Changing SEO agency doesn’t, by itself, make your rankings fall, and it doesn’t keep them steady either. What matters is whether your website, accounts and tracking keep working through the handover, and whether anything important changes at the same time.

This guide covers the exit itself: what to ask for, how to check you’ve actually received it, the safe order for removing the old agency’s access, and what to watch afterwards. If you first want to work out which accounts your business controls today, start with our website ownership check.

Checked against the sources linked below on 6 October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

Two hands passing a set of keys beside a ticked checklist, representing a website and account handover between SEO agencies

What can actually affect your rankings during a switch

Four kinds of change are worth watching. The agency switch itself isn’t one of them.

Technical changes to the site. Changed URLs without redirects, a page accidentally set to noindex, or removed content.
Lost access or lapsed services. An expired domain, hosting that stops when the agency’s account closes, or tracking that’s switched off.
Things that ended when payment stopped. Directory listings, paid placements or tools that only existed while the agency was paying for them.
Changes outside your website. Google updates, competitors and seasonal demand.

Google lists confirmed ranking updates on its Search Status Dashboard. On 6 October 2026, a spam update that began on 24 September was still listed there as active. If your switch falls in the same period, keep that in mind when you read your data.

Step 1: Check the contract, notice period and anything still in progress

Before you give notice, read your contract or terms for four things:

the notice period;
what happens to work you’ve paid for but not received;
who owns the reports and content;
which services the agency pays for on your behalf.

Then ask the agency for a list of:

work in progress;
anything changed on the site in the last three months;
every subscription or tool connected to your website.

Done when: you have the notice end date in writing, a list of open work, and a list of paid services that stop when the contract does.

Step 2: Secure your own access first

Before anything is handed over or removed, make sure your business can get into its key accounts on its own.

Domain registrar and hosting. Log in with your own account, not a shared agency login.
Google accounts. Use a Google account your business controls, with a recovery email and phone number you control.
Two-step verification. Turn it on wherever an account offers it.

Done when: you can sign in to the registrar, the hosting account and your Google products from your own account, and the recovery details point to your email address.

Step 3: Request the handover, then check each item

Ask for everything in one written request (there’s an example email further down). Then check each item yourself, rather than relying on “done” in a reply.

Asset or record	What to request	How to verify receipt	Risk if missing
Domain name	Registered to your business as registrant, in a registrar account you control	Your registrar account shows your business as registrant, plus the expiry date and auto-renew status	The domain lapses, or you can’t change settings
DNS records	A list of current DNS records and where DNS is managed	Compare the list with what your DNS host shows. Website and email still work afterwards.	Email, verification or services break when records change
Hosting	Your own hosting login, or a complete recent backup of files and database with restore instructions	Log in and download a backup yourself. Note its date and size.	The site can’t be moved or restored
WordPress	Your own named Administrator account and a list of all users	Users shows your role as Administrator, and you can add a user	You’re locked out of your own site
Search Console	Owner access on every property for your site, then verify ownership yourself	Settings → Users and permissions lists you as a verified owner, not only a delegated one	If the agency’s verification is removed and no verified owner is left, everyone loses access
Google Analytics 4	Administrator role at account level, and a list of key events (conversions)	Admin → Account access management shows you as Administrator. A test enquiry appears in GA4.	Lost historic data, settings or conversion tracking
Business Profile	Primary owner role on your profile	People and access shows you as Primary owner	You can’t remove other users or manage the profile fully
Tag Manager	Account Administrator and container Publish permission, or a container export if it sits in the agency’s account	Admin → User management shows your permissions, or you hold the exported container file	Tracking and consent settings stop or can’t be changed
Call tracking	Every tracking number, where it appears, where it forwards to, whose account it’s in, and whether it can be moved	Call each number and confirm it reaches you	Calls stop when the agency’s subscription ends
Redirects and technical work	The redirect map, a log of technical changes and a list of open issues	Test a sample of old URLs in a browser. Each should land on the right page.	Broken links and lost pages after later changes
Reports and data	Past reports, rank-tracking exports and any keyword research	Files saved in your own storage	No baseline to compare against
Content and rights	Source files and written confirmation of who owns the content, or what licence you have	Files received, plus a written statement you can keep	Disputes about reusing content
Licences	A list of paid themes, plugins, fonts, stock images and tools, and whose account each is in	The list matches what’s installed in WordPress	Updates stop, or images have to be removed
Listings and subscriptions	Every directory listing, citation account or paid placement set up for you, with who controls it and when it ends	You can log in, or have a plan to replace each one	Listings vanish or show out-of-date details

Details to check for each account

Domains. A public WHOIS lookup won’t reliably tell you who the registrant is. For .uk domains, Nominet doesn’t show the registrant’s name or address unless they’ve agreed to publish it (Nominet). Check inside the registrar account instead.

