Is My SEO Agency Really Helping?17 min read

We get so annoyed when smart business owners are hoodwinked into signing up with shady SEO suppliers.

You know the type. The people that sent poorly constructed ‘we can save the world’ emails to you. 

Yes, these same emails that come from a someone@gmail.com or similar, unbranded domain. With no company credentials; address and phone number are omitted.

Pure and simple, spam. 

Garbage that will do you way more harm than good. Oh yes, of course their service is cheap. But isn’t it too cheap?

The harsh reality is that the SEO industry attracts all sorts of people. The good, the bad and the chancers.

It is one of these industries that you can claim to be an expert in, without any thought to reality.

In some respects it’s a bit like ‘everyone’ being a professional photographer. Yes, cameras are better than they have ever been. But that doesn’t mean you know what you are now professional.

Do you understand the importance of apertures, lighting, shutter speed and ISO’s?

It’s the same when it comes to SEO. 

As we have said, few agencies live up to their own hype.

So we decided to put this post together to hopefully help someone from falling into the trap of dealing with an under-par ‘joke’ agency.

Yes, it might well land us some more clients. But more than that, we sincerely hope that it helps to educate you a little more with some of the nuances in the SEO service.

You should expect your agency to have something to show you, within a reasonable period of starting the service.

And, we aren’t talking about a rise in your ranking positions.

The early stages, say 2, 3 or 4 months into SEO might be a bit early for more significant results. So don’t fret too much at this stage.

But, you would be right to expect something from your agency. The fact is, they should be doing something with the money that you have wired them.

It might be refreshing to see some of the following:

• An SEO audit of your website
• Analysis of your sites back-link profile
• Content for your site
• Summary of what they have changed on your site
• Detail the links they have built
• Offer a performance dashboard with KPI’s
• An overview of the work carried out

We appreciate that every SEO agency is different. What we aren’t saying is that you must have exactly these, but certainly you should have something tangible at this point.

We are more than happy to jump on a video call to discuss updates with our clients. It probably comes from being in the ‘not having anything to hide’ camp.

SEO strategies need implementation. Fact.

So you will need to give them some form of access. Either to your WordPress admin area or other content management system (CMS) that you use. Our post about on-page technical SEO will give you an insight into why it’s needed.

A big red flag is that they don’t actually ask for access to it.

If they haven’t asked for this in the early stages then there is an extremely strong chance that their ‘strategy’ just involves adding links from other sites, be it their PBN or other network of spammy sites. 

They don’t need access for this. 

Strap yourself in and wait for the penalty from Google to hit you – because it will. It’s just a matter of time!

Aside from the CMS access as mentioned above, it would also be good if they asked for:

• Google Analytics access – either view or admin level
• Google Search Console (GSC) access
• Social Media account information and possible access (depends on the structure of the service)

It’s likely that you already have your doubts about the services being provided.

Here’s a short Q/A that will help to confirm things.

This one mostly relates to the building of linkbacks to your website. Although, it can also apply to other elements.

Link building is still an integral part of SEO – hopefully it is carried out in a positive way for the right results. 

This is where many agencies get it wrong. And, badly wrong at that.

You see, they think that they can gain your confidence quicker when they build lots of links. While this might have worked a good number of Google algorithms ago it certainly doesn’t in 2023.

Often they will use their private blog networks (PBN’s) to build out these links. 

If you aren’t already familiar with PBN’s they are a network of websites that are fully under control of the agency.

The strategy involves the agency buying up expired domains that are then used to purpose content of a different nature. These domains have a residual element of ranking from Google. They then link from these networks to the clients site.

Sounds good? Well it would be if it wasn’t going against Google’s terms of service!

The PBN network strategy can work, but isn’t the strongest platform to build your SEO campaign on.

Should Google find out then you are at risk of these links becoming worthless. This happens in one go.

No one wants to arrive at the office to find out that your ‘top of 1st page’ rankings have now turned into ‘bottom of page 3’ rankings. Oh and with an email from GSC giving details of the manual penalty your site is now under.

Believe us, we have seen it for prospective clients. It’s not nice. 

As a paying client you have the right to understand about the service you’re paying for. Right? 

Here’s a list of some of the responses that you don’t want to hear:

• • “Tons of things, it would take too long to explain them all”
  • “We do lots of things, but it revolves around optimising your website for Google and Bing”
  • “As an SEO agency, our efforts on your behalf have to remain confidential”
  • “Due to the industry, we aren’t allowed to confirm our practices”
  • “I’m not 100% sure, but will get back to you”

If / when you get responses similar to those then our advice would be to immediately cancel your contract. You need to fire the SEO agency before they do more damage to your website.

Reputable SEO agencies will be using ‘white-hat practices’ to assist your growth. These strategies are accepted as legitimate, proven techniques that should be easy enough to detail.

SEO is about carrying out quality work. It isn’t about carrying out huge quantities of the following:

• Article submissions
• Directory submissions
• Forum comments
• Bookmarking

These are the things that ‘agencies’ do when they don’t really know what to do.

Is it conceivable that someone can deliver quality when their focus is on quantity?

This strategy is often outlined in the spam emails that arrive in your email client every day.

Although it is more indicative of overseas agencies, but UK agencies will do it too.

