If you are looking for someone to build your website or handle your SEO, the choices feel endless. Freelancer or agency. Local or remote. Strategy-led or just good looking.

Before you sign anything, here are five questions I always recommend asking. They will help you find someone who is not just capable, but actually right for your business.

1. Who is actually doing the work?

It is common for agencies and some freelancers to pass projects on. Sometimes to a junior team, sometimes to white-label partners. That is not automatically a problem, and it is something worth knowing from the start.

What to ask: Will I be dealing directly with the person building my site or managing my SEO, or with an account manager relaying messages?

Why it matters: every hand-off is a place where context gets lost. The person who understood your business in the sales meeting is often not the person writing your homepage.

2. Do they understand your business, or just your brief?

Web design and SEO are tools for moving a business forward. A good partner asks questions that go well past colour palettes and keyword lists. How you win work now. What your best clients have in common. What a good month looks like in numbers.

What to look for: if the conversation stays on the surface, you are buying a service rather than a strategy. Both have their place, and it helps to know which one you are getting.

3. What happens after launch?

Some designers disappear the moment a site goes live. Others fold you into a support package you never quite agreed to. Get the after picture clear before the build starts.

Good signs: proper training, a clean handover, full ownership of your hosting, domain and admin access, and support options you can take or leave. There is a fuller checklist in what a proper website launch actually includes, which covers the legal, technical and tracking pieces that are easy to miss.

4. Is the pricing clear?

You should know what you are paying for, what is included and what is not. If the answer is vague packages and confident talk, ask for a breakdown in plain English and a written scope.

Tip: trust the people who explain things clearly over the ones who sell smoothly. I publish my own ranges in how much does a website cost in the UK so you can benchmark whatever you are quoted.

5. Will they tell you when you are wrong?

This one is harder to test and it matters most. Some people work through jobs. Others actually want the business to succeed, which occasionally means saying that the thing you asked for is not the thing you need.

What to trust: real advice, thoughtful questions, honest scoping, and a willingness to turn work down when it is not the right fit.

Two more worth adding

• How will we know it worked? Ask what gets measured and when you will see it. A site with no measurement plan has no way of proving its value.
• Can I speak to a recent client? Case studies are curated. A five minute phone call with someone six months post-launch tells you more. Mine are on the project pages.

Final thought

Choosing a web designer or SEO partner comes down to trust, strategy and working with someone who cares about the outcome. Whether you work with me or someone else, I hope these questions help you choose well.

If you want to talk a project through, get in touch and I will give you a straight view, including pointing you elsewhere if that is the right answer. You can also email me at martial@marswebsites.co.uk.