Pest control SEO
Hiring an SEO Agency for Pest Control: Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Questions to ask any SEO agency about contracts, reporting, links and ownership before your pest control company signs, plus red flags that mean walk away.
5 min readPest Control SEO Company team
Choose the company that can tell you in writing what it will do each month, how you can cancel, who owns your website and Business Profile, and which links it built for you, with the addresses of each one. If an agency can't answer those clearly before you sign, the reports won't get clearer afterward. Take the questions below into every sales call, write down the answers, and compare them side by side.
Contract and cancellation
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How long is the contract, and what does it cost to leave early? Month to month is easy to judge. A twelve-month term can be fine if the price reflects it, but a long contract with a steep exit fee for a service that can't promise outcomes puts all the risk on you.
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What happens to the work if I cancel? Pages written for your site should stay on your site. Ask whether links they built stay live after you leave or get taken down, and get the answer in writing.
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Is there a setup fee, and what does it pay for? A setup fee for an audit, keyword research and a page plan is reasonable if you receive those documents. A setup fee for "onboarding" with nothing to show for it is not.
Ownership
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Whose name is the domain registered in? It should be yours, in an account you can log into. If an agency registers your domain in its own account and the relationship ends badly, getting it back can take a long time.
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Who owns the Google Business Profile? You should be the owner. An agency can be added as a manager, which gives it the access it needs without control of your listing. Ask them to say this out loud on the call.
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Who owns the tracking phone numbers? If the agency sets up call tracking under its own account and you leave, those numbers can be shut off, and any listing or mailer that shows them goes dead. Use tracking numbers you own, or keep them off your listings entirely.
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Will analytics and Search Console be in my name? Same principle. They should be your accounts, with the agency added as a user.
The work itself
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What exactly will you do in the first ninety days? A clear answer names pages, profile fixes, listings and a number of links. "We'll optimize your presence" is not an answer.
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Which searches and pages will you target, by service and by town? For a pest control company, a good plan separates general pest, termite, rodent, mosquito and any commercial work, and names the towns you actually route. If they want to target "pest control" nationwide, they don't understand your business.
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Can you show me examples of links you've built? Look at the sites. Are they real sites with real readers, are they related to home services or to your area, and would you be comfortable with a customer seeing your name there? If they won't show any examples, treat that as the answer.
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Who writes the content, and how do you handle pest control claims? Safety wording for pesticides ("safe," "non-toxic," "pet-safe") is regulated by the EPA and state agencies, and licensing and warranty rules vary by state. A writer who doesn't know that can put claims on your site that you'll have to answer for.
Reporting
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What's in the monthly report? Ask to see a sample. At minimum it should list every link built that month with its live URL, the page on your site it points to and the anchor text, plus how your target searches moved by service. If you track calls and forms, those belong in it too, since rankings that don't bring calls aren't worth much.
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Who do I talk to when the numbers drop? Rankings move. Seasonal dips happen. You want a person who will explain what changed and what they're doing about it, not a dashboard login.
Fit with pest control
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How will you plan around the season? Swarm season, ant season, mosquito season and the fall rodent push all arrive on a schedule that varies by region. An agency that understands the trade will want seasonal pages live weeks ahead, not the week the phones start ringing.
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Do you have pest control results? If not, what's the closest trade, and where? An agency may show case studies from other industries; that's fine as long as they tell you clearly what the business was and where.
Red flags that should end the conversation
- Guaranteed rankings, "#1 on Google" promises or a set number of weeks to the top. Nobody controls Google's results. Real results take months and depend on the competition in your towns.
- They want to own your domain, your Business Profile or your tracking numbers.
- They won't show you the links they build, or call their link sources "proprietary."
- They suggest adding keywords to your Business Profile name. That's against Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
- They offer to get you reviews from people who weren't customers. Fake reviews are prohibited.
- They suggest only asking happy customers for reviews, or rewarding customers who leave one. Both are against Google's review policies.
- Case studies with no trade, no place and no dates.
- They never ask about your service area, your plans or your busy season.
How to compare the answers
After two or three calls, put the answers in a simple grid: contract terms, ownership, first ninety days, link examples, report sample and the pest control fit. The agency with the lowest price or the most confident pitch isn't always the right one. The one that answered every question in writing, without hedging on ownership or reporting, usually is.
We've done SEO since 2009, and we work month to month with a report that lists every live link, the page it points to and its anchor text. You can hold us to the same fifteen questions: start with how Pest Control SEO Company plans search around the pest calendar, then ask us whatever is on your list.