White label SEO company: what one does, and how to vet one before your first client

A white label SEO company does SEO for agencies, to be sold under the agency's name. It audits, fixes, writes, builds links, manages local profiles and drafts the monthly report, and it never appears anywhere the agency's client can see. Some of these companies work only for agencies. Others, including us, also work directly with businesses.

To see how we work as a white label SEO company, read our white label SEO.

Choosing one is the biggest decision in white label SEO, because the company's work goes out with your name on it. This page covers what a good one does, who actually does the work, and how to vet one with a single paid job before you trust it with a client. For the arrangement itself, start with what white label SEO is.

What a white label SEO company does

• Audits of your clients' sites, with every problem ranked by what it costs and the fix for each.
• Technical work: indexing, redirects, speed, structured data and migrations.
• Content: service pages and articles, written or edited by people.
• Local SEO: Google Business Profiles, reviews, citations and location pages. White label local SEO services covers each.
• Links earned through outreach to relevant sites.
• Reports drafted unbranded from the client's own accounts, for you to finish and send.

And what it should never do: contact your client, put its name on anything the client sees, hold the client's accounts in its own name, or name your clients to anyone else.

Who actually does the work

This is the question most agencies forget to ask. A white label SEO company might do the work with its own staff, with freelance contractors it manages, or by passing it to another white label provider and adding a margin. The third is more common than it should be, and it means your client's site is two steps removed from you.

None of these is automatically wrong. Contractors can be excellent. What matters is that the company knows who is working on your client, stands behind the work, and tells you honestly which model it uses. Ask directly: who will work on my first client, and are they employed by you?

Vet it with one paid job

Every company sounds good on a call. Work is harder to fake. Before you hand over an ongoing client, buy one audit on one real client and judge the company on it.

1. Pick a real client with a real problem, ideally one where you already know some of the answers.
2. Brief it as you would for ongoing work, and note what questions come back. Good companies ask about the business before they look at the site.
3. Judge the audit: are the problems ranked by what they cost, are specific pages named, and could your account manager present it without rewriting it?
4. Forward a follow-up question as if it came from the client, and time the answer.
5. Check the file for leaks: the author field, tool logos, screenshots with an account name, links to the company's own site.
6. Ask for the plan they would follow if this client went monthly, and see whether it comes from the audit or from a menu.

Twelve questions to ask a white label SEO company

1. Who will work on my clients, and are they your employees?
2. Can I start with a single paid audit?
3. Whose name will the accounts be in? The answer you want: the client's.
4. What access do you need to Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile? Full user, analyst or editor, and manager. Never owner.
5. Will you ever contact my client? Never, unless I ask you to join a call as my team.
6. Can I see every link you build? Yes, with the page each one sits on.
7. Do you buy links? No.
8. Is any content published without a person editing it? No.
9. What does the monthly report lead with? Enquiries and calls, from the client's own accounts.
10. How quickly do you answer a question I forward? A time, in writing.
11. What is the notice period, and what do I get when I leave? A short notice period and the full change log.
12. Can you guarantee a ranking? No. Google's own advice on hiring an SEO says nobody can guarantee a number one position.

Red flags

• Guarantees of rankings or of results by a date.
• A refusal to show you the links, or links reported only as a count or a third-party score.
• Accounts set up in the company's own name.
• Sales material naming other agencies' clients. A company that names theirs will name yours.
• No written process for an audit or a month of work.
• Sample reports exported from a tool with the tool's branding still on them.
• Pressure toward a long fixed term before you have seen any work.

A white label company, a freelancer, or a hire?

• A freelancer can be excellent and good value, and is one person: holidays, illness and capacity are your problem, and few freelancers cover technical, content and local work equally well.
• An in-house hire gives you control and costs the same whether you have two clients or ten. It makes sense once SEO is a steady, large part of what you sell.
• A white label company gives you a team without the payroll, and the trade is that you manage a supplier. It makes sense while SEO is growing but not yet steady, or when your clients need more range than one person has.

Agencies outside the United States

Search behaves differently by market: which directories hold the first page, how people describe where they live, which spelling a client expects. A company working for agencies in other countries should check work against the Google their customers use, such as google.co.uk or google.com.au. We have pages for white label SEO for UK agencies and for Australian agencies that set out what is different there.

About us

We are a white label SEO company as well as an SEO agency. Our work for agencies runs on the terms above: the client's accounts, a report led by enquiries and calls, no bought links, no contact with your client, and month to month with 30 days' notice. Most agencies start with one audit. White label SEO sets out the engagement, and white label local SEO covers the local work. For the rest of the cluster, read the white label SEO guide for agencies, white label SEO programs compared and white label SEO reseller programs. To start with one client, send us the site through the form.