If you need leads now without sacrificing long-term visibility, choose an SEO PPC agency that can run paid search and organic search as one accountable growth programme. The right partner will connect your commercial goals, landing pages, conversion tracking, keyword strategy and reporting, then show you what is producing qualified enquiries.
At Flex Digital, we see the strongest results when SEO and PPC inform each other rather than compete for separate budgets. SEO builds durable visibility and useful website assets; PPC provides immediate demand capture, rapid testing and data that can sharpen the organic plan.
Use the seven steps below to assess an agency before you sign a contract.
Table of contents
- Before you start: prepare your selection brief
- 1. Define the outcome you want the agency to improve
- 2. Check that the agency integrates SEO, PPC and conversion work
- 3. Audit measurement before judging performance
- 4. Evaluate the agency’s discovery questions and audit depth
- 5. Compare the proposed strategy, not just the monthly fee
- 6. Agree governance, access and a reporting routine
- 7. Start with a focused 90-day plan and test the partnership
- The completed outcome: a search partner that is accountable for growth
Before you start: prepare your selection brief
Bring three inputs to the process:
- Business goals: revenue, booked surveys, qualified leads, online sales or another outcome that matters commercially.
- Baseline data: current monthly leads, conversion rate, average order value or deal value, marketing spend, sales cycle and close rate where available.
- Access and decision-makers: someone who can share website, analytics and advertising-account access, plus the person who can approve budgets and landing-page changes.
For example, a local roofing company might define success as 15 qualified enquiries each month from specific service areas, rather than simply seeking more website traffic. That gives the prospective agency a measurable target to work towards.
1. Define the outcome you want the agency to improve
Start with an outcome, not a channel request. “We need Google Ads” or “we need to rank higher” is too broad for an effective brief. Specify the commercial action you want more of and how you will judge lead quality.
Ask your team to write one primary goal and two supporting measures. A construction business could use:
- Primary goal: increase qualified kitchen-extension enquiries.
- Supporting measures: cost per qualified lead and the percentage of enquiries that receive a site visit.
Expected result: you can explain what a good month looks like in business terms, not only clicks, impressions or rankings.
Verification check: ask every agency how it would measure this exact result. A credible answer should include a conversion definition, a reporting cadence and a way to reconcile marketing leads with sales outcomes.
Troubleshooting: if you cannot yet identify lead quality, begin by recording enquiry source, service type, location, quoted value and closed status in a simple CRM or shared spreadsheet. An agency can then improve the system, but it should not optimise blindly around form submissions.
2. Check that the agency integrates SEO, PPC and conversion work
A genuine SEO PPC agency should explain how the channels will share research, testing and insight. The work should not be two isolated retainers with two disconnected reports.
Look for a joined-up plan that covers:
- Keyword and search-intent research for both paid and organic opportunities.
- Technical SEO, service pages, useful content and internal linking for organic visibility.
- Google Ads, Microsoft Ads or paid social where those platforms match the audience and offer.
- Landing-page improvements, including message match, calls to action, speed and form usability.
- Conversion-rate optimisation and analytics so that more useful visits become enquiries.
At Flex Digital, our SEO services span technical SEO, local SEO, content, link building and strategy, while our PPC services cover paid search, display, video, shopping, remarketing and Microsoft Ads. This makes it possible to build the mix around the goal rather than force every business into the same channel plan.
Expected result: the proposal shows where PPC will create quick demand capture and testing opportunities, and where SEO will build a stronger long-term foundation.
Verification check: ask, “How will a paid-search insight change our SEO plan, and how will an SEO insight improve paid performance?” Expect a practical example, such as using high-converting paid search terms to prioritise service-page content, or using Search Console findings to identify terms worth testing in ads.
Troubleshooting: be cautious if the agency promises page-one rankings, a fixed number of leads or instant organic results without seeing your website, market and sales data. Search performance and lead volume depend on competition, website quality, budget, offer and conversion journey.
3. Audit measurement before judging performance
No agency can manage spend responsibly if the website does not reliably record valuable actions. Before launch, ask for a measurement audit that covers form submissions, calls, online purchases, booking confirmations, quote requests and, where practical, qualified or won revenue imported from your CRM.
Google Ads defines conversions as valuable actions such as sales, leads, sign-ups, calls or downloads. Its guidance also notes that a site-wide Google tag or a Google Tag Manager setup helps capture website conversions, while Google Analytics events can be created as conversions and shared with Google Ads.
Your agency should clarify which actions are primary conversions for bidding and performance reporting, and which are secondary diagnostic actions. For a home-improvement firm, a completed consultation booking may be primary, while a brochure download or 60-second site engagement can remain secondary.
Useful tools commonly include Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, Search Console, Looker Studio and your CRM. The right tools are less important than having consistent definitions and a process for checking that data is accurate.
Expected result: you have an agreed conversion map and can see the source, campaign and landing page associated with meaningful enquiries.
Verification check: submit a test enquiry and ask the agency to demonstrate where it appears in analytics, advertising and CRM records. Confirm that duplicate form events, spam leads and test submissions are handled appropriately.
Troubleshooting: if your website sends prospects to another domain for bookings or payments, ask how cross-domain measurement will be configured. If sales happen offline, agree how qualified leads and completed sales will be fed back into reporting.
