Red Flags to Watch for When Interviewing SEO Companies

You sit down for a meeting with an SEO company that you’re considering hiring to help improve your rankings and increase your organic traffic. During the conversation, they tell you that they can improve your SEO ranking and your overall brand authority. But you wonder if they’re blowing smoke or if they can deliver on their promise.

There is no perfect SEO agency — there’s just the right one for your needs. If you choose the wrong agency, you’re likely to spend more money than needed and get fewer, or even no, results. Not to mention, you must take a team away from other projects to work with the company. The right agency can make a significant difference in the future of your business by elevating your brand and building trust with new potential customers.

However, it can be challenging to weed through unethical agencies and those whose expertise is not a match for your business needs. It’s often easier if you create a short list of agencies to consider by eliminating those with red flags.

Here are 10 red flags to look for:

1. Promises of Guaranteed Top Rankings: Too Good to Be True

It seems that if an agency guarantees they can deliver you a high ranking, that’s a good thing. But in reality, it’s a giant red flag. The reason: No one can guarantee a specific outcome with SEO. Google actually states in their Search Central webpage “Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google, or advertise a ‘priority submit’ to Google.”

Search engines use algorithms to rank pages, which SEO agencies do not control, and those algorithms are constantly changing. SEO rankings also depend on factors outside the algorithm, including your competitors’ SEO strategies and what topics people are searching for in your industry. SEO companies that promise results are often using black hat methods, which usually backfire, resulting in penalties or only short-term rankings.

When the topic of ranking results comes up, businesses should look for the SEO company to share past results of other clients and their ranking improvements, instead of guarantees. Listen for the agency to talk about specific factors in your industry that affect rankings, such as trends and competitors. You want an agency that uses white hat methods and understands the various factors that go into improving the SEO rankings for your specific company.

2. Instant Results: The Myth of Quick SEO Wins

SEO is a long-term strategy, not a quick fix. If an SEO company promises fast results, they may not have a full understanding of the strategy for successful SEO. It also could mean that they are making promises they cannot deliver on. Another possibility is that the SEO company is planning on using black hat techniques, which can come back on your organization.

When you ask the SEO agency about the timeline for results, look for them to walk you through a realistic time frame that focuses on small and incremental successes. Look for a company that discusses three to six months as a timeframe to begin seeing results and a year for more significant improvements. Companies that promise shorter timeframes are likely overlooking one of the most important parts of SEO: developing a long-term strategy that sets your brand up as an authority in your industry for the long term.

3. Black Hat Techniques: Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Losses

When you ask agencies about their specific strategies for improving your rating, listen carefully for promises of high rankings or instant success. These companies are often planning to turn to black hat SEO. This refers to unethical SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, low quality backlinks, or content scraping.

While these strategies can yield quick results, they’re almost always short-lived, because many search engines quickly penalize organizations that use these unethical methods. Black hat SEO also creates a poor user experience, which means people often only visit your site once. Organizations find that the short-term success of black hat is not worth the long-term damage to the brand.

Investing in these techniques will hurt your brand and waste your budget. If you think a potential agency uses black hat methods, ask pointed questions about their strategies as well as for links to sites they have worked on.

Instead, look for agencies using effective SEO techniques, such as finding keywords based on the search intent of your target audience, creating content based on business challenges, and improving page load speed. Agencies using white hat methods will talk about multiple strategies that work together, such as on-page and off-page SEO. Because white hat SEO takes many months to see results, ethical agencies will focus on setting your expectations for a longer timeline and incremental successes.

4. Platform Migration Pressure: A Hidden Agenda

Some agencies use commercial SEO CMS and SEO tools, while others offer these platforms as an add-on to their services. If an agency has proprietary systems, ask more questions before proceeding. Unscrupulous agencies sometimes try to upsell new clients into contracts with their systems, which may not be necessary and may add significant costs. In some cases, moving systems can even hurt SEO, through results such as causing broken backlinks.

During the conversation, note whether the company is focusing on SEO strategies or their proprietary systems. If their systems seem to be their main area of business, move on to another agency. Legitimate agencies won’t require you to use their system and will be willing to work with your systems instead. Ask pointed questions about why they want you to migrate, and listen for reasons specific to your website and business needs.

5. Overemphasis on Search Engines: Ignoring the Bigger Picture

During the conversations, weed out agencies that are only focusing on search engine results. While search engines are important for driving organic traffic to your website, it’s only one portion of the puzzle of increasing your brand awareness and authority. High rankings only impact the overall business when they also bring conversions, which typically does not happen when search engine rankings are viewed as the sole prize.

