What to ask before you sign anything.
Eighteen vetting questions in the order that disqualifies fastest, and how to read the answers.
Ask in this order
Competence first, accountability second, price last. Most vendors survive a price conversation and fail a competence one, so running the sequence backwards wastes your afternoon. Every question below has a right answer that a vendor who has done this work can give without preparation.
Competence in this trade
Five questions that establish whether they have actually done roofing work.
Live URLs, not screenshots.
Churn is the tell.
A generalist cannot answer this.
TPO and EPDM specifics or nothing.
If the answer is nothing, that whole revenue line is invisible to them.
Scope, in writing
Four questions that turn a proposal into a specification.
A count without a reason is a guess.
A vendor who cannot name anything has not scoped it.
Accountability after launch
Five questions about the eighteen months after the site goes live.
Traffic is not an outcome.
A vendor with no answer has never been asked.
Ownership and exit
Four questions to settle before money moves.
The answer must be me.
The second one is the question that matters.
How to read the answers
Specificity is the signal, not enthusiasm. A vendor who has done this work names page types, timelines, constraints, and things that could go wrong without being pushed. Vague answers about strategy, partnership, and being a growth partner usually mean the plan is a template with your logo dropped into it. The published complaint in this trade, that agencies do not know a ridge cap from a rain gutter, is diagnosed almost entirely in the competence block above.
How Roof-Rank answers them
Roofing only, so the portfolio and the research are in one trade. Page counts specified in writing in the audit blueprint. Query research delivered as a document you keep whoever builds the site. Prices published rather than quoted. No retainer, so there is no term to exit. Domain, files, and content yours from day one. References on request, including a client who chose to build elsewhere.
Related guides.
Long lock-ins, borrowed proof, vague reporting, and the ownership clause that keeps your own site hostage.
One template strategy applied across unrelated trades, billed monthly. The pattern is documented, not alleged.
How to vet a roofing marketing agency, the contract terms to refuse, and why generalists keep failing this trade.
Vet us the same way.
Ask us all eighteen. The audit is $2,500 and answers most of them.