4. Evaluate the agency’s discovery questions and audit depth
Good discovery is specific. The agency should want to understand your margins, lead capacity, service areas, sales cycle, differentiators, seasonal demand, ideal customer and the jobs you do not want.
For construction and home-improvement businesses, useful questions include:
- Which project types have the best margins and close rates?
- Which towns, postcodes or travel radius are commercially viable?
- How quickly can your team respond to an enquiry?
- Are there accreditations, case studies, guarantees or project photos that build trust?
- Which services need demand now, and which should become a long-term growth priority?
A serious audit should examine website crawlability and indexability, existing rankings and search demand, competitors in both paid and organic results, account structure, search terms, negative keywords, location targeting, ad assets, landing pages and conversion tracking.
Expected result: the agency identifies a short list of opportunities, risks and assumptions before it recommends tactics.
Verification check: ask for examples of the findings you will receive in the first 30 days, and who will carry out the work. You should know whether strategy, execution and reporting are performed by the people you meet during the sales process.
Troubleshooting: if you are changing website platforms, merging domains or redesigning pages, raise this in discovery. SEO requirements should shape the project before development begins. Our website development services are designed to bring SEO into the build process rather than treat it as an afterthought.
5. Compare the proposed strategy, not just the monthly fee
When comparing proposals, turn each one into the same decision framework. A lower management fee can be costly if it excludes strategy, landing-page work, tracking fixes or meaningful optimisation time. Equally, an expensive proposal is not automatically better if it does not link activity to a commercial outcome.
Assess each agency against these questions:
- What will happen in the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
- Which deliverables are included, and which are optional or billed separately?
- How will budget be allocated between media spend, management, content, technical work and conversion improvements?
- Who owns the ad accounts, analytics properties, content and creative assets?
- What assumptions sit behind any forecast?
- How will the agency respond if leads increase but quality declines?
An integrated plan normally evolves. Paid campaigns can validate demand and messaging early. SEO work can build service, location and advice content that attracts relevant visitors over time. Conversion improvements then help both channels turn more of that demand into action.
Expected result: you can compare scope, expertise, ownership and expected decision points, rather than choosing on a headline fee alone.
Verification check: ask the agency to explain one recommendation it would not make for your business and why. This tests whether the plan is tailored or copied from a generic template.
Troubleshooting: do not confuse a forecast with a guarantee. Treat forecasts as scenarios based on stated assumptions about search volume, click-through rate, conversion rate, budget and sales capacity.
6. Agree governance, access and a reporting routine
Keep ownership of your core marketing assets. Your business should retain administrator access to Google Ads, Google Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager, your website and any CRM integrations. An agency can have the appropriate working access without becoming the only holder of your data.
Set a reporting routine that answers four questions:
- What happened?
- Why did it happen?
- What has the agency learned?
- What will change next?
A useful report connects channel metrics to business metrics. It might include qualified leads, cost per qualified lead, conversion rate by landing page, search-query themes, organic visibility for priority services, booked appointments and sales feedback. It should also call out tracking changes, seasonality and any factors that make month-to-month comparisons unreliable.
Flex Digital offers PPC training and consultancy for teams that want to understand campaign data and participate more confidently in decision-making. That can be especially valuable where marketing and sales teams need to agree what counts as a quality enquiry.
Expected result: everyone understands who owns accounts, who approves changes, when performance is reviewed and what decisions each meeting will make.
Verification check: request a sample report and walk through it together. If it cannot be understood by the person responsible for commercial results, it needs refinement.
Troubleshooting: set escalation rules before launch. For example, agree who can pause a campaign if lead quality drops, spend rises unexpectedly or capacity is full.
7. Start with a focused 90-day plan and test the partnership
The final step is to turn the selection into a controlled start. A 90-day plan should have a small number of priorities, named owners and clear checkpoints.
A practical sequence looks like this:
- Days 1 to 30: confirm goals, complete tracking and account audits, fix critical technical issues, assess landing pages and establish benchmarks.
- Days 31 to 60: launch or restructure priority PPC campaigns, implement the first SEO improvements, publish or improve core service content and begin landing-page tests.
- Days 61 to 90: review lead quality and search-term data, expand what is working, cut wasted spend, prioritise the next SEO opportunities and agree the following quarter.
Expected result: you have evidence that the agency can communicate clearly, act on data and adapt based on your sales feedback.
Verification check: at day 90, review progress against the original business outcome, not only against activity completed. Decide whether to scale, refine the offer, improve the conversion journey or change the channel balance.
Troubleshooting: if results are weak, diagnose the full journey before changing everything. Check targeting, search intent, offer, ad copy, landing-page relevance, page speed, call handling, follow-up speed and sales qualification. A low conversion rate is rarely solved by increasing budget alone.
The completed outcome: a search partner that is accountable for growth
By now, you should have a repeatable way to choose an SEO PPC agency: set a commercial goal, verify integrated capability, audit tracking, compare tailored strategies, protect account access and assess the first 90 days against lead quality.
We help businesses create flexible, integrated search strategies that join up SEO, paid media, content and conversion work. If you want a clear view of where search is creating opportunity and where budget may be leaking, book a discovery call with Flex Digital. We will start with your goals, current data and practical next steps.