Avoid Small Business SEO Scams

SEO scams aimed at small businesses promise a ranking you cannot buy and hide the work inside a monthly PDF. The tactics change costume. The pitch does not. If someone guarantees a number-one position, sells you links from a list, or will not say which pages they will change, do not hire them.

Pitches that are always a no

• “Guaranteed number one” for a competitive term. Google does not sell that, and neither can an agency.
• A cheap package of hundreds of directory links or private-blog posts. That is how sites get suppressed, not how they earn customers.
• A claim that they have a special relationship with Google.
• Pressure to prepay a year because a slot is closing.
• Ownership games, where they register the domain, the ads account, or the Business Profile in their name.

Reports that hide the absence of work

A 40-page export of rankings for keywords nobody searches, with no list of pages edited and no Search Console data, is a costume. Ask which URL changed this month and what the customer is supposed to do on that page. If the answer is “the algorithm is warming up,” you are funding a delay.

Questions a real firm can answer

• Which queries should this business rank for, and which are a waste?
• What will you change on the site in the first month?
• How will we know it worked besides a rank screenshot? Calls, forms, and pages are acceptable answers.
• Who owns the accounts and the content if we stop?
• What will you not do? A good answer includes bought links and fake reviews.

If you already paid

Get your domain, site login, Google Business Profile, and ads account into an email address you control. Ask for the list of links they built. Disavow is rarely the first move. Stop the activity, then see whether the links are the kind Google already ignores. Change passwords on the way out.

Pay for specific pages and a reporting rhythm you can check. Anyone who cannot show the work in the first month is selling the report, not the marketing.