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Just my two cents on townsquare interactive
Posted by on November 30, 2025 at 5:07 amI took over development of a client's spa site from townsquare interactive.
They have been with townsquare for about 3-4 years. They were first on the $300/month plan, and they are now on the $100 one. Basically they are paying just for hosting since I am doing all the edits on the website. (Yes, I am eventually going to move them away from townsquare.)
Keep in mind, I am a baby SEO, but cleaning up townsquares mess has made me feel like some what of a genius (Yes – thats literally how bad it is because I dont know shi*)
Let me just break it down for you:
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No alt tags on any images.
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Heading tags all sorts of messed up as far as hierarchical structure. For example: page starts with zero H1, first heading tag is an H4, after that is a random H2, multiple random H3's which has nothing to do with the H2, then back to multiple random H4's. This repeats on multiple pages which leads me to believe the heading tags were only used for design purposes.
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Business name literally spelled wrong (completely replacing words for other words) on the website and NAP inconsistency across many citations/listings.
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Many internal and external broken links.
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Multiple duplicate pages with zero unique content per page.
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Keyword research ?? Hello? Anyone home?
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This ones fun: Important and necessary pages set to "noindex".
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No linkage to GMB anywhere.
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When I called them a while ago to implement localbusiness schema, they had a collective total of 0 clue what I was talking about. At that time, client did not have access to code edits, they have now given me access.
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Social media icons linking to nothing.
11: From them directly: "We dont do keyword research" or "We cannot "research" to make pages" – I guess this confirms that no one is home.
12: Also from them (I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly what they said): "Localbusiness schema doesnt help google understand your business and its something in the back end that doesnt show on the live site" Me: Okay can you send me the code for the schema? (this was when I didnt have access to the code) Them: Sends me random ChatGPT generated schema with wrong business name and all sorts of other incorrect information.
13: When searching for the XML sitemap in google, it redirects to the home page. (Ill be honest im not sure whats going on there but I assume its not good.)
Lets call it 3 years x $300/month. At $10,800 would you have a proper setup of this website?
Dont get me wrong, im no where NEAR a pro SEO, I literally just started last year so no idk what im doing. But I felt that this was just unacceptable. Its only 12 frickin pages!Btw: The list goes on but these are the things that come to mind immediately. Not to mention they take WEEKS to respond to 1 edit request.
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1 Reply
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Well at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. I’m not surprised that their prior SEO work was minimal if not abysmal. When I consider what I can do with that budget, it’s next to nothing and I wouldn’t consider my rates expensive.
This is why I tell clients that it would save them more money in the long run to invest in a better scope of work early on instead of having someone new go back and fix everything that’s wrong with their site later.
You’re right on the money with what you found and are recommending. It’s a shame they didn’t start with you.
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