This form of automated, spammy SEO is garbage (crap). And is a sure fire way of getting your site to drop like a balloon filled with lead when you are caught.

It’s the poster child for ‘web spam’ – and Google hates it.

Site back and wait for your site to be de-indexed. Because it is going to happen, sooner or later.

Start planning for a new domain now, because your current one is destined to become unusable for SEO purposes.

Heard of the phrase ‘less is more?’ – it’s perfect for link building strategies.

Rankings can fluctuate for a range of different reasons.

Sometimes these are short term, and often when Google is trying to understand the implementation that is going on with your site.

But other times it can be because there are issues with your SEO strategy.

Keep an eye on your rankings, we recommend you to do so. But don’t become obsessive with it. 

It’s like checking your weight during a diet. Doing it every day isn’t sensible, and often leaves you wanting to make knee-jerk decisions..

If you start to notice that your rankings are steadily dropping then your agency could be carrying out actions that are resulting in your site heading towards a penalty.

Check with the agency to see what they are doing. If it doesn’t match with what you have signed up for then get them to stop.

The image above is from one of our clients who found that they had fallen foul due to the work carried out by their previous SEO agency.

Another tip that there could be an issue with your SEO campaign is if your website traffic suddenly tanks.

More often than not this could be a sign that Google has implemented some for of algorithmic penalty.

Which of course is a really bad thing.

You could check to see if there have been any recent algorithm updates around the time of your traffic hit. Then ask your SEO supplier what updates were conducted on your site in the days leading up to the issue.

You will want to ensure that you query with them any off-site activity that has taken place. Although to be fair it could be that links that have been created a while back have only recently been indexed.

The downside to this is that you will now be missing out on enquiries due to the traffic shortage. To those who have been in this situation, it kinda feels much like your phone has been cut off – that’s how severe it can be.

In an ideal world you will already be well versed with the main target keyphrases that your campaign is working towards. Remember, we touched on this in an earlier section.

You can also verify this by looking in the Google Search Console to see what search terms are driving traffic to your pages. Here you will see a mix of both short and long tail keywords.

Of course it is good to understand that Google will rank a page for a wide range of connected keywords. Providing of course it is relevant to those search terms.

But what about if all of a sudden your site starts gaining traffic from the ‘wrong’ keywords?

This will have happened for a specific reason. It doesn’t just happen by accident.

These search terms should always be relevant to you and of course, you also need to be able to convert them into real life customers. Otherwise, what’s the point of even doing SEO?

Search intent is massive when it comes to SEO in 2023. It’s vital to the success of your endeavors that you are attracting the right types of visitors.

If all of a sudden traffic starts arriving from suspicious queries then it could be a tell-tale sign that careless work has been carried out by your current agency.

SEO is a labour intensive task. Well, it is if the agency is doing the right things by you.

The problem is that because of this SEO can be quite a hard service to scale.

Agencies take on more and more clients and then struggle to commit the right amount of resources to deliver the results that their clients need.

A stretched agency will often only have time to focus on the clients that require the most amount of attention. Sometimes the model here looks like this. They do the bulk of the work at the outset, around the on-boarding time. Then once you are seeing some results they switch their focus onto other clients who need more work carried out.

This is more prevalent if the agency has ‘locked you in’ to a long term contract. They can risk spreading the work a little thin, because they know you aren’t able to go anywhere else.

For this reason alone, we won’t ask our clients to commit to these longer contracts. Our clients stay with us because of the results that they continue to get.

As part of any SEO arrangement there should be a degree of fresh content going up on your website. The amount of content will of course vary depending on the resources that have been allowed by the agency. Your monthly fee will go a long way into determining this outcome.

What we sometimes notice is that website content isn’t quite as good as it really should be.

Sadly, this is one area that you can’t skimp on.

Google needs high quality content to understand you are relevant in your niche. As well as that, your potential new clients need to be able to read content that will steer them in the right direction.

SEO is ultra competitive and these on-site signals are one of the best ways to gain traction.

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), from the likes of ChatGPT or Google Bard, has helped some of the lazier agencies produce content in its entirety.

AI can be super cool to grab content ideas and research elements.

However, using AI to ‘write your content’ at this stage is really bad news. Very often it leaves you with a lower quality of written work. Sometimes this content falls into the category of being thin.

It certainly doesn’t have the human experience element attached to it.

We aren’t saying don’t use AI.But don’t overuse AI.

Content has historically been the single most expense element of an effective SEO campaign. Now that it can be compiled via AI your site could be at risk of not delivering to its potential viewers.

Take a look at the agency’s site as well. Their landing pages might be up to scratch, but delve a little deeper and explore their blog pages.

It might uncover a clue as to what you could expect from them.

Think about it. If they are unable to produce high quality content on their site, how could they possibly do it for their clients?

We want to start by saying that not all SEO agencies are going to let you down. There are some damn fine agencies around who will do some great work for you.

However, by definition, if you have reached this part of our content then there is a very real chance you are seriously concerned about yours.

SEO when done correctly is one of the most valuable marketing tools that you have available to you. The trust that it builds in potential new customers is second to none.

We hope that this post has debunked some of the myths associated with poor quality SEO firms.

As a transparent agency, we would welcome the opportunity to have a chat some time. Feel free to reach out to us about our Local SEO services and we’ll take it from there.