This guide shows you how to choose an eCommerce SEO agency. It’s general information, and every online store differs, so it can’t replace legal or financial advice. We’re an agency ourselves, so we’ve built the checks around Google’s own advice and made sure they apply to us too. Check any agency’s claims and costs yourself before you sign.
The right eCommerce SEO agency is the one that has grown organic revenue for stores like yours, on your platform and at your catalogue size. Give every agency the same brief, ask the same questions and compare what they offer on revenue, not rankings. Then check what they tell you against references and Google’s own guidance.
Estimated reading time 5 minutes
Key takeaways
- Your brief is the first thing to get right and it only needs a page.
- Your platform and your product count are the two facts every eCommerce SEO agency needs first.
- An agency is the right choice when you need several skills at once and don’t want to hire them all.
- A shortlist of three to five agencies is plenty.
- The best questions are the ones that need a specific answer, so ask every agency the same ones.
- A good proposal is specific to your store and ties every task to revenue.
- The biggest red flag is a guaranteed ranking.
- References are the quickest way to test a pitch.
What do you need to prepare before you contact an agency?
Your brief is the first thing to get right and it only needs a page. Write down the revenue you want from organic search, the margins on your main categories and any SEO work or site moves you’ve done before. Note who can change your site, whether that’s an in house developer or an outside team. Advice only pays off when somebody puts it live.
Sounds obvious, but plenty of stores skip it. And Google says the best time to hire is when you’re planning a redesign or a new site: the earlier, the better.
What eCommerce platform is your store on and how many product pages do you have?
Your platform and your product count are the two facts every eCommerce SEO agency needs first. We ask for both before we quote a thing.
Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce each limit what you can change, in different places. An agency that knows your platform’s quirks usually works faster and quotes better. Ask for examples of yours. We’re a Shopify Plus Partner, and we’d expect the same proof from any agency that claims Shopify skills.
Count pages, not just SKUs. If every colour or size has its own URL, include those. A store with 200 products needs different work from one with 20,000. Why? Filters on category pages can create a very large number of URLs, and Google says its crawlers typically visit many of them before they work out the pages are useless, which wastes time you’d rather spend on the pages that sell.
| Product pages | Where the effort usually goes | Ask the agency |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1,000 | Category and product copy, buying guides, links | Who writes the copy, and to what standard? |
| 1,000 to 10,000 | Templates, structured data, internal linking, feeds | How will you improve thousands of pages without editing each one by hand? |
| Over 10,000 | Managing crawling, filters, stock rules, automation | How do you handle filter URLs and out of stock pages? |
Should you choose an eCommerce agency, an eCommerce consultant or an in-house hire?
An eCommerce agency is the right choice when you need several skills at once and don’t want to hire them all. An eCommerce SEO consultant can suit a smaller store that needs direction more than hands on hours. An in house marketer suits a store with enough daily work to keep one busy.
Plenty of stores mix two of these, and we offer consultancy to in-house teams too. Whichever you pick, ask who does the technical work and who does the writing, because few people do both well.
How do you build a shortlist of eCommerce SEO agencies?
A shortlist of three to five agencies is plenty. Start with other store owners on your platform, then look at UK agencies that publish case studies from stores like yours. Treat any “best agency” list as a starting point, and check who wrote it.
Be wary of agencies that email you unprompted. Google warns about those too.
What should you ask an eCommerce SEO agency?
The best questions are the ones that need a specific answer, so ask every agency the same ones. Google’s advice on hiring an SEO suggests asking for past work, how they measure success and how they’ll keep in touch. Here’s what to ask an SEO agency when you sell products online.
| Question | A good answer sounds like | A warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| How do you measure success? | Organic revenue, orders and margin by category | Rankings and visits only |
| Which stores like mine have you worked with? | Same platform and size, with references you can call | Case studies from unrelated sectors, no references |
| What would you fix first on my site? | Specific, from a quick look at your data | A generic checklist, or promises before they’ve seen the site |
| Who does the work? | Named people and a regular call | A senior pitch and an unnamed team |
| How will you work with my developers? | Written tickets, testing and one shared priority list | “We’ll send a report” |
| How do you approach AI search? | Google’s own guidance, plus tracking where you’re cited | A guaranteed place in AI answers |
During an audit, give read only Search Console access, as Google advises. Test any AI claims against Google’s guidance on generative AI.
What should a good eCommerce SEO proposal include?
A good proposal is specific to your store and ties every task to revenue. It should cover the work you need, such as technical fixes, category pages, content or digital PR. It should also put the priorities in order with reasons, and say who does what and how you’ll hear about progress. Google says an audit should estimate the gain you can expect and the work involved.
Check the notice period and who owns the accounts and content. Then find out whether the price covers fixing problems or only reporting them, because a report that sits in a developer’s queue for months earns you nothing, however good it looks. Costs depend on your catalogue, platform and how much needs fixing, so compare the scope line by line, not just the totals.
What are the red flags when you choose an eCommerce SEO agency?
The biggest red flag is a guaranteed ranking. Google says nobody, and nobody, can guarantee a number one position, and it warns against agencies that claim a special link with Google.
Would you hire someone who can’t explain what they’ll change on your site? Neither should you. The same goes for paid link schemes, which break Google’s spam policies, and for reports full of rankings and no revenue.
How do you check an agency’s references and results?
References are the quickest way to test a pitch. Ask for two clients on your platform, and ask whether the agency was easy to work with and got results, as Google suggests. You’ll hear it from someone who paid for the work. Look for revenue and orders as well as traffic, and check the time frame.
Technical fixes can show within weeks, though results vary by store. We merged three regional Magento stores for Splash About into one international Shopify build.
Organic sessions and revenue grew within four weeks. Content and links usually take longer, so agree a baseline from Search Console and your analytics in month one.
If you run a growing Shopify or Magento store and want a straight answer on what organic search could add, talk to our team by email or phone. Tell us your platform and roughly how many product pages you manage, and we’ll tell you what we’d fix first.
