Who owns your website? The question that decides everything
The domain, the ad account, the phone number and the lead records. Most contractors do not own any of them, and only find out on the way out.
There is one question that tells you more about a marketing agency than every case study on their site combined:
If I stop paying you next month, what do I keep?
Ask it before you sign. The answer is usually vague, and the vagueness is the answer.
The five things that should be yours
1. The domain name
Registered to you, on an account you can log into, with a card you control.
Agencies register the domain in their own name constantly. Sometimes for convenience, sometimes on purpose. Either way, when you leave, your web address leaves with them — along with the rankings you spent two years building and every business card you printed.
2. The website itself
Not just the address. The actual files, or an export of the site, in a form another developer can pick up.
Watch for the "we build it on our proprietary platform" line. That usually means the site only exists inside their system. It is not a product you bought, it is a rental — and when you stop paying, it turns off.
3. The Google Ads account
This one costs the most and is the most commonly taken.
An ads account accumulates something valuable that has nothing to do with the ads themselves: history. Google's algorithm learns from months of your conversion data — which searches produced calls, which produced nothing. That learning is the reason a mature account outperforms a fresh one at the same budget.
If the account belongs to the agency, you do not lose "your ads." You lose the learning. Your next agency starts from zero with your money.
The correct structure: the account is yours, opened under your business, with your card on it. The agency gets access through a manager account. Access can be revoked. Ownership does not have to change hands.
4. The phone number
If they gave you a tracking number and it belongs to them, then when you leave, that number stops ringing on your phone.
Every truck decal, every yard sign, every old invoice, every Google listing with that number becomes a dead end. Some of those signs stay in front yards for years.
Tracking numbers are genuinely useful — they are how you know which ad produced which call. But the account holding them should be yours.
5. The lead records
Every name, phone number and address that came through the system. That is your customer list. It is the raw material of every future referral and every re-roof in eight years.
Ask specifically: "Can I export every lead, with all its fields, whenever I want?" If the answer requires a request to support, it is not yours.
Why agencies do this
Mostly not malice. Setting everything up under their own accounts is genuinely faster — one login, no waiting on the client to approve access, no explaining what a billing profile is.
But the effect is the same regardless of intent: it makes leaving expensive. And an agency that has made leaving expensive has less reason to be good next month.
That is the real argument. Not fairness — incentives. When a client can walk away on thirty days' notice with everything intact, the only thing keeping them is the work.
The line to look for in the contract
Vague language is where this hides. "Client shall have access to all marketing assets" means nothing; access is not ownership.
What you want, in writing:
All accounts, domains, phone numbers and data created for the client are registered in the client's name and remain the client's property. Upon termination, the provider will transfer administrative access within X days and retains no ownership interest.
If they will not write that down, you have learned what you needed to know.
Our position, since we are the ones writing this
Everything we build goes in your name from day one. The domain, the site, the Google Ads account, the tracking numbers, the lead records. Our access is administrative and you can revoke it from your own login, without asking us.
That is also why our minimum is three months instead of twelve. When the client can leave cheaply, the contract stops being the thing that holds the relationship together, and the work has to do it instead.
That is the correct amount of pressure for us to be under.