questions on a regular schedule and records the answers the same way each time. Ask to see the recorded answers as well as any summary score.

How long does SEO take to show results?

There is no fixed timeframe, which is why Google suggests asking any SEO what results it expects and in what timeframe before you hire it. Technical fixes can take effect once Google recrawls the affected pages. Content and authority work usually takes longer, and the pace depends on how competitive your market is and how much work is done each month. Be wary of an agency that names a date by which you will hold a specific ranking.

Source: Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?

Agree in advance which measures you will review, and when. A check after the first few months on whether the agreed work was completed is a fair request even when traffic has not yet moved.