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Hire SEO Agency Prep: Five Agent OS Prompts To Audit, Check AI Crawlers And Vet A Shortlist Before You Sign

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Before you hire SEO agency support, let your Agent OS do the groundwork: a baseline audit, an AI crawler check, a schema draft, a content brief and a vetted shortlist.

You'll walk into every sales call knowing your own numbers, and you'll spot weak proposals in minutes.

When the prep is done, book a free SEO strategy session and hand it straight to a human team.

Why prep before you hire

Google's hiring guidance wants owners to understand the basics well enough to notice a bad technique.

Your agent can get you there fast, because most of the groundwork is reading, listing and comparing.

The output is a folder of facts that any agency has to respond to, rather than a blank slate they fill with a pitch.

Quick start: set up the workspace

1. Create a project folder called seo-hire with subfolders baseline, drafts and vetting.
2. Export Search Console performance and the generative AI report into baseline.
3. Give the agent read-only access to your site: a sitemap URL and public pages only.
4. Set a standing rule: the agent drafts, you approve, nothing is sent or published automatically.

Prompt 1: baseline site audit

Read the sitemap at https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
For every URL, record: status code, title, meta description,
H1, word count, canonical, and whether it has a noindex tag.
Flag duplicates, missing titles and any page over 3 redirects.
Save as baseline/audit-YYYY-MM-DD.csv. Do not change anything.

This gives you the starting line that every later report gets measured against.

Save it with the date in the filename, and never overwrite it; a new run gets a new file.

Prompt 2: robots.txt check for AI crawlers

Fetch https://example.com/robots.txt.
For each user agent below, say whether it is allowed or blocked
for the homepage and the main service pages:
Googlebot, Google-Extended, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot,
ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot.
Explain the effect of each rule in one line, citing the official
docs. Draft only. Do not edit robots.txt.

Check the answers against the sources: OpenAI says blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers, Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot to appear in its results, and Anthropic says disabling Claude-SearchBot may cut your visibility in Claude search.

Google is explicit that Google-Extended "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search", according to its common crawlers page.

📞 Prep done? Get a human read on it.

Bring your audit and robots.txt notes to a free SEO strategy session and my team will tell you what matters first. Book a free SEO strategy session.

→ Book my free strategy session

Prompt 3: Organization schema draft

Using only facts visible on https://example.com/about and the
contact page, draft Organization JSON-LD with name, url, logo,
contactPoint and sameAs links to our official profiles.
If it is a local business, suggest the right LocalBusiness subtype.
List any field you could not verify. Draft only.

Google's Organization markup docs say this helps it understand who you are, and the sameAs links tie your profiles together.

It's helpful housekeeping, but Google also says there's no special schema needed to appear in AI Overviews.

Prompt 4: content brief from customer questions

Here are 30 questions customers asked us by email and phone
(pasted below). Group them by service. For each group, draft a
brief: the page it belongs on, the direct answer in two sentences,
the proof we would need (photos, numbers, examples) and three
follow-up questions a buyer might ask next. Draft only.

Google's AI optimisation guide pushes for non-commodity content, meaning answers only your business can give, so feed the agent real questions, not keyword lists.

Prompt 5: shortlist research and vetting questions

Research these three SEO agencies from their own websites only:
[agency A], [agency B], [agency C].
For each, list the services they describe, any claims of guaranteed
rankings or AI mentions, and how they describe link building.
Then draft a vetting email using Google's "Do you need an SEO?"
questions plus: "Does your AEO/GEO advice match Google's official
guidance?" Draft only. Do not send anything.

Read every draft yourself before it goes anywhere, and remove anything that sounds like an accusation.

🔥 Want these prompts as a working system?

The AI Profit Boardroom gives you step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week, so you can learn AI SEO yourself.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Reading the agent's output without fooling yourself

Agents are quick, but they can be confidently wrong, so build in three checks.

First, spot-check five rows of the audit by opening the pages yourself and comparing titles and status codes.

Second, compare every robots.txt verdict with the official crawler page it cites, because user-agent names change and new bots appear.

