Most local business owners cannot evaluate search work directly, and some providers price that confusion in. The result is a market where the worst practices are also the most profitable ones, at least until the penalty, the lock-in, or the invoice arrives.
Below are ten practices that show up constantly in predatory SEO engagements: what each one looks like, why it hurts you, and the question that exposes it. If your current provider passes all ten, keep them. Good providers exist, and they will not mind the questions.
1. Guaranteed rankings
Nobody controls Google's results, and nobody can promise a position in them. A ranking guarantee is either a lie or a trick, and the trick version "guarantees" page one for a phrase so specific that nobody searches it. Honest providers promise what they control, the work, the speed, and the process, and show you the before and after. Ask: which exact search phrase is guaranteed, and how many people searched it last month?
2. Contracts built to trap
The problem is not contract length, it is contract design. Auto-renewals buried in fine print, cancellation windows measured in days, and exit fees that outlast the work all exist to keep you paying after you have stopped wanting to. Read the cancellation clause before you read anything else. Ask: what exactly happens, in dates and dollars, if I cancel in month four?
3. Holding your domain hostage
Some providers register your domain under their own account. The day you try to leave, your web address, your email, and years of search history become bargaining chips. Your domain should live in a registrar account you own, no matter who does the work on it. Ask: whose name is on the registrar account for my domain?
4. Keeping your accounts and your data
The same trick, one layer down: your Google Business Profile, Search Console, and analytics get created under the agency's accounts instead of yours. Leave, and your review history, your ranking data, and your traffic records leave with them. Every account should be owned by you, with the provider added as a manager. Ask: if we parted ways tomorrow, which accounts and which data would I keep?
5. Bought links
Paid link schemes are the fastest way to rent a ranking, and the penalty for them lands on your site, not on the vendor who sold them. Recovery can take longer than the boost lasted. Real authority comes from citations, reviews, and content worth pointing at. Ask: where do my backlinks come from, and can I see the list?
6. Doorway pages
Dozens of thin, near-identical pages, one for every city in the county, used to work a decade ago. Today they are an anti-pattern that search engines actively demote, and they can drag the rest of the site down with them. One real page per real location or true service area is the honest ceiling. Ask: how many location pages are on my site, and how do they actually differ?
7. Copy-paste content
Some shops publish the same article for every client in a vertical with the business name swapped. Mass-produced filler reads like it and ranks like it, and it teaches AI assistants nothing true about your business. There is a thirty-second test. Ask: nothing. Pick any article on your site, put one full sentence of it in quotes, and search it. If other businesses come up, you have your answer.
8. Fake and gated reviews
Buying reviews violates FTC rules, and filtering the ask so only happy customers get the link, called review gating, violates Google's policies. Both put the profile that feeds your phone calls at risk. The honest version asks every customer the same way. Ask: describe exactly how reviews are requested, and who gets asked.
9. Vanity reports
A report can be technically true and still useless: first place for phrases nobody types, impressions instead of calls, graphs with no dollar attached anywhere. The numbers that matter for a local business are calls, booking clicks, direction requests, and what actually changed on the site that month. Ask: which number in this report ties to a customer walking in the door?
10. Fear invoices
"We found 300 toxic links" and "your site has a penalty, this is urgent" are pitches designed to be paid in a panic. Real problems come with evidence you can verify inside your own Search Console. A provider who manufactures the emergency can manufacture the cure forever. Ask: show me the exact warning inside my own account.
The ten questions, in one place
- Which exact phrase is guaranteed, and how many people searched it last month?
- What happens, in dates and dollars, if I cancel in month four?
- Whose name is on my domain's registrar account?
- If we parted ways tomorrow, which accounts and data would I keep?
- Where do my backlinks come from, and can I see the list?
- How many location pages do I have, and how do they differ?
- Does searching one sentence of my articles surface other businesses?
- How exactly are my reviews requested, and who gets asked?
- Which number in this report ties to a customer walking in?
- Can you show me that warning inside my own Search Console?
For the record, our answer sheet is public. We never buy links, never build doorway pages, never publish automated filler, and never promise rankings. Every price is on the pricing page, your domain and accounts stay yours, and every change that ships was approved by a person first. If you want a second opinion on your current setup, the audit is free and the report is honest, even when the honest answer is that your provider is doing fine.
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