SEO agency red flags

None of these are proof of bad intent on their own. Two or three together, and you have enough to end the conversation and go back to your shortlist. Use this alongside questions to ask an SEO agency.

In the sales conversation

• Guaranteed rankings or a guaranteed number one. Nobody controls Google. An agency can guarantee effort, never position.
• A secret method. There is no proprietary algorithm. Techniques that cannot be explained are usually ones that would not survive explaining.
• Pressure to sign today. Discounts that expire this week are a sales tactic, and a poor sign about the twelve months that follow.
• Talking only about tactics, never about your customers. If nobody asks what a customer is worth to you, nobody is optimising for it.
• Cold outreach claiming to have audited your site. It is a mail merge. Genuine agencies rarely need to send them.

In the proposal

• No named deliverables. "Ongoing optimisation" and "monthly SEO" describe a fee, not a service.
• Volume based link packages. Fifty links a month is a promise about quantity, which is the one thing that does not matter.
• Keyword lists with no volume data. Targets should come with search volume and a rough sense of what they are worth.
• Prices far below the market. Read why cheap SEO usually costs more before assuming you have found a bargain.

In the contract

• Twelve month lock in with no break clause. Six months of commitment is reasonable to ask for; twelve with no exit is not.
• The agency owns the content or the accounts. Anything created for you, and any account created in your name, should be yours.
• No access to your own data. Search Console and analytics are your property. An agency holding them hostage is holding your evidence.

Once the work has started

• Reports built on impressions and rankings only. See SEO KPIs that matter for what should be there instead.
• Rankings improving for phrases you have never heard anyone use. Easy keywords are chosen to make graphs move.
• Content appearing without your review. Anything published in your name should be checked by you, particularly in regulated sectors.
• Nobody can explain what happened last month. If the account manager is reading the report to you for the first time in the meeting, no one is steering it.

If you recognise several of these in an agency you are already paying, when to fire your SEO agency sets out how to decide, and how to switch SEO agencies covers moving without losing rankings. If you want a clean shortlist to work from, you can compare Bristol SEO agencies by rating and specialism.