SEO Scams To Watch Out For in 2026.

Quick Foreword: We can offer a unique point of view since we are a package design agency and not to offer SEO services. This article is based on our experience in hearing nightmare situations from our clients. We’ve written this to help our prospective CPG clients (or any company) avoid wasting money with SEO firms that don’t produce results or worse, send your search rankings backward!

Google can be a cruel mistress, we know. Businesses that want their websites to achieve higher traffic and greater visibility are slave to her rankings and algorithms; they are desperate to find anyone who can make their dreams of search engine supremacy come true. So they turn to [cue ominous music here] SEO consultants.

The Dangers of Hiring an SEO Specialist

You know how when you’re in a theater watching a horror movie, and a collective groan occurs whenever a character deliberately walks into the path of a hatchet-wielding psychopath? That’s how we feel whenever anyone says they’ve hired an SEO firm that will ratchet up their Google rankings fast. Nooooooo…

Not all SEO consultants are out to scam you. Unfortunately, though, the fact is, wherever there’s a need for Web visibility expertise, unscrupulous companies are promising to provide unrealistic search engine results. Guarantees to increase traffic, leads, and revenues by using secret (shady) methods, all for a cheap price.

Fact: Good SEO happens by having great content readers find valuable, along with SEO best practices.

Here are eight SEO company scams pushed by 90% of the firms that offer search engine optimization.

The Promise of Immediate First Page Google Search Results.

Seems important, doesn’t it? Going from total obscurity to being the first site on Google in one day. Yes! Of course, if you have a website up now, you can register on Google AdWords and pay them to advertise your site. Mission accomplished, or is it?

Many companies have had terrible experiences with paid marketing, maxing out their advertising budget, only to find that their ROI was negative. The Google Ad Network and other search ads can be effective, but like search engine optimization, they require the right digital marketing agency. The agency’s job is to reduce ad spend and increase conversions.

Organic first page results are a different story. An SEO firm cannot legitimately bump a previously unknown website to the top of Google rankings in only one or two days without using black hat SEO tactics. Anyway, any business wants a high flow of interested traffic to the site, not just instant (and temporary) visibility. This channel is important for all business but SaaS products especially. That’s why businesses should opt for SaaS SEO services that offer a comprehensive and long-term approach to improving their website’s search engine rankings and driving sustained traffic growth. In this example, you may need to split this by hiring an agency specific for content and one for delivering quality Saas link building services so you know that your project is handled by true experts.

You can avoid this SEO scam by seeing search engine marketing as a long term strategy. Also, working with AI SEO agencies can provide the tailored strategies needed to harness AI’s full potential in search optimization.

The Promise Of “Special Knowledge” of Google’s Processes.

So, they have a guy who knows a guy whose girlfriend used to temp at the Googleplex. She says… Trust us, Google guards its trade secrets like a wolverine guards a tenderloin. Even if a mole lurks within Google walls and an SEO company found the hidden secrets, there are so many algorithmic variables that it’s impossible to circumvent them all.

Even John Mueller, Google’s resident SEO spokesperson, gets it wrong occasionally. Since the Google algorithm is not a perfect process where the same results are spit out every time, SEO is as much an art as a science. Avoid any SEO agency that doesn’t recognize that their SEO strategy may not work out exactly as they had planned.

The Promise of Guaranteed Top 10 Rankings.

This is a meaningless promise, plain and simple. We’ve seen SEO companies advertise “Guaranteed first page placement.” Unless sponsored (bought through AdWords) there is no guarantee for a top ten ranking position. If an SEO agency was to make such a promise as a part of their unique selling proposition, it would need to be based on many factors. They would meet the guarantee with a very long contract and a big price tag to lower their risk.

While the SEO service may require a 2-year timeframe to reach the first page, it is unlikely that the agency will have you sign a 2-year contract. A new brand will have difficulty getting a top ten ranking for common terms in an aged industry. A real SEO expert will advise that you are better off building topical authority and focusing on longer tail keywords.

The Promise of Submission To Hundreds of Search Engines

Fair enough. Although… only three search engines really matter. Well, two, actually. Alright, there is pretty much only the Google juggernaut. Anyway, submitting your website to these search engines doesn’t mean the search engines will respond. Those “hundreds” of submissions to search engines no one uses are worthless.

Most of these search engines find their information from Google, anyway. Only Bing and a few others have unique algorithms and ranking factors to determine where they position a page. Search engine submission is simply how an SEO fraud tries to stack the deck and show more value than they actually provide.

The Promise of Hundreds of Directory Links For a Cheap Price

The sheer difficulty of legitimate link building makes this promise even more outrageous. It takes years to earn the reputation for providing great content and services that entice useful link building. When SEO companies offer directory links cheaply, the directories are of inferior quality and irrelevant to your purpose.

Directory listings are almost always no-follow links which don’t carry the same weight as an organic backlink developed through an article mentioned. With all of this said, set up directory backlinks and with Bright Local, the cost is $3.00 per backlink. Setting these up with the right keywords and information might cost your SEO expert a few hundred extra dollars.

You probably find that directory backlinks are more beneficial through their own search engine. Believe it or not, people still search yellowpages.com to find businesses. Sometimes these websites rank in Google search results; if that is the case, you want your listing to populate.

If you set up directory backlinks, do so with high domain authority websites or organizations specific to your industry.

The Promise of Free Trial Services After Accessing Your Site

Under no circumstances should you give any company offering free trial access to your website for any time. Never. Do you hear us? Ne-ver. We have seen cases of entire sites being wrecked by a couple amateurs offering free trials.

The only person who should have access to your website for technical SEO changes is your web developer. Treat these agencies more like an SEO consultant and have them provide a website analysis along with a strategy call.

If you wish to test some of their services, ensure they are external offerings. Have them provide an SEO optimized article and put it on the website yourself. You can use tools such as Yoast SEO or AIOSEO to determine how well they wrote the article.

Otherwise, mitigate your risk of being targeted by an SEO scammer and find someone within your network who has had a positive experience with a company’s SEO work.

The Unsolicited Offer of SEO Service

Received an email from an SEO company recently? They’re incredibly impressed with your site, but thought that you could significantly improve your rankings. This classic spammer trolls the internet looking for URLs and email addresses.

Some of these companies use veiled threats, including phone numbers or personal information. The underlying message being that they have the power to do something nasty to your site if you don’t use their service. Just ignore them, or report their actions to the appropriate government bureau.

Reluctance to Tell you Their Methods

We all know there is such a thing as a trade secret. But if an SEO firm cannot answer a specific question about what it is doing, it is likely because that firm doesn’t know the answer. Whenever you want someone to provide you with a service, you want experience and expertise, not secret magic formulas.

Bottom line is, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. These scams are all part of a greater picture, where the SEO industry has spawned companies that try to game the system. It’s one reason the SEO industry is dying, and why you need to focus on impressive design and relative content to increase your organic rankings.

The Right Way to Approach SEO

In almost all cases, content marketing is the best approach for seeing a search result increase. Whether you are discussing service based search optimization or considering hiring an ecommerce SEO agency, they should put high quality, authoritative and relevant information to your audience at the top of the list. With this strategy you signal to Google that you are a company to be considered for top rankings. An agency should build any SEO campaign around your industry expertise and making sure you are and seen for those reasons. In addition, leveraging Media-driven SEO backlinks can amplify your authority and help earn powerful placements through trusted publications and online mentions.
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Stay away from black hat tactics and instead focus on doing good business. In time, the SEO techniques that a reputable agency provides will yield the realistic results set upon contract.

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