Any business wanting to enter the online market must prepare a complete marketing strategy. SEO is the best option for most companies. If you want to grow your business as much as possible, you need to look for UK SEO packages that include a website SEO audit to help you do so.
Not all local search engine optimisation agencies can provide you with the best services. It can be pretty challenging to find an SEO UK company that will satisfy all your needs.
Luckily, there are several factors that you can check before you start a collaboration with an SEO agency. Based on the results, you can be sure if an agency is there for you and can help your business grow or if the agency wants to make money even at the cost of their client’s well-being.
It’s in your best interest to read all the red flags mentioned below and the potential consequences they can bring. Use this information to find the right SEO packages in the UK so you can avoid the bad ones.
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The first red flag on the list is the lack of transparency. You can find many local search engine optimisation agencies that won’t reveal anything about their services to you. Or the information disclosed is lacking.
You may wonder why that is such a bad thing. Isn’t it normal for a marketing agency to keep its secrets? No! There’s no secrecy in SEO. Transparency is essential in this industry.
Almost everything is already in public spaces on the internet. So, any confidentiality involved in the SEO services provided by an agency is very suspicious.
The most common reason an SEO company would hide anything about their services from their clients is the lack of quality. Many low-level agencies use language to make their services seem mysterious and self-created to convince you to buy their UK SEO packages.
The problem appears when you realise that those so-called top-secret services do not produce the promised results. That’s when you know you are spending money on nothing.
Luckily, there is a method you can use to avoid this type of problem. You can avoid working with any agency that does not provide you with all the information you want and need.
To do that, it is a good idea to find out what information an agency could hide from you, the possible reasons, and the potential consequences of working with those agencies.
You should also know if there are pieces of information that an agency could and should hide from you without causing any problems.
The primary type of information that a low-level SEO UK agency can hide from you is the information about their services.
First, you should find on the agency’s website as much information about the UK SEO packages it provides as possible.
Second, you should get an answer to any question you have about an agency’s services. One that does not involve any secrecy. Only then can you fully know the quality of the services and avoid any useless services.
There are other pieces of information an agency can hide.
- The SEO results of their services. In a long-term collaboration with a UK SEO company, you should expect results reports regularly. An agency that hides the results produced by its services should always be avoided for obvious reasons
- The agency avoids telling you information about itself. You need some information about all your business partners as a business owner. You need access to that information before considering working together. The same applies when you want local search engine optimisation services
- It could hide its experience and capability in the industry. Some new SEO agencies hide or lie about the competence they have in the industry. It would be best if you avoided any such companies. You can find much information about an agency online and discover the truth about its UK SEO packages’ quality through research
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Not all the information about an agency can and should be public knowledge. There are some things that an agency should hide from you.
Those data types will not negatively affect your collaboration, and you have no reason to insist on knowing those things.
So, what can an agency safely hide from you and other clients?
- Personal information about employees. You do not need personal information about all the agency’s employees. It won’t help you in any way. You only need access to some information about the SEO company’s management and your project manager besides what you must learn about the UK SEO packages. You may also find some basic information about other employees. It would be best if you did not ask for more than the agency offers
- Information about its clients. Not every client of an SEO company agrees to be used in the marketing efforts of its SEO partner. Meaning that it won’t leave reviews. Or, it won’t let the agency use its website in the case studies they produce. So, it is normal for you not to find or get information about the agency’s clients without their agreement
- Some tactics used in the services. Even though most of the information about the UK SEO packages must be transparent. There are some things an agency can and should hide from you. For example, the methods used to find and convince host sites to post guest articles. The email crafting tactics would be one of the things an agency can hide in this situation
The UK SEO packages that follow the guidelines of Google are nicknamed white hat. They are the ones that produce the best possible results in the long term.
However, some methods do not respect the requirements that search engines have. Such methods are nicknamed black or grey hat methods. They were created to produce tremendous results in a short period, but they sacrifice the long-term potential of your SEO strategy.
The worst part about these methods is the harmful effects they produce in the end. Even if you benefit from short-term success when you use such UK SEO packages, and your website’s ranks may skyrocket for a period, after a correction made by search engines, all your results will disappear, and your site may even be penalised.
