How to Switch SEO Agencies Without Losing Everything: The Complete Guide
Switching SEO agencies is one of the highest-stakes decisions a marketing team makes — and one of the least documented. This pillar post connects every part of the process: how to audit an agency before you sign, what you're owed when you leave, who owns your Google Ads account and your website, what honest reporting looks like, and what a healthy agency relationship is actually supposed to feel like. If you're considering a switch, mid-transition, or simply want to understand how this process should work before you ever need it — start here.
How to Audit an Agency Before You Sign Anything
A polished proposal and a confident pitch tell you an agency is good at winning business. They tell you almost nothing about whether the agency is good at the actual work. This is the complete pre-signing audit framework — how to evaluate an agency's real capabilities, who will actually work on your account, what the contract should say, and the questions that separate agencies worth hiring from agencies worth avoiding.
What Questions Should I Ask Before Hiring a Marketing Agency?
You've got a sales call with a marketing agency. They have this conversation every day. You don't. The standard questions aren't enough — because a good agency has prepared answers for all of them. This guide gives you the questions that reveal what you actually need to know, organized by what they're designed to uncover, and tells you exactly what a good answer sounds like versus a confident non-answer.
What Exactly Is a Digital Marketing Agency?
The term "digital marketing agency" gets applied to everything from 200-person firms to solo freelancers running ads from their apartment. So what does a digital marketing agency actually do, what should you expect to pay, and how do you know if you're working with a good one? Here's the honest answer.