Good SEO Companies: Red Flags and Deal Breakers
Practical guide to spotting risky SEO agencies and choosing trustworthy partners — covers deal breakers, common red flags, a vendor scorecard, and a simple vendor test.
Vincent JOSSE
Vincent is an SEO Expert who graduated from Polytechnique where he studied graph theory and machine learning applied to search engines.
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Hiring an SEO agency can feel like buying a used car in the dark. Everyone promises “growth,” “authority,” and “page-one rankings,” but the risk is asymmetric: one bad vendor can waste a quarter, torch your content quality, or build links that create long-term cleanup work.
This guide focuses on red flags and true deal breakers so you can identify good SEO companies (and avoid the ones that put your domain at risk).
What “good” looks like
A good SEO company is not the one with the flashiest deck. It is the one that:
Aligns SEO work to business outcomes (pipeline, revenue, qualified leads, CAC payback).
Shows you how they think (prioritization, tradeoffs, sequencing), not just what they will “deliver.”
Operates with verifiable practices (audits you can sanity-check, clean reporting, change logs).
Avoids tactics that violate Google’s spam policies, especially around link manipulation.
If you only remember one thing, remember this: you are not buying “SEO.” You are buying a system.
Deal breakers
These are the situations where you should walk away immediately.
Guarantees on rankings
“Guaranteed #1” is a classic tell. No agency controls Google’s algorithm, your competitors, or SERP features.
What good SEO companies say instead: they define leading indicators (indexation, coverage, non-brand impressions, conversions), set expectations, and propose experiments.
Private Blog Networks and “secret link networks”
If they mention PBNs, “aged domains,” “DA blasts,” or link packages, treat it as a hard stop.
Google explicitly calls out link schemes and manipulative link building as spam. See Google’s documentation on link spam and link schemes.
Ownership games
Walk if they:
Refuse to give you admin access to accounts that matter (Search Console, analytics, tag manager).
Register new properties under their email only.
Won’t share raw exports (keywords, URLs, backlinks they built, content inventory).
You should always be able to take your data and leave.
“We don’t do technical SEO” for a technical problem
If your site has crawling, indexing, performance, JavaScript rendering, or migration issues, a content-only agency that won’t coordinate with dev is a mismatch.
No transparency on who does the work
If the sales person disappears and you cannot meet the strategist or see who writes and edits content, you are buying a black box.
Red flags
Red flags are patterns. One alone might be survivable, but clusters of them usually predict disappointment.
Strategy
A strong vendor can explain what they will do in the first 30 days, and why.
Red flags:
They jump straight to deliverables (“20 blogs/month”) without diagnosing goals, funnel, and current constraints.
They pitch “their process” without adapting to your CMS, dev capacity, review workflow, or legal requirements.
They cannot articulate tradeoffs (for example, why fix internal linking before writing more posts).
Audits
A real audit is specific. It references your URLs, templates, logs, and Search Console patterns.
Red flags:
An audit that looks like a generic checklist with your logo on it.
Recommendations that are impossible to prioritize (50 items, no impact estimate).
“We’ll do a full audit after you sign.”
Content quality
In 2026, content is cheap. Trust is not.
Red flags:
They push AI content at scale without mentioning human review, fact-checking, or updating.
They measure content success by word count or publishing velocity alone.
They do not talk about first-hand experience, original visuals, or credible sourcing.
If you want a deeper framework for quality signals, see our guide on E-E-A-T for automated blogs.
Link building
Links still matter, but “link building” is also where many agencies get reckless.
Red flags:
They sell links as a SKU (“50 links per month”).
They cannot explain placement standards, topical relevance, or how they avoid spam.
They refuse to show examples because it is “proprietary.”
A safer sign is when the agency talks about earning editorial links through assets, PR angles, and partnerships, and pairs that with on-site authority building.
Reporting
A great report is not a PDF. It is a decision system.
Red flags:
Vanity metrics only (rankings without pages, traffic without conversions, impressions without CTR context).
No segmentation (brand vs non-brand, new vs returning, query intent buckets).
No change log (you cannot tie outcomes to actions).
Communication
SEO has uncertainty. The best agencies communicate that uncertainty clearly.
Red flags:
They over-explain results with vague language (“Google dance”) while avoiding specifics.
