You cannot buy SEO from Google - Google does not sell positions in organic results, so what you are always buying is somebody’s work on your site. There is no “buy rankings” form, no subscription in a Google panel, no “enable SEO” switch in your site settings. There is only a person improving your site, writing content and earning links, with Google then judging it however it sees fit. The whole art of buying comes down to one thing: are you paying for concrete work you can verify, or for a promise nobody can keep?
Below: what you are actually buying, how to read an offer, which sentences in a sales call should make you put the pen down, and what those calls impersonating Google really are.
What you are actually paying for
SEO is the work of getting your site to appear higher in the free search results for the phrases your customers use. You pay for a person’s time and skill, not for a place in the ranking. That work splits into three parts, and an honest offer always shows how much of each you get.
| Area | What it means in practice | How to verify it is happening |
|---|---|---|
| Technical SEO | speed, correct URLs, no duplicates, indexing, mobile version | change log + Google Search Console |
| Content | service pages, category copy, articles answering customer questions | actual URLs of the new pages |
| Links | mentions of your site on other websites | a list of URLs where the link sits |
If an offer does not split into those three and instead sells you a “Silver SEO package”, the first question is: what exactly will you do this month? “Optimization” is not an answer.
How to buy SEO, step by step
Order matters - the most money is burned at the start, when someone builds links to a site that is technically not fit to promote.
- Start with a site diagnosis, not a signature. Before anyone starts optimizing, someone has to check the state of the site: can Google see it, how fast does it load, does it even have separate pages for each service?
- Decide what you actually want. Not “rankings”, but the business outcome: local phone calls, quote requests nationwide, sales of a specific product group. That changes the whole strategy.
- Ask for a keyword list with numbers. How many people search for it monthly and how strong the competition is. A phrase with 20 searches a month will not make your year.
- Demand a plan for the first three months. Specifically: which pages will be created, what will be fixed technically, how much content.
- Check who will actually do it. Name, portfolio, two phone numbers of current clients. An honest provider hands those over without hesitation.
- Settle access and ownership. The Google Search Console account, Google Analytics, the content and the site have to be yours. Always.
- Sign a contract with a short notice period - and only then pay.
If you are only starting out and have no bearings yet, go through the SEO audit checklist first - it is easier to talk to a provider when you know what to ask about.
Red flags in an offer
The sentences below do not always mean fraud, but they always mean you need to dig. In practice, most failed engagements I later clean up started with one of them.
- “We guarantee first place in Google” - nobody controls Google’s algorithm, so nobody can guarantee that. Guarantees are usually delivered on phrases nobody searches for.
- “We have a special agreement with Google” - no such agreement exists. Partner status relates to paid ads, not organic results.
- “Results in two weeks” - SEO results are counted in months, and for new sites usually in quarters. It depends on competition in your industry, the age of the domain and the state of the site.
- “We build 300 links a month” - a link count with no mention of where they sit tells you nothing. Bulk directory links can actively hurt.
- “Payment on results only, but a 12-month minimum” - pay-per-result sounds safe until you notice the contract cannot be exited.
- “We will give you a new site for free” - free usually means a site on somebody else’s licence and somebody else’s domain, which you cannot take with you when you part ways.
- A report that is a screenshot of rankings - positions differ by person and location. What counts is visits and enquiries.
- Pressure to decide fast - “this price is valid until tomorrow” is a sales technique, not an offer.
”We are calling from Google” - what that really is
It is not Google. Google does not cold-call with SEO offers and does not sell places in search results. Calls along the lines of “we are from the Google department, your business listing is expiring” or “your site will be removed from the search engine” are third-party companies selling services, sometimes outright fraud.
How to spot it in three questions:
- “What is your company name and tax ID?” - a genuine Google consultant does not hide who employs them. A cold-caller usually starts dodging.
- “Please email me the offer, I will call back” - most of these conversations end right there.
