SEO is very complex, and many business owners, even marketing managers do not totally understand the requirements for an effective SEO strategy. Knowing this, many “agencies” prey on small businesses and take advantage of their lack of knowledge on the topic. If you experience or are currently experiencing any of the following red flags, please speak up. You are likely being taken advantage of and not seeing the value of what SEO can really offer your business.
1. Agency Offers SEO for Under $500/month
If anyone tells you they will optimize your website for SEO and have you ranking at the top of search results for $399/month, please run. This is a common tactic among spammy marketing agencies because they can attract small businesses with low budgets. Most larger, more reputable agencies, start at $1,500/month for SEO services, and for good reason, it takes a lot of work! Without getting into the weeds on how SEO works, you are guaranteed to need copywriting and link building services at the bare minimum. A singular blog post with 700 words would cost at least $399 alone. This does not include tracking, reporting, keyword analysis, link building (typically $500+ per link), etc.
So, the moral of the story, if you are not prepared to invest more than $500/month on SEO, just run some Google Ads instead, or invest elsewhere in your business because you will not get results from SEO. And not because SEO doesn’t work, but because it takes research, planning, technical expertise, copywriting, link building, and consulting to implement an effective strategy.
2. Promises Specific Keyword Rankings
There are no guarantees and no promises in SEO. The reason being that no one can control the algorithm except for Google themselves. There are also the many online competitors changing their strategies on a weekly or monthly basis. There are just too many variables at play with SEO to guarantee results. For example, you could be a manufacturer of grain carts for the agriculture industry and could be ranking in the #5 position on Google for “grain carts” with only a few small competitors ahead of you. From the outside this looks like a great opportunity to ramp up the content and backlinks to the page and jump the competition, and that might be the case. However, Google changes the algorithm almost daily, and could start to favor different content without a day’s notice. One of your competitors could also see the increased SEO efforts on your website and begin making a push themselves. This would make it much more challenging to overtake them in the rankings.
That said, it is crucial to have a good marketing partner to help analyze all of these factors to give you the best possible chance at outranking your competitors, but any ethical digital marketing agency would never promise you they will get you to #1.
3. No Ongoing Communications
No small business owner wants to invest money in something where they can’t see the strategy or the results. Many of the spammy digital marketing agencies out there will make a compelling sales pitch, but then let you run on a “set it and forget it” strategy. This is not what you want. You want to be in the loop on what is happening with the optimizations on your website. You also want to know what kind of results you are getting, and without regular communication, this will be difficult.
The other side of the coin is your marketing partner can’t possibly know everything about your business and needs regular communication to learn more about your business so they can target the right audiences, locations, and keywords. At the very least you should expect to get a monthly report from your partner, and a quarterly phone call. Depending on how aggressive your strategy is, a monthly call is realistic.
4. Setting Up Their Own Accounts
NEVER let your SEO partner set up your accounts under their name or in their “proprietary” software. When you start hearing them say they will run ads for you in their own account or in their own system, then you will never have control or visibility into the data. This is important because if you decide to move away from them in the future, you will lose all of your historical data and make it very challenging for future partners.
Some accounts to make sure you have access to:
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- Website CMS (WordPress)
Google Analytics should not only be setup in your name, but needs to be installed on your website. If your agency partner is not running Google Analytics to track performance, and using their own software you should be very leery. Google Analytics data is straight from the source, so why wouldn’t you want your reports from them?
5. Website Ownership
If you have a partner build you a website, please make sure you own the website. Not just the domain name, but the actual design of the website. Some companies out there will build you a website at a very reasonable price, but with the catch being they will keep the website if you ever stop paying them. For example, they might say, “we will build your site for free with your SEO strategy, and you just pay us $299 month to manage it”. This is concerning for several reasons. First, nothing is free. Secondly, if you do decide to stay with them for the next 10 years, you just paid a fortune for the website. If you decide to leave after one year, they will keep the site anyway. It’s a lose-lose for you.
Be sure you have full access to the backend of your website from day one. You do not want to be in a position after several years of work to have to start over because an unethical SEO firm kept all of your content and website design. Yes, it happens all of the time. If there is a contract, take the time to read it.
Find an SEO Partner You Can Trust
There are thousands of digital marketing agencies out there, and many of them are honest and trustworthy, but the few that aren’t give the industry a bad wrap. Keep the above information in mind if you are looking to hire a marketing partner or are currently with a firm you are questioning. Loading Leads Marketing was developed to provide trustworthy and honest digital marketing advice to small businesses. We offer a free (yes, actually free) 30-minute consulting call to help evaluate your current marketing strategy, and make sure we can actually provide value before we take on the project. We can also take a look to make sure there aren’t any of these red flags in the mix with your current partner. Contact us to schedule a call and see how SEO can benefit your business when done right.
