How to verify an agency's work before you sign

Still live: open it. A portfolio older than it looks fails here. Still theirs: compare the footer credit against the site, because a client who left is visible in about a minute per entry. Field performance, against the Web Vitals thresholds. Indexed, by a site: search or by asking for the report. And whether the copy answers questions, by reading three service pages.

The third check is the one with a number behind it: LCP 2.5 seconds or less, INP 200 milliseconds or less, CLS 0.1 or less, at the 75th percentile of real loads. An agency selling performance on portfolio sites that fail those has told you something specific.

The second check is the one nobody runs. A portfolio of sites whose clients have since left is a portfolio of work that did not hold.

The Search Console export behind one claimed result — not the slide it was pasted into. Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides an advertiser needs substantiation for what an endorsement conveys, so asking for the data behind we-tripled-their-leads is asking for something they are already expected to hold.

A redirect map from a migration they did, as a file, per Google's site move guidance.

And one thing they got wrong and changed afterwards. No answer means they have not shipped enough to have one, or will not tell you.

One disqualifier, stated plainly. A guaranteed ranking position is either ignorance or a lie — nobody controls the ranking systems, and we do not make that promise either.