Frustrating Challenges When Choosing an SEO Agency [Expert Roundup]
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Table of Contents
- Case Studies Prove Agency’s Worth
- Insist on Transparency in SEO Work
- Bridge the Gap Between Promises and Performance
- Avoid Agencies That Make Excuses
- Watch Out for Hidden Costs
- Verify Claims Beyond Surface-Level Case Studies
- Demand Transparency and Measurable ROI
- Seek Agencies That Own Wins and Losses
- Avoid Agencies With Empty Promises
- Test Agencies With a Trial Period
- Track Actual Revenue From SEO
- Prioritise Transparency in SEO Strategies
- Ensure Qualified Staff Handles Your Account
- Conclusion
Choosing an SEO agency can feel like navigating a minefield, every step comes with risk, uncertainty, and a whole lot of technical jargon. For marketing managers under pressure to deliver results, the process is often riddled with red flags: inflated promises, vague strategies, hidden fees, and reports that look impressive but say very little.
So what separates a reliable, high-performing agency from the rest?
We asked 13 industry thought leaders to reveal the most frustrating challenges they face when selecting an SEO partner and the non-negotiables that define a truly trustworthy agency.
Here’s what they had to say.
Case Studies Prove Agency’s Worth
Well, I’m going to answer this unbiasedly because I’ve experienced both sides. I have an agency now, but before that, I worked in-house for a company. In my opinion, the most crucial thing when evaluating an agency isn’t awards or claims like “we’re number one” because, honestly, everyone can say that on their own website. What truly matters are the case studies.
Good case studies speak for themselves, especially if they’re transparent and name the specific companies. You can take those company names, go into tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, and easily verify the actual results yourself- traffic growth, keyword ranking, and so on. It’s something concrete you can measure rather than just marketing talk.
Now that I’m agency-side, I’ve noticed serious, enterprise-level clients regularly ask to see case studies. They even request direct contact with our previous clients to discuss results firsthand before making a decision. So, from my perspective, beyond any claims or even reviews, what truly convinces clients are real, verified success stories in their niche. After all, proven results are what ultimately matter, right?
Maria Harutyunyan, Co-Founder, Loopex Digital
Insist on Transparency in SEO Work
Some SEO agencies operate like black boxes. You pay them, and they say they’re working on your rankings, but they don’t explain what they’re actually doing. Then, six months later, when results are disappointing, you’re left with no real understanding of why. The worst part is when an agency refuses to share specifics, hiding behind vague phrases like “industry best practices” without showing what those actually include.
The ideal SEO partner should treat clients like part of the process, not just a paycheck. If they’re running link-building campaigns, I want to know where those links are coming from. If they optimise on-page elements, I want to see the changes before they go live. It’s not about micromanaging, it’s about knowing that my budget is being used on strategies that actually work.
Shane McEvoy, MD, Flycast Media
Bridge the Gap Between Promises and Performance
One of my biggest frustrations in selecting an SEO agency is the gap between promised results and actual performance- too many agencies sell hype without delivering sustainable traffic growth or ROI. Transparency in reporting is another major concern; vague metrics and vanity numbers don’t help if I can’t see how organic search is translating into real conversions and sales for our personal massagers. Many agencies also take a one-size-fits-all approach, failing to tailor SEO strategies to our niche audience, who are actively seeking chronic pain relief solutions but may not search with traditional e-commerce intent.
Hidden costs create additional roadblocks, as agencies often charge extra for critical services like content creation, technical SEO fixes, or link-building, making it difficult to plan a realistic budget. My ideal SEO partner would offer a clear, data-driven approach with measurable KPIs, a proven track record in health and wellness e-commerce, and an adaptive strategy that evolves with algorithm updates and shifting consumer search behaviour.
Dylan Young, Marketing Specialist, CareMax
Avoid Agencies That Make Excuses
When I joined our team as head of marketing, we had hired a local SEO agency that was charging us a lot of money, but their work wasn’t resulting in lead forms and phone calls. At the time, I wasn’t well educated on SEO, so I began to teach myself.
Their approach to our SEO as a B2C home services company was dozens of location-specific landing pages stuffed with the keyword we wanted to rank for. Imagine a 300-word landing page with no photos, no internal links, just text, centered around a phrase like ‘roof repairs Fort Worth.’ The pages were never promoted or updated beyond the initial launch. Sadly, many contained typos or incorrect information.
The agency would selectively show us instances of some of their pages ranking, but they routinely let themselves off the hook for results. When I pushed them to explain why we weren’t seeing growth in leads, they would respond with something like, “SEO can take a long time,” or “North Texas is a very competitive market.”
Without spending too much time on the story, we dropped that agency. My own education empowered me to realise we were being taken advantage of. Here are the main lessons I learned from that experience:
- An agency shouldn’t make excuses. If it were easy, we’d do it ourselves. Now, when I interview SEO providers, I put the challenge up front – DFW is a hard market, so what will you do to push through to find success? Too many times, we allow them to move the goalposts and escape accountability, so we aim to enter a partnership with eyes wide open.