- “Which listing is this about?” - if the caller does not know your company name from memory, they are working a list.
Separate point: a Google Business Profile is free and you manage it yourself. Nobody has to “unlock” or “renew” it for you. If someone charges you a subscription for it, you are paying purely for their work filling in descriptions and photos - and it is worth knowing that is what you are buying.
Billing models and what sits inside them
There is no single good model, only a fit for the situation.
| Model | Who it fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | sites meant to grow long term | long notice periods and no list of work done |
| Pay per result | industries with countable phrases | expensive phrases in the price list and zero-traffic phrases in the guarantee |
| One-off optimization | a site with basic technical gaps | no continuity - it is housekeeping, not promotion |
| Audit plus in-house rollout | companies with someone to write content | an audit with no implementation changes nothing |
The choice between a fixed monthly fee and a single project I break down in one-off SEO or a monthly retainer. In short: if the site has technical gaps, do the one-off work first and consider ongoing cooperation after - the other way round you burn the first months of the retainer.
Questions worth asking before you sign
Write them down and ask by phone. How they answer tells you more than the offer itself.
- Who specifically will work on my site and how many hours a month?
- What exactly will you do in the first month? I would like a list.
- Which phrases will we focus on and how many people search for them?
- Does access to Search Console and Analytics stay mine?
- Do the content and the pages stay mine after we stop working together?
- Where do the links come from and will I get a list of them?
- What is the notice period?
- What happens if there is no growth after six months - what do we change then?
- Will you show me two clients in my industry I can call?
- Will the report show visits and enquiries, or only rankings?
“That is our proprietary methodology” as an answer to a question about links or scope means, in practice, that there is no scope.
How to check after three months whether it works
After a quarter you do not judge rankings, you judge three things at once.
- Organic visits in Google Search Console - an upward trend, even a slow one, on phrases related to your offer.
- Customer enquiries - calls and forms. The only number that pays the bills.
- Evidence of work - did new pages appear, did the site get faster, did the fixes go live?
If after three months none of those exist and the report is charts with no conclusions, that is the moment for a conversation, not for more budget. If you want to see what a decent starting document should contain, take a look at what a free SEO audit actually gives you.
When the problem is not SEO at all
Sometimes a site does not grow even though the provider is working honestly. Then the bottleneck is usually the site itself: it loads slowly, it has no separate pages per service, the form does not send email, or the copy does not answer what customers actually ask. No number of links makes up for that.
I start with a free diagnosis - I look at the site and at Search Console, then say plainly whether SEO makes sense now or whether technical housekeeping and site development should come first. For larger work you get a fixed bid in writing before we start, with the scope point by point - I bill most projects at a fixed price, usually 5,000-10,000 PLN net depending on scope. I do not sell rankings, because nobody can.
FAQ
How do I buy SEO from Google? You do not - Google does not sell places in the free results. You buy a provider’s work: technical fixes, content and links. Inside Google itself you can only buy ads (Google Ads), which are labelled as ads and run only while you pay.
Can I enable SEO in my site settings? There is no such switch. In your site system (WordPress, for example) you configure the supporting pieces: titles, descriptions, the sitemap, crawler access. That is a necessary condition for Google to understand the site at all, but it is a starting point, not the whole job.
How long until SEO results show? First movement usually after a few months, longer on new domains and in competitive industries. It depends on the state of the site, the strength of the competition and how much real work goes in each month. Anyone promising a specific date and a specific position is promising something they do not control.
Is it better to hire a freelancer or a bigger team? What counts is who actually sits down with your site and how much time they have for it. With a single specialist you talk directly to the person doing the work and you see every change. With a larger structure you get a wider team, but you need to establish who specifically runs your project and whether they are handling dozens of companies at once.
Want your company to show up in Google and in ChatGPT answers? I work on technical SEO and AI visibility from the code side, not the reporting side. Tell me which questions matter to you and I will quote it.