Slide 16 of 39
What Red Flags Should You Watch For When Selecting an SEO Company?
Seven red flags point to a bad SEO hire: a guaranteed ranking by a date, vague answers about where links come from, no read-only access to Search Console or Google Analytics, no work log, a price far below what the promised scope costs, a quote before anyone looked at your site, and no technical audit by the checkpoint you agreed. Each one has a test you can run before signing.
The Seven Flags and How to Test Each One
| Red flag | What it sounds like | Test before you sign |
|---|---|---|
| Ranking guarantee | "Page one in 90 days" | Ask what the agency will commit to in writing instead: the work it ships, the reporting and the exit terms |
| Unclear link sources | "We have a network" or a fixed number of links per month | Ask for two or three sites where the agency placed links for clients recently, with live URLs |
| Reporting you cannot check | Branded PDF only, no access to the underlying data | Ask for read-only access to Search Console, Google Analytics and the rank tracker from day one |
| No record of the work | Results summaries with no list of changes | Ask for a sample monthly task log |
| Price too low for the scope | Full technical, content and link program at a bargain rate | Ask which disciplines the price covers and what each month will deliver |
| Quote without an audit | Price and timeline in the first call | Ask what the agency looked at on your site to arrive at the number |
| No technical audit by the agreed checkpoint (we suggest day 90) | Blog posts and a report, nothing on crawling or indexing | Ask what the audit found and what has been fixed |
Two flags from contract terms belong on the same list: an agency that opens your Google Business Profile, Search Console or Analytics account in its own name, and a long contract with no exit clause. Both make leaving expensive.
Why a Ranking Guarantee Fails the Test
No agency controls how Google ranks pages, so a promised position by a fixed date is either a guess or a plan to use tactics that risk the site. A credible proposal talks in ranges and trade-offs: which keywords are realistic given the site’s current strength, how long comparable sites took, and what could change that. Writing the promise into the contract does not make it any more achievable: a refund clause moves money between you and the agency, not Google’s rankings, and it can reward the agency for chasing easy terms. Treat any ranking guarantee as sales language, and ask instead what the agency will commit to that it controls: the work it ships each month, the reporting, your access to the accounts and the exit terms.
Why Vague Link Answers Matter
An agency may still sell links from private blog networks, paid link schemes or bulk placements on irrelevant sites and call it “aggressive” growth. Google’s spam policies list buying links, and posts that contain links, for ranking purposes as link spam, and state that sites violating the policies “may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.” Detection is automated and runs at scale: Google’s How Search Works page says “Our systems find 40 billion spammy pages every day.” That figure covers spam of every kind, not only links. SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam-prevention system, was launched in 2018, according to Google’s webspam report for 2021.
An agency that cannot or will not name sites where it earned links may be buying them from sources it does not control. Ask it to map its methods onto the legitimate tactics in what link building strategies an SEO company uses.
Reporting and Secrecy
If the only proof of progress is a PDF the agency generates itself, you cannot check the numbers. Watch for “visibility scores” or “SEO scores” with no stated definition; a proprietary score can rise without anything you can verify moving. Reporting should tie to traffic, rankings for named keywords and leads, from accounts you own. The contents of a report you can rely on are described in what reporting to expect from a professional SEO company.
Protecting a process is different from refusing to explain anything. An agency should be able to tell you, in plain language, which pages it changed, what it published and what outreach it ran. Ask for the monthly task log. If it cannot produce one, it may not be tracking its own work closely enough to improve it.
How Low Is Too Low?
Price data puts typical retainers lower than buyers may expect, which matters because the flag is about price relative to scope. In Ahrefs’ survey of 439 SEO providers (updated August 15, 2024), the most common agency retainer band worldwide was $500 to $1,000 a month, while 79.1% of U.S. and Canadian respondents charged at least $1,001. A quote in that range is normal. A full technical, content and link program quoted far below it suggests something promised will not get done.
Owners on cheap plans also report more dissatisfaction. Backlinko’s SEO services research, which draws on its survey of 1,200 business owners, found that those spending less than $500 a month were 75% more likely to be dissatisfied than those spending at least $500. The likely reason is scope: the work shrinks to fit the price. For what a budget under $500 a month can realistically buy, and how the pricing models compare, read the typical pricing model of an SEO company.
Quotes Without an Audit, and No Technical Work
A salesperson who prices the engagement and promises a timeline without looking at your site, your current rankings or your competitors is probably reading from a script. A credible sales process includes at least a light technical and competitive review before a number is attached, because the scope depends on what is already broken.
The checkpoint flag concerns the audit itself. If the agency never crawled your site, it cannot know whether technical problems such as broken canonical tags, crawl traps or slow pages are capping what content and links can do. On a technically clean site, a content-heavy plan can be the right one, as long as the audit that showed the site is clean exists.
When a Flag Is a False Alarm
- Low price, narrow scope. A low quote for a one-time audit or a few hours of consulting is not a red flag; a low quote for a full program is.
- Clean site, little technical work. If the audit found few technical problems, most of the budget should go elsewhere.
- Confidential methods. An agency can decline to share internal templates; it cannot decline to tell you what it changed on your site.
How Many Flags Rule an Agency Out?
Of the seven flags, two end the conversation on their own: a promised ranking by a date, whether or not it goes into the contract, and a link answer built on a “network” or a guaranteed number of earned links per month. An agency that insists on opening your Google accounts in its own name belongs with those two, since it then controls whether you can leave. For the rest, our rule is to drop a candidate that raises two or more. For the full set of questions to put to finalists, use the questions to ask before hiring an SEO company, and what makes a trustworthy SEO company for the positive signals to look for.
If You Already Work With One of These Agencies
Start with the contract. Its termination or notice clause decides how quickly you can leave, so read it before anything else. Before giving notice, request a full export of the work: published content, links acquired and technical changes, so the next agency is not starting from zero or cleaning up links it did not build.
If a dispute follows, know what each body can do. The Better Business Bureau is a private nonprofit organization not affiliated with any government agency; you can file a complaint there, but it is not a regulator. The Federal Trade Commission enforces the FTC Act’s general prohibition on “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” (15 U.S.C. § 45); the statute is general and does not mention SEO, so whether a guarantee the agency could not back up falls under it depends on the facts. Your state attorney general’s office can tell you whether its consumer protection rules cover a business purchase like yours. This is general information, not legal advice; for a contract dispute of significant value, talk to a lawyer licensed in your state.