Give access without sharing a password
Your agency needs your Google profile, Search Console, Analytics and website. How to give each one properly, so you stay the owner and can take it back.
To do the work, your agency needs to see and change a few of your accounts. Never send a password. Add the agency as a user instead: you stay the owner, each change shows who made it, and removing them later takes a minute.
What to share, and how
- Google Business Profile: add your agency as a Manager, not an Owner, under People and access.
- Google Search Console: add them as a user in Settings, under Users and permissions. Restricted lets them read; Full lets them change settings.
- Google Analytics: add them in Admin, under Property access management. Viewer is enough to read; Editor lets them set up tracking.
- Your website: give them a login of their own. On WordPress, that's an Editor or Administrator account in their name.
- Your Facebook and LinkedIn pages: add them from the page's own settings as an admin or editor, not by sharing your login.
Keep the keys yourself
- Make sure you, not the agency, own every account.
- Keep a list of who has access to what.
- When someone leaves, or you change agency, remove their access the same day.
If your agency set up an account for you, ask them to make you its owner. It's your business's profile, and it should stay yours.
Do this before the next lesson
- Check you're the owner of your Google Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics.
- Add your agency as a user on each one they need, and ask them to confirm it worked.
In Groow
If your agency uses Groow, it asks for read-only access wherever reading is enough, and lists every account it works in on one page.
Is your agency on Groow?
Agencies use Groow to do this work for every client each week, and to show what it moved in a monthly report written in plain words.