Before hiring me, my company has been working with an SEO agency for the last year. I assumed they weren’t doing very well considering that my company was looking to replace them.

Sure enough, the company was not getting a lot of traffic. I wondered why this was, and so I decided to do a little investigating. That was when I realized that the SEO agency was doing some shady backlink business. It’s one thing to try your best and not get any results, but another thing entirely if you’re deliberately doing a bad job and hoping to not get caught.

At the face of it, they seem to be doing their job. They have a spreadsheet and everything plus all the positive-sounding monthly reports. A deeper dive into the spreadsheet though would tell a different story— especially when I looked into the type of backlinks they were getting. 

Red Flag 1: Spammy, Unrelated Websites

Everything I have read about what Google wants says that they want relevant backlinks. Also, to stay away from those spammy looking websites that have everything as a topic. Guess what, this was the opposite of what the SEO agency was doing. 

Our company sold solar panels, and so relevant websites would include those that deal with renewable energy and technology or the environment. They didn’t use websites like this, but instead opted for those generic websites that talked about anything under the sun. 

Red Flag 2: Websites have Downward Traffic

You know one way to spot if a website has been penalized by Google? Look at their traffic trajectory. If a website has a downward traffic trajectory, that’s not a very good sign. A healthy website should be climbing the ranks, not tumbling downwards. And these were the type of websites the SEO agency was getting for my company.

After a few months, I actually noticed that some of the websites just bleeped out of existence. Talk about using unreliable websites. 

Red Flag 3: Double Dealing Backlinks, Unrelated Topics

Honestly, all the other red flags can be somewhat forgivable, but this one definitely went over the line. 

First off, I noticed some of the articles the SEO agency made for the company wasn’t even related to solar. They were about VOIP, bicycles, B2C marketing… just all these seemingly random topics. Then I realized something, each article had a backlink to another company! The VOIP article had a link to a VOIP company (along with a link to an oddly placed solar link). From there it was obvious what they were doing, they were double dealing backlinks— the audacity!

The Aftermath

This for an SEO agency that was charging my company £3000 a month! And for what? For 2-3 terrible backlinks each month! I really wondered how they got away with it, but well, the SEO agency owner was a smooth talker, and my manager had a lot on her plate to look too closely.

When confronted about it, the SEO agency owner had all these excuses, like about how the website wanted that VOIP topic or how Google liked variety. BS. 

After my audit, my manager didn’t buy any of it. When they realized there was no way to win her back as a client after this debacle, they simply vanished, without a handover or anything! Talk about unprofessional. Honestly, it’s SEO agencies like this that give the industry a bad name.   

I really did not understand what they gained by doing this. Sure, they had some short term gains, maybe saving a little on buying legitimate backlinks, but at what cost? They just lost the confidence of a monthly-paying long term customer. I honestly hope the SEO agency goes out of business, or at the very least, karma gets to them.

In Conclusion

So if you’re hiring an SEO agency, make sure that you look at their work closely. Don’t fall for all the smooth talking. Make sure that they are actually delivering what they say they are. 

That’s why it’s important to know at least a little bit about SEO before hiring an agency. That way, there are less chances they take you as a fool.