If the .uk domain is already registered to your business but sits in the agency’s registrar account, you don’t need the agency to move it:

Your current registrar may be able to do it.
Otherwise, the registrant can switch registrar through Nominet’s Online Services. Nominet lists a £10 plus VAT fee for this (The UK Domain, run by Nominet).
Changing the registrant to a different person or business is a separate transfer. The new registrant has to accept it within five days (The UK Domain).

Search Console. There are two kinds of owner. A verified owner has proved ownership with something like a DNS record. A delegated owner was added by another owner. If every verified owner is removed, all delegated owners and users lose access after a grace period (Google). So if the agency added you as an owner, verify the property yourself too, for example with a DNS record at your registrar, before the agency’s access goes.

Google Analytics. GA4 doesn’t have a general “owner” role. Its roles are Administrator, Editor, Marketer, Analyst and Viewer.

Only an Administrator can add and remove users.
An Editor has full control of settings but can’t manage users.
A role given at account level applies to every property in that account (Google).

Check which Analytics account your property sits in. If it’s inside the agency’s own account, account-level access there would also cover their other clients, so they’re unlikely to offer it. Agree in writing how you’ll get Administrator control of your property before the contract ends.

Business Profile. Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership. A new owner or manager must wait 7 days before they can, among other things, remove other users or make themselves primary owner (Google). Ask for owner access early, so the wait doesn’t hold up your exit.

Tag Manager. Account Administrators manage users. Container access runs from Read through Edit and Approve to Publish, and only Publish lets someone make changes live (Google).

If the container sits in the agency’s own account, a container export gives you a file you can import into your own account. You can import it by overwriting or merging (Google). Check that your consent banner settings are recorded too, so they can be rebuilt correctly.

Call tracking. UK rules give customers the right to keep their number when changing provider (Ofcom). If the tracking numbers are in the agency’s account, though, the agency or tracking provider is the customer, not you. Ask now whether the numbers can be moved to you. If they can’t, plan replacements before the subscription ends, including on your Business Profile and directory listings.

Content and copyright. Paying for content doesn’t by itself make you the copyright owner. Unless it was agreed otherwise in writing, the person who created the work is usually its first owner (GOV.UK). Ask for written confirmation of what you own and what you’re licensed to use. For anything valuable or disputed, take legal advice.

Rented assets: ask what stops when you stop paying

Some things an agency sets up only exist while someone pays for them. Many are perfectly legitimate:

directory subscriptions;
call tracking;
rank-tracking tools;
premium plugins;
hosting.

Ask for the full list, so you can decide what to keep, take over or replace. If the agency also ran Google Ads for you, ask whether the Ads account is in your business’s name, and include it in the handover.

Links are different. Google’s spam policies treat buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam (Google).

Don’t assume your agency did this. Many don’t.
If the handover shows paid link arrangements, ask what they were and whether they’ll be removed.
Don’t rush to disavow links. Google says most sites won’t need its disavow tool. It’s meant for sites with many spammy or artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action (Google).

Step 4: Save a baseline before anything changes

A baseline lets you tell, later, whether something really changed. Keep it simple and keep each measure separate.

Search visibility: Search Console clicks and impressions.
- Export the Performance report by page and by query. It shows the last three months by default, so widen the date range as far back as it allows before exporting (Google).
- Also save the same months from last year, if the property has them.
Enquiries: GA4 key events and your own records.
- Note your agreed conversions (form submissions, calls, bookings) for the same period.
- Note enquiries you logged yourself, because GA4 doesn’t see everything.
Technical state.
- A list of your live URLs (your XML sitemap is a good start).
- The Search Console indexing totals.
- A note of your current tracking setup.

Clicks are not enquiries, and impressions are not traffic. Keep them in separate columns, so a change in one isn’t mistaken for a change in another.

Things that change the numbers without any SEO change:

Consent choices. When visitors decline analytics cookies, GA4 doesn’t record them in the usual way. Depending on how consent mode is set up, GA4 may estimate some of that missing activity (Google).
Tracking changes. A new tag, form plugin or call tracking setup can change counts overnight.
Seasonality. Compare with the same period last year, not just last month.
Confirmed Google updates. Check the Search Status Dashboard before blaming the switch.
GA4 data retention. It limits how far back detailed explorations go. Standard reports aren’t affected (Google).

