Before you sign
Choosing a leadgeneration company.
Eight questions we’d ask if we were the ones hiring, what a straight answer sounds like, and how we answer each one. Owner to owner.
TL;DR
Before you hire a lead generation company, ask where each lead will come from, who else receives it, whose name the website and ad accounts are in, and how a call gets counted, and expect a plain answer to each before you pay anything. A company that turns vague on any one of them is the wrong company. Google’s own advice adds two warnings: nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking, and be wary of agencies that email you out of the blue. For the first months, it suggests a new firm can see your Search Console data but not change it.
Start here
Get the free look
Send your website and the city you sell in. Michael checks where your traffic comes from, how your site turns it into calls on a phone, and what the AI assistants say about you — then writes back the same day with what to fix first.
Or call (615) 488-7399 at any hour. The line takes your details and Michael calls you back.
The questions
Eight questions, and our answers.
Where will the leads come from?
Get every source by name: search, the map pack, AI answers, a network of sites, paid ads, a marketplace. “Our system” isn’t a source. Ours: SEO, AI visibility and our own trade network, plus paid ads when you want calls this month.
Does anyone else get the same lead?
Ask for the number. A marketplace like Angi matches each request with up to five pros, by its own help page. Ours: calls from your site are yours, and the network gives each trade’s leads in a market to one company.
Who owns the website, the domain and the ad accounts?
Ask what leaves with you if you leave. Ours: Google and Meta bill your ad spend to accounts in your name, and those accounts stay yours if you go.
How will you count a lead?
A click isn’t a lead and neither is an impression. Ask whether they count calls and form submissions, and where that count lives. Ours: every call, form, email and text tap is logged on your own site with its source.
Can you guarantee a ranking?
Google’s answer is no, and a firm that promises one is telling you something about itself. Ours: we promise the work and report the numbers. Our target for every site’s scan is 95 or better, and we call it a target.
What do you build websites on?
This decides whether the AI assistants can read you. W3Techs counts WordPress on 40% of all websites, and Patchstack logged 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, 91% of them in plugins. Ours: hand-written HTML and CSS on Cloudflare’s edge, with no plugins to patch.
How long is the contract?
Ask what it costs to walk away. Ours: month to month with no penalty clause. If the work isn’t producing, you should be able to leave.
Who does the work?
Ask for the name of the person who’ll touch your site. Ours: Michael Blair leads every engagement himself, from the free audit to the monthly report.
Red flags
What Google tells you to watch for.
Google publishes its own advice for anyone hiring help with search, and it’s blunter than most agencies are. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking. “Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.” And when you do hire someone, give them read access to Search Console at first, not write access.
The FTC covers the lead-buying side. Its 2023 order against HomeAdvisor bars false or misleading claims about its leads, including the claim that homeowners were ready to hire. When a seller says its leads are ready to buy, ask how it knows.
Why we ask these first
Hospital systems before websites.
Michael spent fourteen years in hospital IT at Ascension Health. He started the department’s first help desk, served as IT Security Officer for three hospitals, and as an applications analyst handled Cerner security and the system that linked patients across hospitals. He created the first community medical record number across multiple hospitals and designed the first patient arm band with a 3D barcode. That’s software people depend on every day without ever seeing it, and it’s the bar he holds a lead system to.
He ran a web design and hosting business on the side the whole time, and it’s been his full-time work since 2013. Those years taught him what works in SEO and AI visibility, he says, and more importantly what doesn’t. WordPress was one of the lessons.
We stopped recommending WordPress because it was slow, clunky, outdated and always being hacked and the designs were terrible.Michael Blair, co-owner
Answers
Choosing a lead generation company, answered
What is a lead generation company?
A company that brings you potential customers, usually as phone calls or form submissions. Some sell you requests they collected somewhere else; others build the website and the traffic that make your own phone ring. Find out which kind you’re talking to before you compare anything else.
How much do lead generation companies charge?
It depends on the model. Marketplaces charge per lead, others charge a monthly fee, and some do both. We never charge per click or per lead. Whatever the model, ask what you’ll still own on the day you stop paying.
What questions should I ask a lead generation company?
Where the leads come from, who else gets them, who owns the site and the ad accounts, how a lead is counted, whether they guarantee rankings, what they build sites on, how long the contract runs, and who does the work. All eight are on this page, with our own answer to each.
What are the red flags with a lead generation company?
A guaranteed ranking, a cold email out of nowhere, leads sold as “ready to hire” with no proof, a contract you can’t leave, and a lead count only the seller can see. Google warns about the first two in its own guidance on hiring help with search.
Is it better to buy leads or generate your own?
Bought leads ring the phone this week; your own build a source that keeps working after you stop paying. Plenty of owners run both for a while. A monthly count of the calls from your own site, by source, tells you when the bought ones can go.
Should a lead generation company own my website?
No. If the site, the domain or the ad accounts sit in the company’s name, leaving means starting over. Ask for the domain registration and every ad account to be in your business’s name from the first day, and get that in writing.
Sources
Where every number came from.
- Google Search Central, “Do you need an SEO?”, updated 5 June 2026: developers.google.com
- Federal Trade Commission, final order against HomeAdvisor, 21 April 2023: ftc.gov
- Angi Help Center, “Opportunities and Leads Frequently Asked Questions,” updated 20 April 2026: intercom.help/angi
- W3Techs, usage statistics for WordPress, 14 October 2026: w3techs.com
- Patchstack, “State of WordPress Security in 2026,” 25 February 2026: patchstack.com
