How to Choose an SEO Agency: Red Flags, Fair Timelines, What to Ask

Many companies in the Gulf and Egypt do not go looking for an SEO partner; the offer arrives on its own. A cold email promising “page one in 30 days”, a WhatsApp message with a screenshot of someone else’s rankings, a proposal listing dozens of deliverables and no outcome. The marketing manager who receives it often has no way to tell a serious offer from a risky one.

There is a better starting point than any agency’s pitch: Google’s own guidance for businesses thinking about hiring an SEO. Its Search Central page “Do you need an SEO?” calls hiring an SEO “a big decision”, and it is unusually direct about what to be wary of. This guide builds on that page, adds the questions that matter specifically for bilingual, multi-branch companies in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt, and ends with a question sheet you can use in your next meeting.

What Google itself tells businesses hiring an SEO

Four sentences from the page, quoted exactly, are worth keeping in front of you in every sales conversation:

• “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
• “You should never have to link to an SEO.”
• “Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.”
• “Advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in our search results.” The page adds that Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in its search results.

The same page lists useful services an SEO can provide, including a review of your site content or structure, technical advice on website development (such as hosting, redirects, error pages and JavaScript), content development, keyword research, SEO training, expertise in specific markets and geographies, and optimising for generative AI. Notice what is not on that list: buying links, mass-producing pages, or anything that has to be kept secret from you.

Google also suggests questions to ask a prospective SEO, including whether they can show examples of previous work, whether they follow Google Search Essentials, what experience they have in your industry and your country or city, and whether they will share all the changes they make to your site. One of the questions is: “What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?” Google asks the question but does not answer it.

Red flags that should end the conversation

Some warning signs are matters of taste. These are not. Each is either named directly in Google’s guidance or describes a practice Google’s spam policies say can make a site “rank lower in results or not appear in results at all”.

A practical test: ask the agency to show you the links it built for a past client. If the list is mostly unrelated foreign blogs, directory pages or sites that exist only to sell articles, treat that as a warning.

Fair timelines: what an honest answer sounds like

Because Google does not put a number on “how long does SEO take”, you should be sceptical of anyone who quotes a single duration as if it were a rule. What Google does say, in its SEO Starter Guide, is this: “Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months.” It adds that you “likely want to wait a few weeks to assess whether your work had beneficial effects in Google Search results.”

That range is wide because the work is not one thing. An honest proposal separates it into phases and tells you what each phase should change, rather than promising a position by a date:

1. Diagnosis. A technical and content audit, agreement on which pages actually matter, and a baseline of current search visibility and inquiries. This produces decisions, not rankings. Our technical SEO audit checklist sets out what that report should contain.
2. Fixes that remove obstacles. Indexing problems, broken redirects, duplicate or missing language versions, slow templates. These are the changes most likely to show effects early, because they unblock pages that already deserve to be found.
3. Pages built around real searches. New or rewritten service, product and location pages in Arabic and English. This is slower: pages have to be crawled, assessed and compared against what already ranks.
4. Authority and reputation. Earned mentions, partner and supplier listings, case studies, reviews on your Business Profiles. This compounds over time and cannot be scheduled.

When you ask about timeframes, the right answer names the phase, the expected change and how it will be measured. “You’ll be on page one in three months” is a sales line. “After the indexing fixes, we expect these 20 service pages to appear in Search Console’s indexed count; we’ll review impressions for them after several weeks” is a plan.

Pace also depends on how competitive your queries are, the site’s history and how quickly your team approves content. A partner that asks about these before quoting a timeline is doing its job.

Questions that matter in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Egypt

Generic SEO checklists rarely cover the issues that decide results for regional companies. Add these four areas to your evaluation.

1. Arabic content, not translated English

Ask how the agency researches Arabic searches. Buyers do not always search in the words a translator would choose, and buyers in different Arab markets may phrase the same need differently; our guide to Arabic keyword research for B2B shows the method to test the agency’s answer against. Then ask how the site will be structured: Google’s guidance on multilingual sites recommends a separate URL for each language version, connected with hreflang, and our guide to how to structure an Arabic and English site sets out what a good answer covers. An agency that proposes a plugin that “auto-translates everything” has not read that guidance.

2. Google Business Profiles for every branch

For companies with offices, showrooms or warehouses in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai or Cairo, local results can matter as much as the website. Ask the agency how it will handle them, and check the answer against Google’s Business Profile guidelines: no more than one profile per location, a name that reflects your real-world name without marketing taglines or service information, a precise address, no virtual offices, and service-area businesses hiding their address. If an agency suggests renaming your profile to something like “Best Office Furniture Riyadh”, that adds unnecessary information to the business name, which the guidelines do not permit. Our guide to Business Profiles for multiple branches covers the full set-up.

Also ask who will own the profiles. Google’s owner and manager roles allow multiple owners but only one primary owner, plus managers; managers can edit business information, respond to reviews and publish posts, but cannot add or remove users or remove the profile. The sensible arrangement is that your company holds primary ownership and the agency works as a manager.

3. AI search, without the mystery

Many proposals now include an “AI SEO” or “GEO” line item. Ask what it actually involves. Google’s own documentation on AI features states: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” It also says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org structured data for these features. Clear, accurate, well-structured pages that answer real questions remain the foundation. Be cautious of anyone who promises that your company will be cited in AI answers by a certain date.

4. Reporting on inquiries, not only rankings

A monthly report full of keyword positions can look impressive while the phone stays silent. Ask to see a sample report and check whether it connects organic traffic to the actions that matter: quotation requests, calls, WhatsApp clicks, form submissions. Ideally these are tracked in your analytics before the work starts, so the baseline is clear; our guide on how to track calls, forms and WhatsApp clicks covers the set-up. Rankings are a useful diagnostic; inquiries from the right buyers are the outcome.

Access and ownership: keep control of your own accounts

An SEO partner needs access to your website and data. Your company should stay in control of what is granted and be able to take it back.

• Search Console. Your company should be the verified owner of the property. Google’s permissions documentation describes owners (verified or delegated), full users and restricted users; only owners can add or remove users. Once you have signed, a full user role is usually enough for day-to-day work.
• Analytics and Business Profiles. Created under company accounts, not an agency employee’s personal email, with the agency added as a user.
• Website. A named admin account for the agency, separate from yours, so it can be removed cleanly at the end of the engagement.
• Content. You approve pages before they go live, and the content, reports and keyword research belong to you when the contract ends.

Hypothetical example: a typical SEO proposal, line by line

Here is how we would mark up a proposal of the kind many Gulf companies receive. The lines are a composite written for illustration, not taken from any real agency, but each one is common. Use the same three verdicts on the proposal in front of you.

A proposal does not have to be perfect to be worth signing. If the “refuse” lines can be removed and the “ask for detail” lines are answered with measurable tasks, it may still be the right partner.

A question sheet for your next agency meeting

Use these questions with every shortlisted partner and compare the answers side by side.

The last question is often the most revealing. SEO for a technical B2B company depends on information only you hold: which products carry margin, which regions you can serve, which certifications buyers ask about. A partner that does not ask for it risks writing pages that rank for the wrong things.

At RX Designer, SEO and search visibility work starts with that conversation: the market, the buyer and the searches they actually make, before any page is written or any report is produced.

If a proposal is already on your desk, bring it and your Search Console access (read-only is enough) to a business diagnosis session. We will mark which lines match Google’s guidance, which need a measurable milestone, and which to refuse, before you sign.