There are marketing companies out there that will take your money and doing absolutely nothing.

I see it too frequently and it’s heart breaking. A few weeks ago I talked to a business owner who had been paying for SEO for over a year.

Over. A. Year. Hard-earned money. Every month. Meanwhile their website? Nada.

When I ran the audit, I expected to see something. Keyword growth. Backlinks. Internal linking. Anything that suggested someone had actually been working on it.

Instead it looked like someone launched the site, shut the laptop, and vanished.

No new content.
No authority building.

It was the marketing equivalent of buying a treadmill and using it as a coat rack.

So how do you avoid auto-paying for absolutely nothing?

First: Google them.

Search what they claim to specialize in. Do they show up? Page one? Anywhere? Are they visible in AI summaries? Or are they buried under agencies that actually know what they’re doing?

If they can’t generate visibility for themselves, be more than a little wary.

Then check the reviews — not the stars, the substance.

Click the profiles. If someone has written exactly one review ever and it’s a glowing love letter to this agency, that’s suspicious. If all the reviews landed in the same month, suspicious. If the profile photo looks like it came free with the frame, suspicious.

Real humans leave messy trails online. They review restaurants, gyms, plumbers, the nail salon that wrecked their cuticles. Not just one heroic SEO testimonial.

Now here’s the big one.

If they insist on locking you into a long contract like it’s a cell phone plan from 2007… pause.

If they retain ownership of your website.
If they control your domain.
If they own your ad accounts.
If you “lose access” when you leave.

That’s not a partnership.

That’s a hostage situation.

You should never break up with an agency and lose your digital assets like you’re dividing furniture in a messy divorce.

And finally, ask for case studies. With timelines. What changed and when? How do they define success — rankings, traffic, revenue? And how do they report? Will they show you exactly what they did each month and why it matters? Or are you getting a glossy PDF full of colorful charts and motivational vibes?

If everything sounds impressive but still somehow foggy…

Walk.