White Label SEO: Who Does the Work When Your Agency Resells It

If you buy SEO from your web designer or your marketing agency, the work on your site may be done by a company you have never spoken to. That arrangement has a name, white label, and it is an ordinary way for a business to sell a service it does not perform in-house. It is not a trick, and you are allowed to ask about it; a good agency will answer. What this page covers is what changes for you when there are two companies on your account instead of one, and the four questions that settle it. Whoever does the work, you should be able to see it and you should own it. Everything below follows from that one sentence.

What is a white label SEO agency?

A company that does SEO work for other agencies, which then sell that work under their own name. Your web designer sells you a monthly SEO package. The work goes to the supplier. The report comes back with your designer's logo on it, and the person who made the changes to your site works for the supplier. The designer is your point of contact and is responsible to you for the result; the supplier is responsible to the designer. Good work reaches sites this way and so does bad work. The arrangement does not decide which.

Why an agency does this, and why it is not a problem by itself

For the same reason any business buys in work it does not do every day. A designer who is good at design does not want to hire and train a search team for a service some clients ask about once a year, so they buy it in from a company that does only that. If you have ever bought in work your own business does not do, you know the shape of it: you stay responsible to your customer for the result. The questions that matter are the ones you would ask of any arrangement like that: do you know who to contact, who is answerable when something goes wrong, and who holds the keys when the work is done. None of those questions is an accusation. A good agency expects to be asked them.

What changes for you when there are two companies on the account

Three things, and the first two are easy to miss because the report looks the same either way.

Who you can talk to

The person who answers your questions may not be the person who made the change. Questions travel through a layer, and answers travel back through it. That is workable if the layer is quick and honest, and it is a problem if it turns a five-minute question into a two-week wait. Ask whether you can speak directly to whoever is making changes to your site when you need to. The answer might be no, and a no with a reason is fine. A no with no reason is the thing to notice.

What your fee pays for

When you ask what an SEO agency costs, the answer through a white label arrangement has two parts: the supplier's fee for the work and the agency's margin for holding the relationship and carrying the responsibility. Neither part is wrong. You are paying for accountability as well as for changes, and accountability is worth money. What you should be able to see is the list of what the supplier did in a month, with dates, because that is the one thing that either survives the two layers or does not. If the report that reaches you is positions and a chart and no list of changes, the list stopped at the layer above you, and you are paying for something you cannot check.

Who wrote your content

This is the one that shows up on the page. Words written by someone who has never seen your business or met your customers can read that way. The buyers we read did not describe an outsider; what they said they could tell was copy written by a tool or to a keyword count, and one of them was rewriting every page an agency had delivered because the copy did not sound like the business. Ask who writes the words that go on your site, and whether anyone who knows your business reads them before they go live. An agency with a good supplier will have an answer ready, because it is a question they have been asked before.

The four questions, and the answers that should not worry you

Who does the work. Who holds the logins to my site, my analytics and my Search Console. Can I see last month's list of changes, with dates. And what leaves with me if I leave. Read those aloud and notice that none of them accuses anyone of anything. A good reseller answers all four in a minute: a partner they have used for years, you hold the logins and they have their own access, here is the list, and everything on your site stays on your site. That set of answers is a reason to stay. What should worry you is a pause on the second question or a change of subject on the third. These are the same questions that sit at the centre of how to choose an SEO agency. White label adds a second name to one of the answers, and that is all it adds.

Who owns what

Whichever company did the work, the content, the tracking and the logins should be yours. Read the agreement for the word ownership before you agree to it, and if it is not there, ask for it in writing. A page written for your site belongs on your site after you stop paying. An analytics account set up for your business should be set up in your name with the agency added as a user, not the other way round. If the agreement is silent on this, that is not deception, it is an agreement that was written for a different question, and it is the easiest thing to fix before money changes hands.

What to check before you buy, on anyone including us

Ask any provider for one past month's list of changes with the client's details removed, ask who will hold the logins, ask to speak to the person who will touch your site, and ask what stays if you stop. All four are checkable before a card comes out and they work on a reseller, a supplier and a one-person shop alike. Our own answers to three of them are on our pricing page, and they are short: there is no account manager between you and the work; we ask for co-owner access to your site and will not take ownership of it even if you offer; and nothing is rented, so if you cancel, the work stays on your pages. The past month's list is not on that page. Ask us for it the way you would ask anyone, and we will tell you plainly what we can show today.

The part that does not change, whoever does it

Search does not hold still after the first month, so whoever does the work, the question in month four is whether anyone is still doing it. That is true of a supplier, a reseller and of us. What that continuing work is, and why it is the part that quietly stops when it is nobody's job, is set out in our guide to ongoing SEO. If you are not sure who is on your account today, bring the last report you were sent to a free SEO consultation and we will read it with you and tell you which of the four questions it answers and which it does not. That is a fair use of the conversation, and it does not need anyone's logins.

We sell one thing to one website: a fixed number of things done to your pages every week, for one flat price with no contract and no account manager in the middle, and the only part that lands on you is reading what changed. What that costs is on our pricing page. It is one number, and what it includes and leaves out sits beside it.

And if you would rather ask the four questions of us in person before deciding anything, book a free SEO consultation. You will speak to the person who does the work.

Written by Spencer Capron at Capron Media, in collaboration with our AI agents. The same way we do the work for clients. Spencer reviews everything published here.