How to vet an SEO expert in Dubai: eleven questions

The quickest filter costs nothing. Ask the SEO to look at your site for fifteen minutes on a call and name the three biggest problems, with the page and the reason for each. Someone who works with sites every day will point at a specific page, a specific search and a specific fix. Someone who sells SEO will tell you they need a full audit first.

Notice what they ask you before they answer anything. A practitioner wants to know what a customer is worth, how enquiries arrive (call, WhatsApp or form), who answers them and how fast, and what has been tried before. A seller asks for your budget and your competitors' names.

Can they show you rather than tell you?

1. What are the three biggest problems on my site, and how do you know?

Listen for pages, searches and evidence: a service page set to noindex, two pages competing for the same search, a mobile load time above the 2.5 seconds that web.dev gives as the good threshold for Largest Contentful Paint. The test is cheap because a practitioner already knows where to look. 'We'd need a proper audit first' is the weak answer, along with a list of generic tips or a score from a tool.

2. Can I see an anonymised audit, and what happened after it?

Expect a past audit with the client's name removed, a ranked fix list with an owner and an effort estimate for each item, and a candid account of which fixes were made and what moved in Search Console. An audit that nobody acted on is a document, not evidence. Be wary of a polished sample with no outcome, or a refusal on confidentiality grounds when a redacted page would do. What an SEO audit should cover sets the standard.

3. Which searches would you target first for us, and how big are they?

Expect a short list in English and Arabic, grouped by what the searcher wants, with monthly volumes and a note on who holds page one today. The first list shows whether anything was researched. A long list of your services plus the word Dubai, with no volumes and no Arabic, means nothing was done for you. See keyword research for what the list should be built from.

Who does the work, and in which languages?

4. Who will do the work, by name, and how many other sites do they handle?

You want a person, a role, an account count and a chance to speak to them before you sign. SEO is judgement applied to one particular site, so whoever makes the judgement is the product. 'Our team' is the weak answer, as is a senior name in the pitch with a junior on the account, or work sent offshore without saying so.

5. How do you handle Arabic?

The answer should name a native Arabic writer, explain that Arabic keyword research starts from how Arabic speakers phrase a search, and mention hreflang and right-to-left checks. Arabic is a separate research job and a separate writing job, not a layer on the English site. 'We use a translation tool' ends the conversation. We write Arabic with native Arabic writers and never machine-translate, which is the standard we'd ask of anyone.

6. What do you need from my developer, and what happens when they're slow?

The answer should be a prioritised change list with an agreed turnaround, a staging copy to test on, and a record of every change made. SEO changes are mostly edits to your site, so they stall wherever your developer is slow, and a site built by one company and hosted by another stalls twice. 'We'll send a report' is a weak answer, as is a request for full admin access with no change log.

How will you know it's working?

7. What will the monthly report show, and can I see the same numbers in my own Search Console?

Insist on clicks, impressions and average position for an agreed list of searches that exclude your company name, plus enquiries, all visible in accounts you own. A report you can only read with the provider's help can't be checked. A rank-tracker PDF, a count of keywords on page one or a third-party authority score is not a report.

8. How will you count enquiries from WhatsApp and phone calls?

Click-to-chat and call tracking should be set up in week one, with a way to match them to sales. SEO that can't see WhatsApp and calls looks worse than it is, and gets cancelled for it. 'We track form submissions' misses both. Conversion tracking in the UAE covers the set-up.

What happens if it goes wrong?

9. How do you build links, and what would you never do?

Earned mentions are the answer: local press, supplier and partner sites, industry bodies, data worth citing, plus a stated list of things the provider refuses to do. Links bought in your name are a risk you carry, not the provider. A fixed number of links a month, a private network of blogs, or paid placements called outreach are the warning signs. Link building in the UAE covers what earns links here.

10. Who owns the accounts, and what is the exit?

Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile should sit in your company's name from day one, with the provider added as a user, and the notice period and the handover of reports, tracking and content files should be written down. Whoever holds the logins decides who can leave. Accounts under the agency's email, a long minimum term with no break point, or content that stays theirs are the warning signs. On our engagements, accounts, pages and files stay in the client's name.

11. What would you tell me not to spend money on?

The best answer is specific and costs the provider revenue: not redesigning the site this quarter, not buying an expensive tool, or not buying SEO at all because the numbers don't work. A provider who has never talked a client out of anything is selling, not advising. 'Everything helps' is the weak answer, and a promise of a ranking is a weak answer too, as what a ranking guarantee really means explains.

How should you score the answers?

Count the answers that contained something checkable: a name, a number, a document or a date. The table below says what counts for each question. Fewer than eight out of eleven is a no.

Ask question one again at month three or four, about the same site. If the problems named at the start are fixed and the pages are indexed, the work is real, and how long SEO takes lists what the first months should show. Our SEO service answers to the same list.

Send the eleven to every provider on your shortlist today, in writing, and ignore any proposal that arrives before the answers do.