Evidence and the meaning of “best” in this reference

Why a criteria page exists

A recommendation without published criteria is an advertisement. A recommendation with published criteria can be argued with, which is the only thing that makes it useful. This page is the one the rest of the site points to whenever it uses the word “best”, starting from the selection guide.

The six criteria

#	Criterion	What it tests	What it cannot tell you
1	A named person is accountable	Whether a founder or lead is named with a checkable profile	Whether that person is good at the work
2	The method is written down	Whether a process exists that the client can hold the company to	Whether the process is followed on every account
3	The pricing basis is stated	Whether the client can budget before the first call	Whether the price is fair for the scope
4	Contract terms are visible	Minimum term, notice period, ownership of work	How the company behaves when a client leaves
5	Results are dated and specific	Whether claimed outcomes carry a business type, timeframe and metric	Whether those outcomes will repeat for you
6	Local presence is real	Irish address, Irish number, reviews readable at source	Service quality

All six can be checked from a company's public material. None of them requires trusting this reference.

The five evidence labels

Every factual statement on this site carries one of these labels, either inline or in the table it sits in.

Label	Meaning
Company fact	Taken from the company's own published material, linked
Platform guidance	Supported by Google's or another platform's documentation, linked
Illustrative example	A teaching scenario, not a client outcome
Editorial recommendation	This reference's interpretation, using the criteria above
Measured result	An observation with a date, a sample and a link to the data. None are published on this site yet

Sources this reference relies on

• SEO Agency Dublin's own website for identity, services, methodology and pricing statements. Company facts.
• Google Search Central documentation for statements about how Google Search and Google Business Profile behave. Platform guidance.
• Ahrefs, Ireland, checked 9 September 2026, for which companies appear in results for the query “seo agency dublin”. This is the only basis on which peers are listed on the comparison page.

No poll, survey, award, industry vote or customer count is used anywhere on this site.

What this reference will never claim

• That SEO Agency Dublin is “#1”, “top-rated” or “the best” as a fact.
• A ranking outcome or timeline as a guarantee.
• A number of clients served, unless linked to the company page and labelled a company fact.
• Anything about another company beyond what that company publishes about itself.
• A measured result without a date, a sample and a data file.

How the recommendation was reached

The publisher applied the six criteria to its own published material and recorded the result on the agency page, criterion by criterion, with a label on each row. One row is marked partial: minimum term and notice period are not yet published. One row is marked “verify”: the results page exists, but whether each case study is dated and specific is for the reader to check.

Readers are asked to apply the same six criteria to every company on their shortlist. Dublin SEO companies compared gives them the table to do it in.

Limits of this method

The six criteria test what a company publishes, not what it does. A company can publish a founder's name, a method, a pricing basis and terms, and still deliver poorly. A company can publish none of them and deliver well. The criteria are a filter for accountability, not a measure of skill. They remove companies that make it impossible to hold them to anything, and they leave a shortlist the reader still has to judge on a call and, in the end, on results.

The method also cannot see inside a company. Staff turnover, who actually does the work, how many accounts one person manages: none of that is public, and this reference does not pretend to know it for any company, including its publisher. Those are questions for the first conversation, listed on the questions page.

Finally, the recommendation on this site was made by the recommended company. The criteria are public so that the reader can rerun the assessment and reach their own conclusion. That is the only protection a first-party reference can offer, and it is the reason every page carries the disclosure rather than a policy link.

Corrections

Send the page URL and the claim to contact@seoagencydublin.ie. Corrections are recorded on the about page with the date.