So, you may end up worse than before using these methods.
Before choosing an SEO company, you need to pay attention and check if they use those harmful methods in their UK SEO packages.
Remember that you may find some SEO UK agencies that hide their use of such practices and promise massive results for their clients in the short term.
Falling into those traps will make you suffer significantly in the long run.
With enough SEO knowledge, detecting the black hat techniques will be easy. The fact that they do not conform to Google’s guidelines or go against them is a clear sign of revealing the truth to you.
On the other hand, UK SEO packages that use grey-hat SEO methods are more challenging to discover. They do not go against the rules. The idea of such methods is to bend the rules as much as possible.
Do not think that bending the rules won’t cause any trouble for your business. Search engines care about their well-being. So, if the rule-bending local search engine optimisation services cause any harm to google or another search engine, they will penalise your website. After so many years, SEO experts already know what is allowed and what is not.
So, no grey hat method exists that won’t cause harm to any online business using them.
Even though there are significant differences between the UK SEO packages that use black hat and grey hat methods, the results are the same. Your online business will suffer a lot more than the short-term benefits you will obtain.
So, you can consider these tactics red flags to stop or avoid collaborating with any agency that uses them.
The first thing you must do if you want to detect unethical SEO easily is to learn the guidelines as much as possible. Even if you find a reliable SEO UK partner, in the end, you still need to have some knowledge about the industry to ensure a good collaboration.
Learning the basic rules is the foundation of your understanding. Next, you can start learning about SEO, the methods and services that perform the best.
Now that you know enough about SEO, you will have an easy time detecting the black hat services and avoiding them. Finding the best SEO packages in the UK suited for your company will also be a lot easier. As for grey hat methods, you will either detect them or have suspicions about them.
For the second situation, you can use the internet and check if you found a grey hat tactic or not.
In many cases, evil companies will use either black or grey hat methods for the following red flag explained below. An agency rarely uses these methods without having another associated red flag.
So you do not need to worry too much. Of course, it’s good to be vigilant and do your due diligence before using UK SEO packages.
Now, let’s go to the next red flag you should pay attention to.
If you do not know much about SEO, it’s easy to fall into this trap. Here’s the deal, though. All the UK SEO packages can’t rank a new keyword on the first search result page in a month. At least it’s impossible to do so while using white hat methods.
Why? Because SEO has some basic rules, you should understand. No one can go against these principles without causing harm to the website.
- SEO is a long-term solution. Unlike many other online marketing solutions, global and local search engine optimisation focuses on organic growth. You optimise your site, then search engines check the changes. Nevertheless, that’s not enough. Google must see the results of these changes before deciding the correct ranking for your site. As you can imagine, this process takes time. Ranking a new keyword directly on the first page in a month would require an unrealistic amount of optimisation done in a short period
- Fluctuations are inevitable. Another industry rule that you should remember is “guaranteed fluctuation”. The result pages are a battlefield. You not only compete against other companies for the ranks, but you also strive to satisfy the requirements of search engines. Moreover, the algorithms used by Google are constantly changing, and rank fluctuations are inevitable regardless of the UK SEO packages you use
- Content is mandatory. You can find more SEO rules on the internet, but the three mentioned here are the most important ones. That includes the need to use content in your strategies. It’s impossible to succeed with SEO if you do not use high-quality content optimised for your business. It would be best if you do not trust anyone that tells you otherwise
As implied above, using good UK SEO packages is indeed impossible to achieve this. The only way to do so is to find a crack in the system, which means that you understand the algorithm and know how to benefit from errors, glitches and other gimmicks that could help you get first-page ranks.
These are considered black hat methods, so search engines will penalise your site gravely after it’s found out.
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So, in theory, you could get first-page ranks in a month. You could lose everything soon, which makes your SEO efforts worthless.
This is also why you should avoid SEO companies that can achieve this more than those that only make such promises. It is a much better idea for you to focus on tried and tested tactics and strategies that will surely help your online business continue to grow in the long term.
You must consider many factors before you can approximate the results of UK SEO packages. This applies even when an agency uses SEO and link building services for its site. If you or your SEO partner follow some simple rules, you can get the best results in the shortest period possible.