Agencies that make search engine results their highest priority often turn to black hat methods or create an SEO strategy that doesn’t integrate with other aspects of your digital marketing. Instead, look for an agency that focuses on the overall brand, including areas such as user experience and engagement. Ask the agencies what metrics they measure, and listen for agencies that measure bounce rate, time on site, and lead quality, which reflect user experience and engagement.

6. Lack of Transparency and Communication: Keeping You in the Dark

The most successful relationships between agencies and clients are built around collaboration and trust. Because SEO is a lengthy progress with small successes often occurring before major progress, agencies should keep clients updated on milestones. However, some agencies don’t provide regular communication to clients, leaving clients wondering about progress and their investment.

When meeting with agencies, ask about report frequency and additional communication to help gauge transparency. Look for a company that will provide you with logins to tools so you can check status at any time. During the conversation, look for an attitude of partnership as well as team members who you feel that you can easily work with closely. When talking to other clients of the agency, be sure to also ask them about the agency’s communication, reporting, and transparency.

7. Poor Review Profile: A Tell-Tale Sign of Trouble

As part of reviewing potential SEO agencies, a key part of your due diligence is finding out what it’s like to work with them. While calling client references is important, agencies typically only provide references for clients who had a positive experience. By looking at review sites, such as their Google profile, G2, and Clutch, you can get a broader view of the agency. Be sure to spend some time reading the reviews — not just one or two. Additionally, use the search features to look for topics that are key to your business’s goals, such as technical SEO or collaboration.

Because bad reviews occasionally happen even for the best of companies, look for patterns in the reviews instead of focusing on one-off poor reviews. When reading reviews, you should also pay attention to the positive reviews for specific proof points. Some agencies solicit fake reviews, which are often generic and do not include specifics.

Additionally, look to see if the agency responds to the reviews as well as how they respond. Those responses give you insight into their communication and collaboration style. Look for an agency that takes feedback gracefully. Only responding to positive reviews or becoming defensive when addressing negative reviews are red flags.

8. Focusing on Selling Services Instead of Understanding Your Needs

During the meeting, listen to how the agency approaches the conversation. Do they start the conversation by explaining their services and trying to sell you on a retainer? Or do they first ask questions about your current SEO and your future goals?

Each organization’s SEO needs are different. If an agency doesn’t create an individual plan and package, they are likely going to use a cookie cutter approach to your SEO. You need an agency that is not focused on services, but will instead create a personalized approach to help you improve your SEO. Look for an agency that only suggests packages and services after fully understanding your organization’s specific goals and situation.

9. Low-Quality Backlinks: Risking Reputation Harm

A strong backlink profile is a key part of increasing an organization’s SEO rankings. However, building this profile from scratch can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Many agencies take short cuts in this area to artificially increase rankings. Common tactics include using irrelevant websites, buying links from link farms, linking to low-authority websites, and using websites in a different language.

By using an agency that adds low-quality backlinks, your organization may see a quick increase in SEO, followed by long-term damage after search engines detect the spammy backlinks. Search engines typically penalize organizations that use low-quality backlinks and, in severe cases, can even blacklist those websites through deindexing. Additionally, it can be very time-consuming to remove and replace the problematic backlinks down the road.

Look for agencies that focus on ethical link-building techniques, which starts by creating interesting and relevant content. Agencies should also reach out directly to reputable sites to suggest links. SEO tools can also help agencies quickly identify link-building opportunities based on current content and domain authority. Collaboration through being a guest on virtual events as well as a guest poster on blogs also can create new backlink opportunities. Other techniques to listen for include using niche directories, Yelp, and Google Business Profile.

10. Overfocus on Vanity Metrics: Missing Real Success

Some agencies will spout off metrics that sound impressive, such as high impressions or keyword rankings. However, these accolades can be meaningless without context. For example, ranking as number one for an irrelevant or very low volume keyword does not help your business grow. At the same time, impressions and page views don’t matter unless the leads are high quality and turn into conversions.

If an agency focuses on these vanity metrics, ask pointed questions about metrics that home in on engagement and revenue. You need an agency that can implement an SEO strategy that builds your audience and leads to conversions. Instead of short-term gains, your brand needs to improve its authority and engagement level for sustainable growth.

Your decision about which SEO agency to hire makes a big impact on your SEO success or failure. By taking the time to carefully screen agencies and look for common red flags, you can find the right partner to guide your company through your SEO journey.