Questions to ask about search readiness

Nine questions to ask a supplier. All of them are about the build rather than about rankings, all are answerable in a sentence, and all are cheap for a buyer to settle before a deposit and expensive to discover afterwards.

Ask them in writing. The request itself is informative: these are short factual statements about how work will be done, and a supplier’s reluctance to put them in an email is the finding rather than an inconvenience.

The nine questions to ask a supplier

#	Question	What a good answer sounds like
1	What happens to our existing web addresses?	A redirect map, produced from a crawl before launch, verified after
2	Which search-readiness items are in this quote, and which are ongoing?	A specific split, not “SEO is included”
3	Who owns the measurement accounts?	You do, on a business login, with them added as a user
4	Will every page have its own title and description?	Yes, and who writes them
5	Will one page be reachable at more than one address?	No, and how the variants are handled
6	Is staging password-protected, and how does the launch switch work?	Authentication, and a named checklist item
7	Is the content in the page, or added by a script afterwards?	In the page, for anything that matters commercially
8	Who submits the sitemap, and who reads the indexing report?	A named person, in the first fortnight
9	What are you promising about rankings?	Nothing specific, and they should say so plainly

Why each supplier question is on the list

1. Existing addresses. The highest-consequence item in any rebuild, and the one that fails silently. Missing redirects break every link, bookmark, directory listing and search result at once, and nothing on the new site looks wrong. A supplier who has done rebuilds answers this immediately and mentions a map. The detail is on the redirect map.

2. The split. Build-side search readiness is a finite list that is finished at launch. Competing for a phrase is an open-ended programme with a monthly fee. Nearly every dispute about whether SEO was included is a dispute about which of these the quote meant. The boundary is set out on the boundary between a build and SEO.

3. Account ownership. An account created on a supplier’s personal login leaves when they do, and the historical data leaves with it. It cannot be recovered afterwards — a new account starts from the day it is verified. This is settled at the start or not at all, and it is on the search console account.

4. Titles and descriptions. Duplicate titles across a set of pages are among the most common defects in small business sites, and they arise by default on platforms that generate titles from a template. Ask whether they are written per page and by whom, because this is copy and it is often in nobody’s scope. See titles and descriptions.

5. One page, one address. The same page routinely answers at four addresses without anyone deciding it should, and the wrong one can be the one that wins. Ask what happens with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, and with a tracking parameter attached. See one page at several addresses.

6. The launch switch. It fails in both directions: a live site still carrying the instruction that hid the staging copy, and a staging copy left public and indexed. Both are invisible from the front end. A password on staging is the only mechanism that is reliable in both directions, and the reasoning is on the launch switch.

7. Where the content lives. Content assembled by a script after the page loads is read later and less dependably than content present in the page as delivered. For a service description, a price or a phone number, that is not a risk worth taking. See what is legible to a machine.

8. Someone reading the reports. Submitting a sitemap takes a minute; comparing submitted against indexed a fortnight later is what turns it into information. This is usually nobody’s job by default. See the machine-readable sitemap.

9. Promises. Nobody can promise a search position. A specific promise about a position, a timeframe or a traffic figure is a representation about a future outcome the person making it does not control. Ask what happens if it is not met, in writing, and read the answer against what a contract should cover.

The three supplier answers that should stop you as a buyer

“SEO is included.” Without a split, this is not an answer. It may mean the nine build items, or a monthly programme, or nothing at all.

“We’ll get you to the top of Google.” Nobody controls that. Under Australian Consumer Law a representation about services is judged on substance rather than intent, and this one cannot be supported.

“We’ll set up the accounts under our agency login for now.” For now becomes permanently, and the data is not portable afterwards.

What is reasonable to expect from a supplier at the price

None of the nine costs much. Redirects take time proportional to the size of the old site and everything else is a checklist item during a launch that is happening anyway.

What is not reasonable to expect inside a fixed build fee is ongoing content, competitive analysis or link work. Those are a programme. A buyer who expects them and a supplier who did not quote them will both be right about what they thought was agreed, which is why question 2 exists. The general cost structure is on the cost of a website in Australia, where every figure states its GST treatment.

What to do next as the buyer

Print the nine-question table and take it to the meeting. Send it by email afterwards and ask for written answers. If you are still assembling the brief, write a brief any supplier can quote against produces the document that makes competing quotes describe the same scope, and what a website design company actually is covers the wider question of who you are dealing with.