Sauce · Hiring
Red flags when you hire someone for local SEO
Quick answer
Six red flags. A guaranteed ranking. A price with no scope. Work you cannot see. A long lock-in with an exit fee. Reviews you cannot verify. Vague monthly updates. Before you sign, ask three things. What will you do each month. How will I see it. What happens if I leave.
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Get the free scanThe pitch was smooth. “Guaranteed page one in 30 days.” You almost signed.
Local SEO is a good buy from the right person. It is a money pit from the wrong one. The difference shows up in the sales call, if you know what to listen for.
Here are the tells.
The six red flags
“We guarantee #1” or “page one in 30 days.” Nobody controls Google’s results, and Google itself warns against providers who claim they do. A guarantee means they will hit an easy target that does not move revenue, then point at it.
“$500 a month for SEO.” SEO for what? Ask for the list of what happens each month and how many hours it takes. A number with no work attached is a template, run across hundreds of clients.
No login to a rank tracker, no grid scan, no before picture. If you cannot watch where you rank across your area and how it changed, you are paying on faith.
A 12-month contract with a penalty to leave early. A short minimum term is fair, because the work takes months. A long one you cannot exit is a way to keep billing after the results stop.
Testimonials with first names and no business. Reputation systems only work when the feedback is real and checkable (Tadelis, Annual Review of Economics, 2016). Ask for two clients in your country you can call.
“We have been optimising.” Optimising what? A good provider can tell you in plain words what they did in the last 30 days and what it was meant to move.
The three questions that expose them
What exactly will you do each month?
You want a list: reviews, listings, profile checks, pages, scans. Not “ongoing optimisation.” If they cannot itemise it, they may not be doing much.
How will I see it?
You want a login to a rank tracker and a geo-grid scan you can read, plus a plain monthly summary. “We will send a report” is not enough if you cannot understand the report.
What happens if I leave?
You want a short minimum term, no exit fee, and to keep the work: the pages, the profile, the audit. If leaving is expensive or you lose access to everything, that tells you what the deal is really for.
- “Guaranteed page one, or your money back.”
- “Trust the process, results take time” with no measurement offered.
- “Sign today for this rate.”
- “We do SEO for everyone in your industry.”
- “We do not guarantee rankings. Here is what we do guarantee.”
- “Here is your baseline scan. We will re-run it monthly.”
- “Take the proposal, compare it, come back.”
- “We take one client per trade per city. Yours may be taken.”
Go deeper
Before you sign anything
Three reads for the hiring decision.
Get a second opinion first.The free scan is an independent baseline you can hold any quote against.
Get the free scanWhat is not a red flag
- No ranking guarantee. That is honesty, not a weakness. Ask what they do guarantee instead.
- Saying no to some of your work. A provider who declines a bad-fit request is protecting the result.
- A short minimum term, like three months. The work genuinely takes that long to show. A penalty to leave after is the problem, not the term itself.
- A price higher than the cheap quote. Real local work is hours of a person’s time. The $500 plan is usually the template.
What are the biggest red flags when hiring a local SEO company?
A guaranteed ranking, a monthly price with no list of work attached, no way for you to see where you rank or how it changed, a long contract with an exit fee, testimonials you cannot verify, and monthly updates that never say what was actually done.
Is a local SEO ranking guarantee a scam?
It is at least a warning sign. Nobody controls Google's results, and Google warns against providers who claim they do. A guarantee usually means the provider will hit an easy, low-value target and present it as success. An honest provider commits to measured visibility growth, not a specific position.
What questions should I ask before hiring a local SEO pro?
Three: what exactly will you do each month, how will I see it, and what happens if I leave. You want an itemised list of work, a login to a rank tracker plus a geo-grid scan you can read, and a short minimum term with no exit penalty and no loss of the work you paid for.
How do I check if a local SEO company is legit?
Ask for two clients in your country you can phone. Check their own Google Business Profile and its reviews. Search their business name for complaints. Ask them to walk you through a live client's grid scan. Get a free independent audit so you have a baseline to compare their claims against.
Should local SEO come with a contract?
A short minimum term is reasonable because the work takes months to show. What matters is that you can leave after it without a penalty, and that you keep what you paid for: the pages, the optimised profile, the audit. A long lock-in you cannot exit is the red flag, not the contract itself.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help, Improve your local ranking on Google: local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence; there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
- Google Search Central, Do you need an SEO?: be wary of SEOs and firms that guarantee ranking number one, and note that SEO results typically take four months to a year.
- Competition Bureau Canada, deceptive marketing practices guidance: performance claims a business cannot substantiate can breach the Competition Act, which is one reason a rankings guarantee is a legal as well as an evidential problem.
- DataForSEO, Rank Tracker and SERP datasets (2026): ranking positions are volatile and vary by location and query, so a fixed-position promise cannot be honoured across a real service area.
- Peer-reviewed: Tadelis, S. (2016). “Reputation and Feedback Systems in Online Platform Markets.” Annual Review of Economics 8, 321–340. Reputation systems reduce the information gap between buyer and seller only when the feedback is genuine and verifiable, which is why unverifiable testimonials are a red flag.
This is general guidance, not legal advice. Figures are quoted from the sources above and are directional.
Next step
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