How to Spot a Bad SEO Proposal
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 9:47 am
Optimizing your site for search engines, more commonly known as SEO, is a great way to boost your business and there are tons of great SEO agencies, companies and people that can help you do it right. Unfortunately, there are some SEO angencies out there that aren’t on the up and up. Sometimes shady “SEOs” can promise the moon, but leave you with just the stinky cheese. Getting worked over by a bad SEO proposal can not only cost you some serious coin, but can get you in trouble with Google, which can sink your business in the search results. Here are a few “activities” that should raise red flags, and prevent you from getting taken advantage of. Keep these tips top of mind when thinking about hiring an SEO to help boost your business.
Problem #1
The unsolicited email/ SEO proposal: You check your email and the sri lanka whatsapp number database subject line reads, “I’ll help grow your biz.” So you bite and open it. It reads: “Hey XYZ Company, My name is Larry and I work for Larry’s SEO Co. I noticed you aren’t on the front page of Google and I can get you there fast. You also aren’t on Google+, Twitter, etc. I can do this for only $10k a month. Also, I will get every one of your keywords on page one next month.”
A few reasons why this is a really horrible proposal: It’s impossible to give any sort of quote on price, “guarantees” and any other deliverables with out a decently deep dive into the current landscape. We’d be willing to bet that ol’ Larry didn’t put in a few hours work before sending you this bold SEO proposal. If the email sparked your interest, then get to searching Google and keep these next tips in mind.
Problem #2
When you get that SEO firm on the phone, keep your ears tuned to any of the following phrases, because even though they can be done, it might not be in a way that’s in line with Google’s Quality Guidelines and recent Panda and Penguin updates.
“We can get you to page 1 in 1 month!”: We usually don’t say something is impossible, but there’s no way a company can guarantee this and use white hat, Google approved methods. They’ll usually sneakily dance their way around that “guarantee” comment by saying they managed to get some ultra long tail keyword on page one. There aren’t too many people trying to get to page one for the keyword, “twenty ounce black tall and wide coffee mugs,” so they can semi-truthfully say this. Don’t be fooled by this big promise, just pass.
“We will get you 100k backlinks in 1 month”: While they might be able to actually get this done, the links are close to valueless and more than likely will get you penalized by Google. Don’t be tempted.
“Hey I noticed you don’t have a Google+ profile”: This might be true and a Google+ profile is a great thing to have, but a shady SEO company might try to charge you several hundred dollars to do what would take you 15 minutes to do in between checking your emails. We even made it nice and easy for you right here.
Problem #1
The unsolicited email/ SEO proposal: You check your email and the sri lanka whatsapp number database subject line reads, “I’ll help grow your biz.” So you bite and open it. It reads: “Hey XYZ Company, My name is Larry and I work for Larry’s SEO Co. I noticed you aren’t on the front page of Google and I can get you there fast. You also aren’t on Google+, Twitter, etc. I can do this for only $10k a month. Also, I will get every one of your keywords on page one next month.”
A few reasons why this is a really horrible proposal: It’s impossible to give any sort of quote on price, “guarantees” and any other deliverables with out a decently deep dive into the current landscape. We’d be willing to bet that ol’ Larry didn’t put in a few hours work before sending you this bold SEO proposal. If the email sparked your interest, then get to searching Google and keep these next tips in mind.
Problem #2
When you get that SEO firm on the phone, keep your ears tuned to any of the following phrases, because even though they can be done, it might not be in a way that’s in line with Google’s Quality Guidelines and recent Panda and Penguin updates.
“We can get you to page 1 in 1 month!”: We usually don’t say something is impossible, but there’s no way a company can guarantee this and use white hat, Google approved methods. They’ll usually sneakily dance their way around that “guarantee” comment by saying they managed to get some ultra long tail keyword on page one. There aren’t too many people trying to get to page one for the keyword, “twenty ounce black tall and wide coffee mugs,” so they can semi-truthfully say this. Don’t be fooled by this big promise, just pass.
“We will get you 100k backlinks in 1 month”: While they might be able to actually get this done, the links are close to valueless and more than likely will get you penalized by Google. Don’t be tempted.
“Hey I noticed you don’t have a Google+ profile”: This might be true and a Google+ profile is a great thing to have, but a shady SEO company might try to charge you several hundred dollars to do what would take you 15 minutes to do in between checking your emails. We even made it nice and easy for you right here.