- What am I paying for – effort or results? We set clear expectations again. Is their fee designed to cover their monthly work, or should it result in leads?
- How do we measure success? I want to know from the start which metrics matter. I don’t want vanity ranking metrics, I want more traffic and more leads. Every update with the agency should be to discuss those things.
Some agencies, like the one we dropped, have a way of creating a ‘fog of war’ that can trap unprepared marketers in bad relationships. In a perfect world, everything would be clear and out in the open so that both parties understand that we are primarily concerned with the outcome of the efforts.
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Ryan Stephens, Marketing Director, Texas Direct Roofing & Construction
Watch Out for Hidden Costs
The most annoying aspect is hidden costs. If you have a set budget for SEO and the agency suddenly charges you an extra fee, you have to make compromises in other areas. This could jeopardise the overall marketing plan and result in missed opportunities in those other areas. Since SEO is a long-term strategy, when the costs start to increase quietly, it becomes a hassle and makes you doubt the agency’s integrity. If the agency is unable to be transparent about its charges, they are probably evasive about other things as well. When the promise doesn’t match the delivery, you start negotiating damage control. If I were asked to design my perfect SEO agency, I would focus on a team that is clear and honest about everything. A team that breaks down all costs of their services upfront before entering into a contract with a client.
Sam Jacobs, Head of Marketing, Ammo.com
Verify Claims Beyond Surface-Level Case Studies
Verifying agency claims beyond surface-level case studies creates significant selection challenges. Real experience reveals capability gaps that sales presentations hide.
Managing both client-side vendor selection and our own agency operations taught me that methodology transparency separates truly effective partners from smooth-talking vendors. When evaluating SEO agencies, I request detailed workflow documentation and specific examples of how they solved problems similar to ours. This practical approach helped identify an agency whose process adapted to algorithm changes rather than relying on outdated tactics.
Contract analysis often uncovers concerning service limitations. While leading marketing at a SaaS company, I discovered our “comprehensive” SEO partner excluded essential technical implementation despite highlighting these very capabilities during sales presentations. This experience led me to develop detailed requirement breakdowns for all agency contracts.
The ideal SEO partnership balances strategic guidance with tactical execution. Exceptional agencies demonstrate clear connections between recommended tactics and business objectives while providing straightforward reporting that tracks both implementation progress and actual business impact. This performance-focused approach creates accountability beyond ranking fluctuations.
Aaron Whittaker, VP of Demand Generation & Marketing, Thrive Digital Marketing Agency
Demand Transparency and Measurable ROI
Two of the biggest frustrations when selecting an SEO agency are transparency and measurable ROI. Many agencies promise results but fail to outline their strategy or provide meaningful reporting. SEO is an investment, and without clear performance tracking and accountability, it’s difficult to justify continued spending.
Another challenge is industry expertise. Cost segregation is a niche financial service that requires highly technical content and compliance awareness. Many SEO agencies offer generic strategies that don’t align with our audience, which leads to wasted efforts on irrelevant traffic. We need an agency that understands B2B financial services, tax strategies, and long-tail keyword targeting for highly qualified leads–not just an increase in organic visits.
The ideal SEO partner would have a proven track record in technical industries, a transparent reporting system with real business and SEO KPIs, and a proactive strategy that evolves with search trends. They would focus on generating high-value leads rather than just traffic and communicate clearly about the why behind every tactic. SEO isn’t just about rankings- it’s about conversions, and the right agency understands that.
Michael Hammelburger, CFO, The Bottom Line Group
Seek Agencies That Own Wins and Losses
Transparency. Agencies share sanitised reports with vanity metrics – impressions and ranking that they don’t tie to business outcomes. It feels like they are hiding behind data instead of using it as an open dialogue about what is working and what isn’t. I translate the lack of clarity to wasted time, a wasted budget and an endless guessing game. Agencies send over beautifully designed dashboards. If the dashboard doesn’t answer simple, important questions like “How does it affect revenue?” or “Why did the conversion rates drop over the last month?” then they are functionally useless.
The biggest roadblock is trust. SEO, by nature, takes time to work and show results. Agencies fear that being open about the challenges and missed monthly targets might make them look bad. In my opinion, clear and honest reporting is always the start of a long-term relationship.
If I had complete authority, I would get an SEO partner who owns wins and losses. One who doesn’t sugarcoat numbers and can explain, “Here is what we tried, here is why it didn’t work, and what we plan to do differently next month.” This level of honesty would give me confidence in the agency since it shows they are working with me, not for me.
Sergey Ermakovich, CMO, HasData
Avoid Agencies With Empty Promises
When choosing an SEO agency, I often come across companies that make promises that are not backed by any facts. If the agency promises to help you achieve incredible results but avoids questions about their methods and techniques, this is a red flag. There is a chance that such companies will use risky search tricks. This may bring you instant traffic, but it later becomes a problem with site bans or complaints from Google.