Third, read each draft brief aloud and delete anything you can't back up with a real photo, number or example.

If a draft claims a guaranteed result, it's wrong, because Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.

Keep a short notes file of every correction, so the next run of the prompt starts from better instructions.

What your agent can't decide for you

• Whether a proposal is fair. Google's warning signs, such as guaranteed #1 rankings or secret methods, need a human to judge tone and intent.
• Whether a link deal is safe. Paid placements must carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" under Google's link guidance, and context matters.
• Whether the agency is curious about your business, which Google counts as a good sign.
• How much risk you're willing to take, because Google says you're responsible for what your hired company does.

A weekly routine once the agency starts

Prep doesn't stop when you sign; it turns into a light weekly check.

Each Monday, ask the agent to compare the agency's change log with a fresh crawl and list any URL that changed without a log entry.

Once a month, re-run the robots.txt check so a plugin update or firewall rule can't quietly block a search bot.

Every quarter, re-export Search Console and the generative AI report and set the numbers beside your original baseline.

The agency should welcome this, because Google tells owners to expect every change to be explained.

If you want help building these routines, the AI Profit Boardroom covers agent workflows like this in its trainings and live calls.

When to hand it to a pro

Hand over once the baseline shows problems your agent can list but not fix: rendering issues, a messy migration, thin service pages or no earned links.

That's the moment a strategy session pays off, because you arrive with evidence instead of a vague worry.

For a broader view on what to keep in-house, see outsourcing SEO services in your Agent OS.

What to bring to your first agency call

• The dated baseline audit from Prompt 1, with the worst ten problems highlighted.
• The robots.txt notes from Prompt 2, including any AI search bot that's blocked.
• Your draft Organization schema and the list of fields the agent couldn't verify.
• Two or three page briefs built from real customer questions.
• The vetting questions, so every agency answers the same list.

Agencies that are worth hiring will engage with this material straight away.

Ones that brush it aside in favour of a generic pitch have told you something useful.

Either way, you've saved the first few weeks that an agency would otherwise spend finding the same facts.

You've also learnt enough about your own site to follow their reports, which Google treats as part of hiring well.

Example: a dental clinic run-through

1. Monday: the practice manager sets up the folder and exports Search Console.
2. Tuesday: Prompt 1 finds twelve treatment pages without meta descriptions and two pages set to noindex by mistake.
3. Wednesday: Prompt 2 shows a firewall rule blocking OAI-SearchBot.
4. Thursday: Prompt 4 turns 30 patient questions into four page briefs.
5. Friday: Prompt 5 drafts vetting emails; the manager edits and sends them by hand.
6. Next week: the clinic books a strategy session and brings the whole folder.

No claim there about rankings: the point is that the clinic now knows what to ask for.

📞 Hand your groundwork to a team that reads it properly

On the call we'll go through your folder and map the first fixes. Book a free SEO strategy session.

→ Grab your free session

🎁 Two free extras for your agent

Load the 200+ AI SEO Prompts into your workspace, and read the free link building book before any agency talks links.

→ Book a free SEO strategy session

FAQ

Can my Agent OS replace an SEO agency?

It can handle the groundwork: audits, checks, drafts and research. Judgement on strategy, links and trust still needs people.

Should the agent edit robots.txt for me?

No. Keep it on draft only, check its notes against the official crawler docs, and make the change yourself.

Which AI crawlers should I check first?

OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, because those affect whether you can appear in those search products.

What should I bring to the strategy session?

Your baseline audit, robots.txt notes, page briefs and any agency proposals you've received.

Final word on Hire SEO Agency Prep

Run the five prompts, review every draft, and when the groundwork is done and you're ready to hire SEO agency help, book a free strategy session.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Outsource SEO Services: Do the Groundwork In Your Agent OS

→ SEO Agency for Startups: Do the Groundwork in Your Agent OS

→ Link Building Agency Groundwork: 5 Prompts In Your Agent OS

→ White Label SEO Agency Prep: 5 Prompts For Your Agent OS

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