Done when: the exports and notes are saved in your own storage, dated, and labelled.

Step 5: Agree who does what during the changeover

Write down who is responsible, and until when, for:

domain and hosting renewals;
backups;
WordPress updates;
tracking and reporting;
any unfinished technical work.

This matters most for anything with a renewal date that falls during the notice period. Unless your contract says the agency handles them, assume renewals and backups are yours from the day the handover completes.

Done when: every recurring task has a named owner and a date.

Step 6: Finish the handover, then remove old access in the right order

Removing access too early is one of the easiest ways to cause a problem. Follow this order.

Confirm your durable access. Using the table in Step 3, check you hold the top role in each account:
- Search Console verified owner.
- GA4 Administrator at account level.
- Business Profile primary owner.
- Tag Manager Administrator.
- WordPress Administrator.
- Registrar and hosting logins.
Remove or downgrade the agency’s users. Do this in each product’s user settings.
Search Console: verify yourself before removing the agency. Check you’re a verified owner, not only a delegated one (see above). Then remove the agency’s owner account and its verification tokens; if the tokens stay, they can verify again and regain access (Google). Keep your own verification record in place: Search Console checks regularly that it’s still there, and Google advises keeping a DNS verification record (Google).
DNS: don’t delete records you don’t recognise. TXT and CNAME records often support email delivery, verification or other services. Ask what each one is for first.
WordPress: reassign content before deleting a user. If the agency’s account published posts or pages, choose to attribute that content to another user when you delete it. WordPress deletes a user’s posts if no one is chosen to receive them (WordPress developer reference). If you’re unsure, change the account’s role or reset its password instead of deleting it.
Change shared passwords. Change any password that was ever shared, and remove any API keys or integrations the agency added.

Done when: the agency’s accounts no longer appear in any user list, and your site, email, tracking and Business Profile still work.

Step 7: Monitor the first three months

After the switch, our WordPress SEO checklist can help you check for important issues left behind.

On the day:
- Check the site loads.
- Check forms send and arrive.
- Check tracking numbers ring through.
- Check a test enquiry appears in GA4.
Weekly for the first month:
- Search Console clicks and impressions against your baseline.
- The Pages (indexing) report.
- Any new messages from Google.
Monthly after that: compare enquiries with the same months last year. Note any tracking or consent changes alongside the figures.

A short dip doesn’t prove a problem, and a steady line doesn’t prove nothing is wrong. Look at which pages changed, and check the technical causes first. If it’s a fall rather than noise, our guide to what to check when rankings drop walks through the order.

Avoid changing everything at once

A new agency often wants to make its mark. Try not to change URLs, the design, large amounts of content and the tracking setup in the same few weeks as the handover.

If several things change together and performance falls, it becomes much harder to work out which change caused it. Agree the order of changes with your new provider, and record the date each one goes live.

A handover request you can adapt

Replace the parts in square brackets with your own details.

Subject: Handover of [business name] website and accounts

Hello [name],

As agreed, our contract ends on [date]. To make the handover smooth, please could you arrange the following by [date]:

Confirmation of the registrant and registrar account for [domain], and a list of current DNS records.

My own login to the hosting account, or a complete recent backup of the website files and database with restore notes.

A WordPress Administrator account in my name.

Owner access in Search Console (I’ll then verify the property myself), Administrator access at account level in Google Analytics, primary ownership of our Business Profile, and Administrator access in Tag Manager. Please invite [email address] rather than sending any passwords.

A list of call-tracking numbers, where they’re used, and whether they can be transferred.

The redirect map, a summary of technical changes made in the last 12 months, and any open issues.

Copies of past reports, content files, and confirmation of our rights to the content you produced.

A list of paid licences, tools, listings and subscriptions set up for us, with whose account each is in and when each ends.

Please let me know if anything can’t be transferred, so we can plan for it.

Thank you, [name]

Keep a copy of what you sent and when.

If the handover goes wrong

Sometimes access isn’t returned, or traffic falls despite a careful switch. Then the first job is to find out what actually changed, rather than changing more.

When we work on a client’s accounts, we use manager or user access rather than anyone’s main Google password, and we remind clients to remove our access when the work ends. Your accounts stay yours.

Our SEO recovery service starts with a diagnosis, from £145: confirming the symptom, building a timeline and ruling out measurement faults before any fix is proposed. Implementation is quoted separately once the cause is clear.

By David, founder of SEO Agency in Nottingham.