How to recognize red flags in SEO service providers

Recently a Dutch programme called BOOS, (“angry”), addressed an issue that unfortunately still happens too often: a few small businesses had been pressured into a long term “SEO” contract, with no work delivered, and no results to be seen.

Actions like these have an impact on the entire industry. People lose faith in my profession as an SEO Consultant and lose faith in SEO working altogether. But worse so, these people were scammed out of their hard-earned money.

Most SEO providers are professionals, but let’s discuss the darker side: how can you recognise sketchy providers and avoid being scammed?

Quick recap: what is SEO

Search Engine Optimisation works on optimising your site in various ways, including on-page, off-page, and technical SEO amongst others, to help your website rank better for relevant keywords in search engines. It is a long term strategy that requires ongoing maintenance as algorithms change and competitors improve their sites. 

Keywords: long term strategy, ongoing work, and relevant keywords. This is going to be important later.

Red Flags in SEO Providers

1. Promises exact rank positions: “We will get you to #1 for sure”
2. Promises of exact/large amount of traffic
3. Promises results in a short amount of time
4. Pressures you into making a decision right there and then
5. Doesn’t show interest in your company, products or services
6. Hard to get in touch with
7. Won’t provide regular updates or reports

Let’s discuss these a bit more.

🚩Promises exact ranking positions

As much as we want to, no SEO provider can guarantee a certain ranking position. We always work with a third party: the search engine, and only they have the final say on who shows for what and when. Variables include not only your site structure, content, optimisation and load speed, but also what is the user searching for, when, from where, and what is already in their search history?

As an SEO we keep these things in mind and apply this to the optimisations, but all these variables make it impossible to promise an exact position for your relevant keywords.

So either you won’t see these results, or you may rank for low volume keywords that could be completely irrelevant to your business.

🚩Promises an extreme traffic increase

In line with the previous point, with so many variables it simply isn’t possible to promise a certain amount of traffic. Depending on your industry and niche that amount of traffic may not even be there at all. Keyword research will provide you with more information on how popular certain terms are, but there is no guarantee (and the guarantee is more towards you definitely won’t) get all the search volume associated with the keyword research.

Promising large amounts of traffic is either a lie, extremely irrelevant traffic, or even bot traffic, that has no way of converting into a lead for your business.

🚩 Promises results in a short time

In the introduction I highlighted a few keywords, one of them being long term strategy. While sometimes results can show very quick, most of the time SEO takes a while, from a few weeks to many months. And again, we are dependent on third party search engines crawling, categorising and ranking the pages – something that is ultimately out of our control.

SEO is an ongoing process, and while short term results are possible, there is no guarantee. In line with the previous red flags, they are simply promises that cannot be kept.

🚩 Pressures you into making a decision there and then

As in the episode of BOOS, one of the reasons these businesses got into this situation is because they were pressured with hard sales tactics. Cold calls promising great leads to small local businesses, then pressuring that the competitors are overtaking them, the discount is only valid right now, you’re losing money by the minute; they’re not aiming to help, they’re aiming to sell.

If pressure is applied in such a manner that you feel you can’t make a well-informed decision: it is time to walk away. A good service provider (SEO or otherwise) will inform you, talk to you, and look at the right solutions for your business and your goals. Of course, selling our services is part of that conversation, but ultimately we want to work with you, not extort you.

🚩 Doesn’t show interest in your company, products or services

If the focus on is the sale, and not on the service or solution, that is a red flag as to where their interests are. Knowing your brand, services and products, your unique selling points, the audience you target: that all helps us optimise your site better for the right traffic. 

If there is no interest or questions about your business, it can indicate that they’re not the right fit for you.

🚩 Hard to get in touch with

Another one that showed in BOOS: once the deal was closed, it became increasingly difficult to get in touch with the agency. A clear indicator that the sale was the main purpose, not the service. It puts you as the client in a tough position as at this point, it may already be too late, and you may be stuck in an unfavourable contract.

When you are still discussing services, ask about how to get in touch, what kind of contact or communication can you expect? Are you happy with what they say?

🚩 Won’t provide regular updates or reports

I mentioned that SEO is a long term strategy, and it requires time and ongoing work to execute that strategy. That is however not an excuse to not hear anything at all for months on end. 

Personally, I will not do weekly updates – SEO is simply too slow for that, and the little changes in data aren’t as easily analysed. I prefer to do monthly updates on website performance, and insight into work done and next steps. Depending on the amount of traffic we can analyse data more in-depth monthly, or it could be better to acquire two or three months’ worth of data to ensure the analysis is valid.

Not communicating progress or not being able to supply performance reports or analysis is poor ethic at best, but could also indicate they are not tracking progress at all.

Not all SEO providers are evil

While this is quite a list of red flags to look out for, not all SEO consultants, agencies, freelancers, or full-time employees are scam artists. Search engine optimisation is a valid and proven technique that helps your organic traffic performance over time. 

Due to its long term nature, it is often described more as brand marketing than performance marketing; and your chosen SEO provider can support you in this journey. 

When engaging with an SEO service, whether you reached out or they got in contact with you, consider the above points, and ask questions: SEO Consultants tend to be proud of their work, and we are happy to answer your questions to make sure what we offer is what you need.

Watch below the episode (autogenerated English subtitles available)