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I Think My Past Employers Have (unintentionally) Scammed People
Posted by on February 12, 2026 at 5:02 pmI’ve worked at two agencies in the past which were my first forays into SEO and have serious doubts about the effectiveness and legitimacy of services offered.
Both agencies offered SEO packages for around $750 – $1,500 per month that included 4 ai generated articles based on client’s desired keywords, a keyword ranking report pulled from ahrefs/SEMrush and a back linking report. Though one agency would report site traffic.
For clients who’d been in business for decades or were known in the community their keyword report always looked good but for smaller/newer clients they received little to no impact from the work. Moreover, the articles produced never generated much traffic (5 – 10 views on average if that).
Thanks to this sub I’ve learned that the SEO tools only provide an estimate using their algorithm and Google analytics (GSC & G4) are the ultimate guides but are the tactics above common in the marketing industry?
What are the signs, service offerings, and price points of legitimate SEO services? To my knowledge each service should be tailored to what each client needs right? Some may need serious onsite technical support, while others require on page content to be refreshed, a GBP review strategy, or support developing partnerships to generate back links. It seems more like a trial and error process rather than a streamlined offering but what do you guys think?
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1 Reply
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I usually decline about 80% of potential clients because, in many cases, it simply doesn’t make business sense. Small businesses can’t realistically compete on Google, especially when they’re new. Most of them want results and profit immediately, but SEO is a long-term investment. They’re competing against companies that are already established, already ranking at the top, and already generating more revenue. For many small businesses, that makes heavy SEO investment impractical.
With medium-sized businesses – companies generating at least a few million dollars per month – it’s a different situation. The planning horizon is longer. We can build a strategy 12 months ahead and work toward measurable results in a structured way.
Your question is missing some important context, which makes it hard to answer precisely. If your goal is to work with small businesses, you should understand that many of them simply don’t have the budget for long-term SEO. Medium, large, and enterprise companies often solve this by hiring in-house teams.
That’s just the reality of how the market works.
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You’re right to question it templated “4 articles + reports” SEO rarely drives real business impact.
Legit SEO starts with diagnosis, strategy, and KPIs tied to revenue, not just rankings. If you ever want a second opinion or help structuring something more outcome-focused, happy to chat.
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I have worked at large agencies where once the owner sold, it turns into just this as a service. Then the new owners take the cash and spend it in other investments as the acquisition slowly degrades over time. It’s a cycle.
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those packages are basically a content mill with a keyword report stapled on top. the articles get like eight views because theyre not solving a real search intent, theyre just keyword stuffed blog posts that google learned to ignore in 2019. legitimate seo starts with a real audit of your technical setup, then figures out what your audience actually searches for, then builds content or fixes pages around that. good agencies charge more because they do custom work, bad ones sell you a package and churn it out for everyone. if the price is under two grand a month and they promise four articles plus reports, its a factory. real seo also takes six months minimum to show results, so anyone promising fast wins is lying. for small businesses the better move is to pick three pages that already get some traffic, rewrite them properly, and build a few real backlinks through partnerships or guest posts. if you want to vet an agency, ask them to show you a clients organic traffic graph over 12 months with annotations explaining what they did and when. if they cant produce that, walk away.
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