How to recognize when someone is trying to rip you off
Updated Feb 5, 2026 • Small business • Buying advice
If someone promises instant #1 rankings or offers “SEO” without explaining what they’ll actually do, slow down. Good SEO is fundamentals + consistent work, not magic.
Red flags to watch for
- “Guaranteed #1 ranking” (for competitive terms) without clarifying scope, timeframe, or risks.
- No deliverables — just a monthly fee and vague “optimization.”
- They won’t give you access to your own domain, hosting, analytics, or Search Console.
- They won’t explain content — but content quality matters (people-first helps).
- They avoid technical answers (sitemaps, indexation, canonical tags, page speed).
Questions to ask (and what you should hear)
-
“What exactly will you do in month 1?”
Expect specifics: technical audit, on-page fixes, local SEO setup, content plan, reporting cadence. -
“How do you handle titles and meta descriptions?”
They should talk about relevance + clarity and how snippets work. -
“Will you set up or use sitemaps and robots.txt correctly?”
A legit provider understands crawl/index basics and can explain it. -
“What do you need from me?”
Good SEO requires business knowledge: services, service areas, photos, FAQs, proof, and real customer questions.
What a fair, real deliverable list looks like
- Audit summary + prioritized fixes
- On-page updates (titles, headings, internal linking)
- Local SEO improvements (NAP + schema + local pages)
- Content plan + published posts
- Monthly reporting (rankings, traffic trends, conversions/leads)
If you want a sanity check
If you’ve been offered a website/SEO package and you’re unsure, send it over. We’ll tell you what’s real, what’s missing, and what questions to ask next.