How a Bad Local SEO Agency Hurt My Business.
6 Warning Signs You Hired a Bad Local SEO Agency
There are plenty of SEO agencies out there who will do an outstanding job, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. Some agencies can be careless with your online reputation and destroy your business. As a result it is crucial you know how to recognize a bad agency before you hire them.
Hiring a local SEO company is really hard. There are lots of them out there — but not all of them are created equal. I’ll be upfront from the get go, we don’t work with many SEO agencies outside of our own. Now — that’s not us being snobbish. It’s because we simply have little interest in helping the agencies we work with to compete for our agency’s work. There are a variety of reasons for this — but it ultimately comes down to results.
The first thing you should look out for when hiring a local search agency is a lack of transparency. A bad SEO agency will keyword stuff your website, build hundreds of duplicate pages on your site, and use black hat techniques to get your listings ranked high. When you ask them about it, they will pretend they have no idea what you are talking about.
Maybe a few months back you found a great local seo agency because you liked their online marketing presentations. You asked them to give your local business a list of tasks and they assured you it was merely a small price. However, when the work began there were more questions than answers. Although promised this was a ‘strategic and long-term’ task, the agency instead recommended an immediate and ‘fast track’ approach that made no sense in terms of the business’s needs.
If you’re in the market to hire a local SEO agency, there are many options out there. If you’re looking on Google, you’ll see hundreds of potential candidates. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Depending on your location and your form of marketing, your list could be much longer. So how do you know which local SEO agencies to hire?
Here are 6 signs your local SEO agency might be under delivering on promises. If you notice these red flags, it’s probably time follow-up and have the agency clarify exactly what they’re doing for you….
1. Improper Communication
I think that one of the biggest, most common issues is communication. It’s easy to get frustrated when you have clients that don’t really speak ‘marketing language’ and it’s difficult to find quality/quantity writers who can write copy that is SEO optimized without having all the right words or buzzwords in place. I would love to hear other people’s suggestions on solving this problem, whether it be in a more technical sense (or even moral/ethical)!
A lot of SEO consultants and agencies promise to bring business to your doorstep. When you hire them, they start claiming that they have enough expertise to execute their job to perfection. However, after a few months, they realize that executing the work in accordance with the laid down plans is not that easy after all and hence, reallllyyy slow down the process.
What you should look for in an SEO company is a certain degree of accessibility and honesty. You should be able to talk to someone at the agency who will answer your questions without using metaphorical language like “friendly local spiders” and without using platitudes, buzzwords, or marketing jargon.
2. There were no reports generated.
If you’re looking for an SEO company and there are no reports from your SEO company, that’s a red flag. If you read on the internet that SEO companies are using shady practices, such as private blog networks, that is another red flag.”
If you’re getting a report, it can be pretty good proof that the SEO company is being honest.
There are lots of shady practices in SEO. Most of them, such as the use of content farms, private blog networks, link-wheeling and all sorts of other tactics, make it harder for search engines to read your sites and only serve to hurt your rankings.
All of us who have been paying (loyal) customers of this so-called SEO company deserve reassurance that the work and money they took from us is not sullied by shady practices.
Shady SEOs will use any method to get you ranked and keep you there, no matter what it does to your ranking in the long term. They’ve probably used free, spammy backlinks to other sites. They might even have gotten some links from sketchy sites and forums that Google has caught using black hat tactics.
3. No real Local SEO results.
Many SEO agencies call themselves Local SEO agencies. If a company is doing local SEO, then they should be able to show local work in their reports. Just like with general SEO, there will be some reports that get generated for a client, but the actual work being done should be local.
A full report for a client should include some specific local ranking actions in addition to general SEO. A general SEO report does not go deep enough to be useful; it is essentially useless unless clients know what they should be doing. Specific local tactics can be implemented by anyone since they are straightforward. Local SEO agencies are able to do this work because they have developed the relationships and customer base they need to do it, or otherwise know who needs to be involved.
In essence, many local SEO agencies are now just fronting basic SEO services for the businesses they work with. The agency may charge customers a higher rate, or they may keep their rates commensurate with the service provided, but either way it’s likely that some SEO will still be bundled into their ‘local’ SEO service, and that this will increase the overall cost of each local SEO project.
To my mind, reports that don’t refer to locations are just hollow shells. The local SEO agency client is no better off than before (except perhaps for having paid more). The way it should be presented local SEO to clients is that the report should identify specific, actionable problems and also provide a map of opportunities. The client can read research and then take the next step with complete transparency as to what they are paying for.
If you want to be able to accurately claim to do local SEO, the way you need to be able to answer questions about local SEO is by showing a local SEO strategy.
4. Guarantees = Scam
If you see a company offering guaranteed number one results in local search, it’s clear that the offer is not legitimate. Any claim of guaranteed rankings is a sign that the service provider is likely to be scamming you. The only way to make such a guarantee is if you were a fortune-teller.
How do you maintain your ranking if you don’t have enough money to advertise? You should pay attention only to SEO companies that know how to build quality backlinks, which will in turn generate natural backlinks.
At this point you might be wondering: How can this happen? After all, search results aren’t something that anyone can just make up out of thin air. There’s a simple answer though: Web sites that qualify to be listed in Google and other search engines are ranked according to the criteria that Google and the other search engines publish. If a company claims to offer guaranteed number one results, what it’s really doing is claiming to have some secret process that will allow your site to rank above the established.
Companies that provide SEO services try to convince their potential customers that they can guarantee top rankings. Just as with lottery tickets, the purchaser of a service that guarantees top results is always right. He bought the charm. It didn’t work.
Just because you’re running an SEO campaign does not mean your website will be number one for your target search term. There are many other websites out there. There are millions of potential customers, and tens of thousands of search terms they might use. If SEO were so easy, everyone would be doing it. And since just about anyone can do SEO (or at least pay someone to do it for them), all those competitors are in a similar boat.
5. Bad Leads = Bad Business
A good SEO company should be able to not only get you leads that aren’t from your area, but also ones from that don’t fit your demographic or target audience. If this isn’t the case, then they aren’t using all aspects of SEO properly and might just be wasting your time and money.
A bad lead is someone who’s unlikely to be a customer. You might have a business where it’s easy to convert leads into sales, in which case you can generate lots of leads. On the other hand, if you’re selling an expensive product to sophisticated buyers that takes time and effort to evaluate, and that your buyer needs to get her boss to approve, then leads are going to be hard.
6. Promising 100s of Backlinks
Certainly, you can get high-quality backlinks by many techniques. But beware of services promising to give you massive numbers of links really fast.
The number of links is not the first indicator that something might be wrong. The top quality links also need to be checked. Do these look natural? Are the sites linked to relevant and authoritative? These are all important questions that can’t always be answered by using a link checking tool.
A lot of companies offer to place ‘high-quality’ links in exchange for money. They are either useless or spam. If they get you no benefit, why would anyone pay for them?
While building trust, search engines also expect you to do something visible to attract users’ attention. For instance, you can submit a site to directories that are relevant to your niche, and thus get high-quality backlinks.
The best SEO agencies will not promise a specific number of links.
So here’s the deal. How to know if the agency you are hiring is a good SEO Agency?
A good place to start is to ask what kinds of results the agency has achieved for its previous clients. If you’re confident in the skills of your local SEO company, you can safely ask a lot more questions. You can also rate how comfortable you feel about discussing things with the professional — if they make you feel uncomfortable, it’s a clear sign that something is wrong.
The best way to stay on top of your SEO campaign is to make sure you have communication with the company who is doing the work for you. Good links are being built and bad ones are being removed, you should know about it.
Thanks for reading :)