They miss meetings, change priorities weekly, or rotate account managers constantly.
They do not ask for stakeholder input (sales objections, ICP nuance, product positioning).
Quick scorecard
Use the table below in vendor calls. It keeps the discussion concrete and comparable.
Area | Red flag | Why it matters | What to ask | What good looks like |
Goals | No conversion discussion | SEO can “win” traffic and still lose ROI | “What is your KPI stack?” | Outcomes mapped to funnel and GA4/CRM events |
Audit | Generic checklist | Signals shallow work | “Show 3 issues from our site and how you’d prioritize them” | Specific URLs, impact estimates, sequencing |
Content | Word count targets | Incentivizes fluff | “How do you ensure accuracy and usefulness?” | Editorial standards, SMEs, refresh plan |
Links | Link packages | High risk of spam | “How are links earned and vetted?” | Relevance, editorial placements, transparency |
Reporting | Rankings only | Misleads decisions | “How do you connect work to revenue?” | Page-level reporting + conversion attribution |
Access | They “own” accounts | Lock-in and opacity | “Will we have admin access?” | You own data, properties, and content |
Contracts | Long lock-in | Limits learning | “Can we run a pilot?” | Short pilot, clear exit, clean handoff |
A simple vendor test
You can pressure-test an agency without overcomplicating it.
Ask for a one-page plan
A good agency can outline:
The first 5 actions they would take.
The assumptions they are making.
The risks and dependencies.
The metric that would prove they were right.
If they cannot do this, they likely do not have a real prioritization model.
Ask for two examples
Keep it practical:
One example where they fixed an indexing or technical constraint.
One example where they drove pipeline or revenue from non-brand queries.
If they only show traffic charts, you are missing the business layer.
Contract traps
Good SEO companies protect both sides with clarity.
Watch for these traps:
Vague deliverables: “ongoing optimization” with no defined cadence or scope.
No exit plan: no handover of documents, content briefs, or technical tickets.
Opaque subcontracting: you do not know where content or links come from.
Attribution games: they claim credit for branded demand or unrelated campaigns.
What to request:
A written scope with monthly output ranges and quality criteria.
A change log policy (what gets tracked, where, and who approves).
A clear data ownership clause.
A defined pilot period.
A note on AI content
AI is not the problem. Unmanaged automation is.
If an agency uses AI, ask how they prevent:
Duplicate or near-duplicate content across the site.
Cannibalization (multiple pages targeting the same intent).
Hallucinated facts and unsupported claims.
If you are scaling publishing internally, this guide helps: How to prevent duplicate content when auto-publishing AI blog posts.
If you want more control
Many teams hire agencies because execution bottlenecks are real: briefs take time, writers need direction, internal links get forgotten, publishing is a hassle.
A different model is to keep strategy in-house (or with a light advisor) and automate the repeatable ops:
Keyword research and prioritization
Content generation with brand voice constraints
Internal linking
Scheduling and publishing
That is exactly the workflow BlogSEO is built for: generate and publish SEO-optimized articles automatically, with structure analysis, keyword research, competitor monitoring, brand voice matching, internal linking automation, and CMS integrations.
FAQ
Are good SEO companies expensive? Good SEO companies are not always the most expensive, but they are rarely the cheapest. Look for clear scope, measurable outcomes, and transparency over “low monthly + vague work.”
How long should I give an SEO company before judging results? Expect early signals in 4 to 8 weeks (indexation, coverage, content velocity, technical fixes) and meaningful growth in 3 to 6 months, depending on your site and competition.
Is link building required to see results? Not always. Many sites unlock growth first through technical fixes, better internal linking, and intent-aligned content. Links can accelerate results, but risky links can also create long-term problems.
What is the biggest red flag in SEO? Selling guaranteed rankings or packaged links is the most consistent indicator of low-quality or risky SEO.
Can I use an SEO tool instead of hiring an agency? If your main constraint is publishing and operational execution (not strategy), automation can replace a lot of agency work. Many teams use tools to scale content while keeping oversight in-house.
Try a safer path to SEO growth
If you are tired of vendor black boxes, consider running SEO with a transparent content pipeline you control.
Start a 3-day free trial of BlogSEO to generate, schedule, and auto-publish SEO articles, or book a demo to see the workflow on your CMS.
