Everybody selling SEO calls themselves an expert
The word costs nothing to use, which is why every agency page in this city carries it and why searching for one is genuinely difficult. There is no register, no licence, and no official certification in SEO itself, so the title tells you nothing on its own.
What separates people who know the work from people who sell it is narrower than it looks. Can they read a crawl and tell you which of the ninety issues actually matter. Can they open Search Console and explain why a page is excluded rather than simply noting that it is. Do they understand how your site is built well enough to know whether a fix takes ten minutes or a fortnight. And will they tell you when a keyword is out of reach for your budget, which is the least commercial thing an agency can do and the most useful.
This page is written to help you test that, including on us. If it makes you better at interviewing an agency we do not end up working with, it has still done its job.
