Spotting an SEO Agency: 7 Warning Signs of Bad Providers

Few industries produce as many empty promises as SEO, because customers find the work hard to check. These seven warning signs protect you. Yes, we offer SEO ourselves; that is exactly why we lay out the criteria you can measure us by too.

Warning sign 1: a guarantee of position 1

Nobody can guarantee Google rankings, Google decides on its own. Anyone who guarantees them is either clueless or playing tricks (for instance, position 1 for search terms no one ever types). Why that is the case, our honest SEO timeline explains.

Warning sign 2: results “in a few days”

Genuine visibility takes months. Instant promises point to tricks that Google penalises sooner or later, leaving you worse off than before.

Warning sign 3: lock-in contracts of 12+ months

Long minimum terms tie down customers you could not keep with results. Trustworthy providers do not tie you down, we work entirely without a subscription: a one-off foundation, optional checks. Anyone who delivers results does not need a contractual leash.

Warning sign 4: secrecy

“Our methods are a trade secret”, no. Good SEO work can be explained: what was done, why, and to what effect. Demand reports you can understand without a translator. If all you get is colourful charts that say nothing, you are paying for fog.

Warning sign 5: calls and emails saying “your website has serious errors!”

Cold outreach that trades on fear, usually auto-generated “analyses” that claim the same thing about every website. Trustworthy providers do not need to frighten you.

Warning sign 6: bought links and bulk text in the offer

“500 backlinks for 299 francs” or automatically generated mountains of text breach Google’s guidelines and can damage your website for good. Visible short term, burned long term.

Warning sign 7: no question about your business

Anyone who sells you a package straight away, without asking who your customers are and what they search for, is optimising blind. SEO begins with listening, otherwise you get found for terms that bring in nothing.

The counter-check: questions you should ask

“What exactly do you do in the first month?” (A concrete answer is good.) “How do I cancel?” (Monthly is good.) “What if SEO does nothing for me?”, the honest answer is: it happens, and a trustworthy provider tells you so after the analysis, instead of billing you for years.

And us?

Measure us against this list: no guarantees, no subscription, understandable reports, and an honest analysis first. The price calculator sets out the framework in two minutes.