So, what are the rules?
- Start with a complete SEO analysis process. First, you need an SEO audit to find out the current situation of a website, so that you can prepare a personalised strategy. Second, using the audit and custom plan information, you can deduce some results and the period required for them to appear. Without an audit, you will lack the necessary information to approximate anything about the future SEO state of a site
- Create and implement personalised strategies. Using SEO plans that can be found online without any degree of customisation will produce mediocre results at best. In today’s competitive market, standard methods may not be enough to create satisfactory outcomes. For this reason, more and more SEO companies that won’t provide personalised UK SEO packages for their clients are starting to lose their market share
- Regularly check the progress to update the strategy. To approximate the future results properly and maximise them, you must regularly perform an SEO audit and use it to adapt the plan based on the analysis process results. Generally, a frequency of three months is recommended, but in some cases, six months can be good enough
Most business owners start looking for SEO UK companies while focusing entirely on their services and SEO skills and ignoring the importance of communication.
There are always grave consequences when this happens. Remember that the communication ability of an SEO agency is so crucial that a lack of 24/7 access is considered a red flag.
So, you should always avoid this kind of SEO agency.
SEO is an industry that evolves continuously. Google and other search engines implement new updates several times every week. Most of them are small but could affect your site’s ranks.
So, it is possible that you discover a problem and you need to contact your SEO provider. You can imagine the damages will continue to grow if you can’t reach your project manager at any moment of the day.
There are many other situations where a lack of communication can cause harm to your company. You will find below why communication is so vital in this industry. For every reason, a lack of communication will cause damage.
So, before you use any SEO packages in the UK, make sure your provider gives you 24/7 communication access.
Avoid any potential SEO partner that does not offer this feature.
Even if you do not consider the possible damages caused by algorithm updates, there are many other reasons why you must ensure that your SEO partner provides 24/7 communication. You should ensure that your provider has top-quality communication skills.
You may need to contact your provider in tens of different situations. Below you can find the three most important ones. However, you should not limit yourself to them.
If you have any questions or problems regarding your collaboration with an SEO company, you should contact it as quickly as possible.
- You may have questions before starting a collaboration. You can find much information about an agency if you properly check the content on its website. That’s not always enough, though. You may have questions about the local search engine optimisation services that are not answered, so you can’t just start the collaboration without getting the answers you need. The agency should let their clients and potential customers contact someone who can provide the answers they need as quickly as possible
- You want to discuss the SEO efforts of the agency. When you work with an SEO agency, you can let it take care of everything while waiting for the results. Or, you can monitor the UK SEO packages and make sure everything goes well. If you want to get the most out of the collaboration, you should choose the second option. In that case, you need 24/7 communication access
- You may need more information about the SEO reports you get. A reliable agency must provide you with regular SEO reports that will show you the results produced by the agency. You will discuss their frequency with the agency. If you may have questions or need more information than you can find the answers in the reports. So, being able to contact your project manager at any moment is quite important
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So, what could happen if you do not have communication access to your SEO partner? We can use the situations mentioned above as examples.
First, you still have some questions but can’t contact the agency. You may be inclined to start the collaboration anyway. Is that a good idea? Certainly not. You lack information and can’t be sure your decision is correct. Yes, you can be smart and wait until you get your answers, even if emotion can control us too much sometimes.
What about the discussion you should have with your provider about the UK SEO packages? If you can’t contact them and the agency implements the changes without waiting for your approval, you may be dissatisfied with their efforts and results. Without non-stop communication access, you can only suffer losses in this situation.
Imagine you read the reports you get from the agency late at night because that’s when you have some free time. You need to contact the agency and ask questions or request more details but you can’t because the agency has no available channel for you at that hour.
You may forget some of the questions you have until the next day.
Yet again, you risk suffering losses in the future because of this.
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About Author
Ion G. Tudorache
As a co-founder and managing director of GAMIT I am the first contact of our clients. My job includes setting project objectives and offering SEO consulting advice to customers. My professional background and experience working in the SEO industry are essential in developing efficient SEO strategies and designing innovative techniques.