Choose the search partner that ships the work
How to compare search providers
Comparing agencies means comparing production rather than promises. Ask what ships each month and who writes it. Ask what evidence picks the work, what access you keep and how results reach you. Then check the case studies against measurement you can verify. Price becomes comparable once you know the monthly unit of work. We publish ours and run month to month.
What to check, in order
Six checks. Any provider worth hiring can answer all six in writing.
Monthly production
How many pages, fixes and source items ship each month. A retainer without a unit of work cannot be compared or enforced.
Who does the work
The named people writing, building and reviewing, and whether any of it is subcontracted.
Evidence discipline
How the work is chosen. Ask for the data behind last month's plan and see whether it exists.
Access and ownership
Whether accounts, pages, data and tracking stay with you, in your own properties, if the engagement ends.
Reporting
Query-level movement, surface readings and enquiries, rather than a position list and a traffic chart.
Proof you can check
Case studies with the market, the window and the measurement stated, so the number can be verified.
We built a roofing company to $1 million a year on search alone
Searchmaxxed grew out of Radiant Roof Repairs, a Gold Coast roofing business Brenden built with search as its only marketing channel. Everything below comes from that company's own records, and it is the only result on this site that is ours rather than a client's.
A new business with no traffic and no reviews reached more than $1 million a year in revenue.
Three high-intent roofing searches held the top organic position within 90 days of the work starting.
No ad budget, no bought leads, no outbound calling, so every enquiry traced back to a page or the profile.
One market with beatable competitors. Yours is sized in the audit before anyone promises a timeline.
Revenue comes from the company's own records and the search figures from Google Search Console for the same property. It records what happened in one market, and your market gets sized in the audit.
Read how it was done →Why comparisons go wrong
Providers get judged on presentation. The deck with the best design wins, then the first month arrives and the production is a report and two blog posts.
The second failure is proof. A percentage with no window, no market and no measurement source is unverifiable, and it is the most common number in this industry.
No production commitment
Without a monthly unit of work, there is nothing to enforce and nothing to compare between two quotes.
Unverifiable results
You cannot check a growth percentage with no window or measurement source. Ask for both, every time.
Access held by the agency
Analytics, Search Console or ad accounts owned by the provider means your history leaves with them.
Reporting without enquiries
Positions and sessions are inputs. Calls, forms and revenue are the reason for the spend.
How to run the comparison
Four steps that take a week and prevent a twelve-month mistake.
Write the brief
Your commercial numbers and internal capacity
A brief every provider answers against
Ask for monthly scope
The brief, each provider's proposal
Comparable scopes at comparable prices
Verify the proof
Named case studies, public data
Claims verified, or a gap you can raise
Test the first month
Signed scope, access
A first change log you can hold against the promise
What good reporting looks like
Four things a monthly report should contain, whoever you hire.
CHANGE LOG
What shipped this month, named and dated, so the production commitment is visible.
QUERY-LEVEL MOVEMENT
Movement for the pages that shipped, not a sitewide average that hides the detail.
SURFACE READINGS
Which answer surfaces appear on your buying questions, with the prompt and the date recorded.
ENQUIRIES AND VALUE
Calls and forms tied to pages and searches, with job value where you can share it.
Where we sit
Our answers to the six checks are published rather than pitched.
Published pricing
Managed Search Loop
Case studies
What it costs and how the terms work
Our pricing is published rather than quoted after a call. Terms run month to month with no lock-in, and the audit fee is credited in full if you start within 14 days.
One search system, two levels of output.
What every package includes
- ✓Audits and diagnostics. AI visibility baseline, technical audit, gap analysis and opportunity sizing, run continuously and read weekly.
- ✓Strategy and plans. A 90-day plan prioritized by commercial impact, broken into weekly shipped releases.
- ✓Fully handled implementation. Pages, technical work, schema, internal links and source-layer actions: built, approved and deployed by us.
- ✓Measurement and reporting. Rank, visibility, AI answer presence and enquiries, benchmarked against competitors, reported in a monthly decision memo.
- ✓Direct access. You talk to the people doing the work. No account managers.
- ✓Approval gates. A person signs off every public change before it ships, with deployment proof after.
- ✓Your data, verified. Search Console and GA4 wired and checked, so every claim traces to a number.
- ✓Experiment memory. Every result feeds the playbook, so nothing gets learned twice.
- ✓The release log. Watch the work ship in real time, every release logged with its deployment proof.
- ✓You own everything. Site, repository, content and data are yours from day one. No lock-in beyond the term.
$6,500
/mo- ✓30 production units a month: pages, rebuilds, technical work
- ✓New commercial pages shipped as the loop finds each win
- ✓Landing page optimization on up to 4 existing pages a month
- ✓Technical, schema and internal-link batches every month
- ✓Source layer basics: citations, profiles, reviews
- ✓One qualified link action every month
- ✓Reddit engagement scaled to 10 mentions per month
- ✓AI visibility tracking plus the monthly decision memo
- ✓Every new page submitted to Google and indexation-verified
$11,000
/mo- ✓50 production units a month, shipped in weekly releases
- ✓Net-new comparison, industry and integration page families
- ✓Site-wide content and technical audits, continuous, read weekly
- ✓A press release written and distributed every month
- ✓Continuous digital PR and qualified link campaigns
- ✓Reddit engagement scaled to 20 mentions per month
- ✓AI answer tracking: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews
- ✓Quarterly competitor teardown and executive review
- ✓A quarterly proof asset built from your own wins, engineered to earn links
Everything we have written on choosing a provider
Written by the team running this work for clients.
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Questions about choosing an agency
What is the single best question to ask an agency?
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Are big agencies safer?
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Should we hire in-house instead?
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How do we check a case study?
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Is a guarantee a good sign?
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What about agencies that will not publish prices?
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How long before we can judge a provider?
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What if we already have an agency?
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- Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Google Search Central, Search Console performance report
- Google Search Central, Structured data general guidelines
Written and reviewed by Brenden at Searchmaxxed. Last reviewed 19 August 2026.