Her agency was scamming her

Another victim.

I spoke to yet another victim of a predatory SEO agency.

They’d been working together since 2019.

Organic traffic had steadily grown during that time, but nearly all of it was branded.

So when we spoke late last night, she showed me their Search Console chart with branded traffic filtered out.

My jaw hit the table.

I asked to see any of the reports that the agency had sent over in the past few months, just to try and make sense of what they’d been doing.

Or as I feared, not doing.

5 years of working together — they never sent regular monthly reports.

They had bi-monthly meetings to check in with the agency, and the agency just screenshared the reports.

Never sent them over for her records.

Red flag #1.

She told me that she’d been writing blog content on her own for the last 2 years.

Me: “Did they provide you with content briefs?”

Her: “Never.”

Me: “Did they at least give you a content calendar to follow, or guide you on which topics to cover?”

Her: “Never".”

They never even bothered to review her blog content, build internal links, or even handle the publishing for her on Shopify.

It was entirely on her — the CEO of the company.

There are 1000 other things that a 7-figure eCom CEO should be doing instead of publishing blog content.

Red flag #2.

She informed me that the only page content they handled were the collection pages.

“Thank god,” I thought to myself.

She then went on to say that they only do 7 collection pages per year.

PER YEAR.

I optimized 11 collection pages yesterday, in a single day.

Red flag #3.

I pulled up their backlink profile on Semrush — I wanted to see what their link building efforts consisted of.

I added filters for dofollow links added in the last 60 days and from sites that had a DR greater than 20.

Of the 4 links that remained, she had personally built all 4 of them through link exchanges.

Red flag #4.

To recap,

No reporting.

No blog content.

Just 7 collection page optimizations per year.

No active link building.

Any guess how much they were charging?

$3,000 AUD.

Roughly $2020.74 USD.

They were just collecting a check.

Zero work, likely 90% margins.

A pathetic excuse for an agency.

I checked out their site — they’re a full stack digital marketing agency “that means business.”

The only business they have is swindling their customers out of money for years on end.

Without providing any return whatsoever.

She’d just lit $180,000 on fire over the last 5 years with the agency.

I suggested that she do it herself, since she practically was doing that already.

She could get back $3k each month and save herself a huge headache.

But she’s a busy CEO, with just 2 hours per week to commit to SEO.

I pointed her to my course, meant for situations exactly like this, where you can only commit a few hours per month to SEO.

She bought it immediately.

She traded $180k and a nightmare agency for a $297 program designed specifically for operators like her.

She sent me a message a few hours later:

“I’ve already learned more about SEO in 45 minutes than I learned over the last 5 years. Thank you!”

Can’t wait to see her grow and leave that agency in the dust.

Kai