Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Agency (2026 Guide)

Every strategy we build starts with a full audit of your current website, a deep dive into your competitive landscape, and keyword research built around your specific goals, not a template. No two strategies look the same because no two businesses are the same.

Both. Search is changing fast—Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other AI tools are increasingly how people find information and businesses. We build strategies that account for traditional rankings and AI visibility, so your brand shows up wherever your audience is searching.

We invest heavily in continuous learning—following algorithm updates, testing new approaches on real projects, and staying plugged into the SEO community. SEO in 2026 looks very different from SEO even two years ago, and we adapt accordingly.

Always. We only use white-hat SEO techniques—no shortcuts, no tricks, nothing that could put your site at risk of a Google penalty. Sustainable growth takes longer but it lasts.

Honest answer: most clients start seeing meaningful movement within 3 to 6 months, but substantial, compounding results typically take 6 to 12 months of consistent work. Anyone who promises page-one rankings in 30 days is selling you something.

We focus on the metrics that matter to your business—organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and most importantly, conversions. We don't hide behind vanity metrics like impressions alone. You'll always know exactly what's moving and why.

Absolutely, always. You should have full ownership of your own data at all times. We set up and configure these tools for you, but the accounts belong to you, not us.

Rankings are a means to an end, not the end itself. We measure success by what actually matters to your business—more qualified visitors, more inquiries, more revenue. A site ranking on page one for keywords nobody searches isn't a win.

At Hot Brewed SEO, you work directly with Mirjana—our founder and lead strategist. You won't get handed off to a junior account manager or an outsourced team after you sign. The person you meet on the discovery call is the person doing the work.

We provide monthly reporting and are available for check-ins whenever you need them. We believe in proactive communication—if something important changes, you'll hear from us before your next scheduled report

We start with a thorough discovery call to understand your business, goals, and current situation. From there we conduct a full audit, build your strategy, and walk you through it before any work begins. You'll always know what we're doing and why.

We adjust. SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it discipline—it requires ongoing analysis and adaptation. If a strategy isn't delivering the expected results, we diagnose why, communicate that clearly, and pivot. You'll never be left wondering why your numbers aren't moving.

Yes, you can find our case studies here. We protect client confidentiality by keeping names private, but every result we share is real and verifiable.

A few things: you work directly with Mirjana, a specialist with nearly a decade of experience—not a generalist team.

She holds a Master's degree in English Language and Literature, which gives her a deeper understanding of language and search intent than most SEO practitioners.

We're also a certified Squarespace Circle Partner, so we can handle both your website and your SEO under one roof. And we've maintained a 95% client retention rate because we treat every project like it's our own business.

We take client confidentiality seriously. We never share client names, data, or proprietary information without explicit permission. Our case studies are anonymized by default.

Yes. While we have deep experience across health, wellness, fitness, and SaaS, we've worked across 15+ industries. If you have an online presence that needs to grow, we can help.

Yes, we're a certified Squarespace Circle Partner, which means we build and optimize Squarespace websites to the highest standard.
Whether you need a new site from scratch or want to improve an existing one, we handle both the design and the SEO together.

Squarespace is an excellent choice for small to mid-sized businesses that want a beautiful, fast, and easy-to-manage website without the technical overhead of WordPress. It's also highly SEO-friendly when set up correctly, which is exactly what we do.

Absolutely. We audit and optimize existing Squarespace sites regularly. If your current site isn't performing the way you'd like, we can identify exactly what's holding it back and fix it.