The contractor out of Kansas had all the signals of someone doing SEO. Monthly reports with charts. Fifty keyphrases tracked across multiple verticals. A provider who sent updates on schedule and used all the right terminology. From the outside, it looked like a machine was running.
The phone wasn’t ringing.
When we got into it, it was the same story we’ve seen enough times to stop being surprised by it: bad links from foreign countries, very generic blogs, no thoughtful linking to support the pages that matter — the service pages, the pages that bring in work. The provider had been running a shotgun approach — doing a lot of damage everywhere, but very little damage. Fifty keyphrases, none of them targeted, none of them converting, none of them connected to the two or three services that produce 80% of the contractor’s revenue.
That’s what a bad SEO company looks like from the inside. From the outside, it looks like progress. And that gap — between what the reports say and what the phone does — is where businesses lose months of money before they realize something’s wrong.
If you’re in that gap right now, or if you’re about to sign with a company and something doesn’t feel right, here’s what to look for.
Red Flags During the Sales Process
The first warning sign is the simplest one: if there’s not a lot of specifics, that’s a red flag.
A bad SEO company’s sales pitch sounds confident and busy. “We’re going to get you links. We’re going to optimize your content. We’re going to fix your site.” Every sentence starts with “we’re going to” and none of them end with details. What kind of links? How many, and from where? What does “optimize your content” mean in practice — are they rewriting pages, adding new ones, restructuring the site? What does “fix your site” look like when you open the hood?
Get into the weeds. That’s the move. If a company can’t answer specific questions during the sales process, they won’t have specific answers once you’re paying.
One thing that should raise an eyebrow immediately: volume promises. We don’t say we’re going to give you 20 or 30 links a month because it’s simply not possible. There’s not that many niche-relevant backlinks available for most industries. The math doesn’t support it. If someone is promising you dozens of backlinks a month, those links are coming from places that have nothing to do with your business — and Google knows the difference.
What matters is that everything done is there to support the service. Every link relevant to what you do. Every piece of content tied to the brand and the actual services you offer. Not volume. Relevance.
And ask them: “Are you going to fix my website? Okay — what does that look like, exactly?” If the answer is vague or redirects to a different topic, you have your answer.
What a Bad SEO Company’s Report Looks Like
A bad report is full of metrics. That’s the giveaway — not that it has data, but that the data doesn’t connect to anything you care about.
The classic version: a list of keyphrases where you’re not ranking, and the report shows you moved from position 90 to position 80. Technically, that’s improvement. But you’re not getting any calls. That’s a problem. Position 80 means you’re on page eight of Google. Nobody has ever gone to page eight of Google to hire a contractor. Moving from invisible to slightly less invisible isn’t a result. It’s a distraction dressed up as progress.
The vanity metrics pile up fast. Impressions, keyword counts, “ranking for 50 keyphrases across multiple verticals.” It looks like a lot is happening. The charts go up. The spreadsheets are color-coded. And the phone still isn’t ringing.
If the results — not the data, but what’s happening in the real world — are very unspecific, that’s a problem and a sign that this is a bad company’s report.
What a Real Report Shows Instead
A good monthly report shows improvements that matter. This page got this many views and it’s from real US traffic. This long-tail keyword started ranking and it led to a form submission or a phone call. The report connects the work to the outcome — not to a chart that only the provider can interpret.
We look for small wins so that you can start to get some traction. That’s not going to happen immediately, but after a couple of months, typically, we can find some long-tail keywords — more specific phrases that fewer companies are competing for — and those small wins can help sustain you while you’re building up everything else.
That’s the difference. A bad report tells you things are moving. A good report shows you where the movement is and what it produced. If your provider can’t draw a line from their work to a phone call or a form fill, the report isn’t for you. It’s for them — to justify the next invoice.
The Contractor in Kansas
This one’s worth walking through because it shows every layer of the problem in one story.
A contractor came to us mid-contract with another SEO company. We didn’t know yet whether the company was bad — just that the contractor wanted some new help. When we got into it, the picture was familiar. Bad links from foreign countries. Very generic blogs that could’ve been written for any company in any industry. No thoughtful linking to the service pages — the pages that represent what the contractor does for a living and what a potential customer would need to find.
The main vanity metrics the old company used were that classic story: ranking for 50 keyphrases across multiple verticals. Sounds impressive until you realize it was a shotgun approach — doing a lot of damage everywhere, but very little damage. None of it moved the needle. The keyphrases weren’t targeted. The traffic wasn’t converting. The reports looked professional and the results were empty.
