Hashtag not all SEO agencies are fucking lame, but many are. For genuine SEOs, it’s frustrating coz it makes us and the industry look bad. Decent SEOs spend a lot of time assuaging the fears of business owners who’ve been stung by SEO shysters.
Side note: I pulled back the tone of this article. The first draft was pretty toxic.
The lame/dodgy/scamming SEO agency is skilled at sounding impressive. They know jargon, and they’re not afraid to use it. Here’s a proposal from a real-life SEO agency:
“To deliver a full-scale SEO and GEO audit with implementation, ensuring the website is fully optimised for visibility, indexing, speed, and international reach.
“On-page audit for the current site. Technical SEO audit for the new site, sharing insight reports and recommendations for the web developer.
“Metadata, schema markup (important for GEO), and structured data recommendations for the website to grow with AI searches. Broken links, redirect chains, and duplicate content resolution.
“On-page SEO and content structure. Keyword mapping. Optimisation of current pages (titles, headers, keyword integration in key content elements on pillar pages).
“Product page optimisation (using SKU-level templates). GEO targeting. Multilingual SEO best practices (hreflang tags, canonical links).
“Backlink and authority review. Toxic link audit plus disavow recommendations.”
The poor client receiving this proposal couldn’t decipher it. Sure, they understood bits, but it reads like an SEO jargon bingo card. That’s why my pal (the client’s freelance writer) messaged to see what I thought before the client parted with 27K.
A couple of caveats: I don’t know the agency. I have no axe to grind. And without firsthand experience, I can’t judge competency, but my advice to the client was to ask questions. If they know their stuff, the agency will be more than willing to explain in language the client understands. See, a lot of SEO agencies are lame because they don’t actually know their arse from their elbow. That becomes evident when clients probe deeper.
Trust is crucial to client relationships. As a client, you take a gamble, trusting that the service provider will come through. Things can go tits up, and that’s the risk you take, however, you start to build trust when you know exactly what you’re paying for.
To me, this SEO agency’s proposal seemed padded out, extra fluff saying the same thing in different ways. Throw in ‘GEO’ and ‘AI’, and you’re on track to a perfectly lame SEO agency proposal that baffles with bullshit.
TOP TIP: If an SEO agency describes AI search optimisation as a separate entity, ask them what they’re doing differently from SEO to show up on LLMs.
When it comes to search engine marketing, I assume new clients are in the dark. A handful of clients know some SEO, but I have no way of knowing how much ‘some’ is. Unless they inform me in detail, I assume they don’t know anything. That means they’ll get the most out of the insights. So expect a jargon-free, easy-to-grasp approach from yours truly.
Sounding impressive is ego. Unless it’s substantiated, there’s a danger of being all mouth and no trousers. Chest puffing should be avoided in proposals, marketing material, and websites. (According to my pal, this agency’s site was full of ‘business transformation this’ and ‘vertical solutions that’. Christ.)
So yeah, SEO agencies are fucking lame (seriously, the first draft of this article was all like this).
If an agency is trying to impress with fancy talk, it could be because they want to make the project seem more complex. That way they charge more cash. And if they’re selling AI optimisation as additional work to SEO, that also means they can charge more cash. I call bullshit.
First published, 21st February, 2025.
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