Key takeaways
- Guaranteed rankings, secret methods and unsolicited “errors on your website” emails are the three clearest disqualifiers.
- An agency that will not give you owner access to your own Search Console is protecting its reporting, not your data.
- Reports that only show impressions and “work completed” are hiding the absence of results.
- The pattern underneath every red flag on this list is the same: you are prevented from checking anything.
Almost every bad SEO engagement was visible before the contract was signed. The warning signs are not subtle, they are simply easy to mistake for confidence — which is exactly why they work.
What follows is grouped by how much it should worry you. The last column of your own thinking should always be the same question: does this arrangement let me check anything independently?
Disqualifying — walk away
These are not negotiable
1. Guaranteed rankings
Predicts: a contract satisfied by ranking you for phrases nobody searches. Nobody outside Google controls the index. Where guarantees are honoured at all, they are honoured against terms so specific that ranking first for them means nothing — and the contract is then complete.
2. “We have a proprietary method we cannot disclose”
Predicts: either nothing is happening, or something is happening that you would refuse if you understood it. Real SEO has no trade secrets worth hiding from the client paying for it. The skill is in judgement and execution, not in a method that must stay concealed.
3. The unsolicited “we found errors on your website” email
Predicts: a mass-sent template. These are broadcast to thousands of domains with generic findings that apply to nearly every site. A genuine outreach message names a specific problem on your specific site that you can verify in under a minute.
4. They will not give you owner access to your own accounts
Predicts: reporting you cannot audit, and a painful exit. Search Console, Analytics and your Business Profile should be in your name with the agency added as a user. There is no legitimate reason for the reverse.
5. Buying links, or a monthly “link quota”
Predicts: risk transferred to you. Paid links breach Google’s spam policies. The agency leaves; the links, and any consequences, stay attached to your domain.
Serious — ask hard questions before proceeding
Worth stopping over
6. A fixed package quoted before anyone looked at your site
Predicts: work chosen for being easy to deliver at scale rather than for fixing your problem. “20 blog posts and 50 directory listings” is a production schedule, not a strategy. Diagnosis has to come first, or the treatment is a guess.
7. Reports full of activity, empty of outcomes
Predicts: nothing is working and the report is designed to obscure it. Articles published, links built and keywords tracked are inputs. Impressions, position, indexed pages and inquiries are outcomes. A report heavy on the first and silent on the second is telling you something.
8. Only ever showing you numbers that go up
Predicts: selective reporting. Every real campaign has a bad month, a page that lost position, an experiment that failed. An agency that has never reported one is either not looking or not telling.
9. Long lock-in with no exit
Predicts: revenue protection, not confidence. SEO genuinely needs six to twelve months to judge, so a longer term is reasonable — but it should come with defined review points and a way out if agreed indicators do not move.
10. Pressure to decide now
Predicts: a sales process optimized against consideration. Discounts expiring at the end of the call have nothing to do with search. Nothing about your rankings changes if you decide next week.
Worth noticing — not automatically fatal
Context matters here
11. Their own site does not rank for anything
Less damning than it looks. Plenty of good agencies are busy with client work and neglect their own marketing. But it is fair to ask what they rank for and how they get clients — and the answer should be coherent.
12. Client logos with no case studies
A logo proves a transaction, not a result. Ask what was actually done for one of them and what changed. If nothing specific can be described, the logo is decoration.
13. Everything is “Google’s algorithm update”
Updates are real and they do move rankings. But used as the standing explanation for every disappointing month, it is an unfalsifiable excuse. Ask which update, when, what it targeted, and what specifically changed on your site.
14. No questions about your business
If a full sales call passes without anyone asking what your margins look like, which services you actually want more of, or where your best customers come from, the plan cannot be built around your economics. It will be built around traffic.
The pattern underneath all of them
Read the list again and one property connects every item: each one removes your ability to verify something. Guarantees replace evidence. Secret methods prevent inspection. Owning your accounts blocks the audit trail. Activity reports substitute effort for outcome.
The question is not “do I trust this agency?” It is “if they were wrong, or not working, how would I find out?”
If you cannot answer that second question about an arrangement being offered to you, the specific warning signs almost stop mattering. Fix the verifiability first: own your accounts, agree what will be measured, and agree what an unsuccessful month looks like before you start rather than after.