What we did was ask a simple question: where does 80% of your revenue come from? And the answer — like it almost always is — was only one, two, or three of those ten services. So that’s what we focused on. We’re not going to try to hit all ten of them. We targeted the services that produce the money, built the content and links around those, and the contractor started to get some calls.
But here’s the part that made it harder: we had to build a brand new website. The old one was beyond repair. The development side made no sense — no hierarchy, no structure, and every single page looked exactly the same. Sure, you can get someone to click on it. But when they go through your site and everything looks generic, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help. The SEO can bring someone to your door, but if the house looks abandoned when they get there, they’re not walking in.
That contractor is doing better now. Not because we’re smarter than the last company — because we asked the right first question and didn’t waste months on work that was never going to produce results.
Why Bad SEO Companies Survive for So Long
It’s like having a good mechanic. Once you find that good mechanic, you’re never going to go anywhere else. But until then, you’re going to get a little hosed along the way — because the education that happens is an education of pain and loss.
That’s true in a lot of industries. What makes SEO worse is the delay.
Unlike a mechanic, where you know within 24 or 48 hours if something bad happens, with SEO you might not know for three to six months. That’s the timeline. And in that window, the provider is sending reports, using jargon, showing you charts — and you have no way to verify whether the work is real or the numbers are theater.
The complexity makes it worse. It’s not that SEO is impossibly complicated — it’s that unless you know the business, which most small business owners understandably don’t, they can show you the work and you will be none the wiser. Even professionals can get duped. You’ve got to go in and look at every single link and then figure out: is this a spam network? Is this a real site? Has it been flagged? That takes expertise and time — the two things a business owner is already short on.
And then there’s the jargon. “These are contextual links.” What does that mean? “These are niche links.” Someone might know what that means. The phrases pile up and they all sound technical enough to be real, even when they’re not describing anything of value.
We don’t use any of them. And if we do, because we have to — like “niche link,” for example — we translate it immediately. A niche link is a website that’s just like you. In the case of this contractor, it’s a contractor website. When contractors speak about contractors, that’s a good thing in Google’s eyes. That’s how you say it. Not “contextual backlink profile optimization.” Just: a site like yours linked to yours, and Google noticed.
The One Question That Exposes a Bad SEO Company
Here it is. Ask this during the sales process, before you sign anything:
“Is every link I’m going to get a niche-relevant link?”
Period. That’s the question. And when they backpedal — “oh, that’s not as important,” or “we use a mix of strategies,” or “domain authority matters more than niche relevance” — you have your answer.
Think about it from a logical standpoint. If you’re a contractor and you have a music production website recommending you — and it’s not a review, it’s just your contractor info sitting on a music production website — how does that make any sense? It just doesn’t. Google can see that. A human can see that. The only person who can’t see it is the one paying for the link.
Niche-relevant means the linking site is in your world. It’s related to what you do, who you serve, or the industry you operate in. Anything else is a number on a spreadsheet — it exists to pad the report, not to help your business rank.
If a business owner asks this one question during the sales process, the bad actors will show themselves pretty quick. The good ones will say yes and show you examples. The bad ones will talk around it — and that’s all you need to hear.
FAQ
How many backlinks should an SEO company be building per month?
There’s no magic number, and anyone promising 20 or 30 links a month is a red flag. There aren’t that many niche-relevant backlinks available for most industries. What matters isn’t volume — it’s whether every link is from a site related to your business. Five relevant links will do more than fifty irrelevant ones.
Should I ask to see the actual links my SEO company is building?
Yes. Ask them to show you, and then look at the sites those links are on. If they’re on foreign-language sites, generic directories, or websites that have nothing to do with your industry, the links aren’t helping. If your SEO company hesitates to show you, that tells you what you need to know.
Can a bad SEO company damage my website’s rankings?
Yes. Toxic backlinks and spammy networks don’t just fail to help — they can actively hurt your domain authority with Google. In some cases, the first step after leaving a bad provider is disavowing the links they built, because leaving them in place makes the recovery harder.
What does good SEO cost for a small business?
Our SEO starts at $750 a month. That covers niche-relevant backlinks, technical audits, content strategy, and schema markup. If you’re paying significantly less elsewhere and seeing no results, the price gap is usually the gap between real links and fake ones.
How long should I wait before deciding my SEO company isn’t working?
Three to six months is a fair window — SEO takes time even when done right. But during that window, you should see evidence of real work: small wins on long-tail keywords, traffic from real US sources, improvements to your site structure. If you’re only seeing charts and keyword counts with no connection to phone calls or leads, the timeline isn’t the issue. The work is.