My ideal SEO agency is a team of people who work transparently and can explain every step they take. The results of their work are easy to measure. Clear reporting, realistic deadlines, strategy, and planning are the must-haves of a good SEO agency. It is also important to me that the agency sees SEO as part of general marketing, integrating different methods and new techniques.
Dmytro Kudrenko, Co-founder & Email Marketing Expert, Claspo
Test Agencies With a Trial Period
The biggest frustration when selecting an SEO agency is separating genuine expertise from empty promises. Many agencies showcase impressive case studies but deliver underwhelming results when handling your specific business challenges. We faced this exact problem until we developed a practical solution: a three-phase trial period with potential SEO partners. We asked shortlisted agencies to audit our site, implement three quick fixes, and report results before signing any long-term contracts.
This approach transformed our SEO partner selection process. Our current agency increased organic traffic by 42% in six months by addressing technical issues others had missed. They first fixed our schema markup for product pages, which immediately improved how our diamond rings appeared in search results. The key is requiring potential agencies to demonstrate their capabilities with your actual business data. This hands-on evaluation reveals their true expertise, communication style, and reporting transparency, all before committing to a lengthy contract.
Yoad Bet Yosef, Owner, Nature Sparkle
Track Actual Revenue From SEO
I’ve audited over 100 SEO agencies, managed them on behalf of agency founders, and worked directly with clients who’ve been burned by them. The biggest frustration I have is most agencies have no clue how to track actual revenue from SEO.
They’ll throw out vanity metrics: rankings, traffic, and domain authority, but when you ask, “How much money did this organic traffic actually make?” they have no answer.
The SEO industry is filled with amateurs because the barrier to entry is so low. It’s built on big promises and vague guarantees about rankings and traffic, but agencies don’t take into account that SEO doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
They’ll take full credit for a client’s success, when in reality, maybe a competitor went out of business, or the founder had other marketing initiatives running in the background. There’s never any real transparency about what actually contributed to those results.
Most agencies also hide everything. They’ll tell you there’s a setup fee or that they’re doing all this work behind the scenes, but they won’t invite clients to their project management tools. They won’t let them see Slack conversations. They claim a “team” is working on an account, but you have no idea what’s actually being done.
What an ideal SEO agency looks like:
- They track actual revenue from SEO. If an agency can’t show how much organic traffic is converting into sales, they’re guessing.
- They know how to scale organic traffic the right way. No shady tactics, no fluff. Just real content marketing, technical SEO, and link-building.
- They have top-tier writing skills. SEO is content marketing at its core. They should understand how to craft high-quality commercial pages, blogs, and landing pages that convert.
- They give clear, simple reporting. Not auto-generated fluff about domain authority or keyword rankings; just money made, main insights, and actionable steps.
- They are fully transparent. Clients should have access to project management tools, conversations, and real-time updates instead of being left in the dark.
Most SEO agencies don’t do any of this. They sell six-month contracts with the promise of better rankings, then keep clients on the hook by telling them to “just wait another three months” when the results aren’t there.
This industry is full of smoke and mirrors, and I hate what it’s become. If an agency can’t track ROI, can’t show their work, and hides behind complex reports, they’re not doing SEO; they’re running a scam.
Josiah Roche, Fractional CMO, JRR Marketing
Prioritise Transparency in SEO Strategies
Selecting an SEO agency has always been a challenge for me, and the biggest frustration lies in assessing their transparency. I remember working with an agency that promised big results but provided little clarity on how it planned to achieve them.
Their reports were vague, filled with jargon, and often left me guessing what work had actually been done. It made me feel like I was paying for something intangible, which ultimately eroded trust.
To me, transparency is everything. I want an agency that can clearly outline its strategies from the start- what they’ll prioritise, why it matters, and how they’ll measure success. I had a much better experience with an agency that broke down its approach during the pitch itself.
They shared specific examples of campaigns they had worked on in my industry and included detailed plans tailored to my business goals. This level of openness gave me confidence in their process and their ability to deliver.
My ideal SEO partner would prioritise communication. Regular, clear updates with actionable insights are key. More than rankings alone, I need measurable results that align with broader business objectives–like increased leads or conversions- so I can justify the investment and see the value in the relationship long-term.
Ben H, Founder & Owner, Dealmemo
Ensure Qualified Staff Handles Your Account
Our biggest frustration is perhaps when an agency places a remote contractor or junior associate on our account to execute our campaigns without communicating this when signing up. We’ve been in situations when the primary contact impresses us in early presentations and then hands the project off to someone who doesn’t have the needed insight into our niche industry of kitchen appliances. Without this clarity, it is easy to get stuck in yesterday’s strategy or miss the next great growth opportunity.
Another major pain point is sifting through overly polished reports that are heavy on vanity metrics but light on performance metrics. For example, measuring keyword rank is nice, but we also need ACTUAL DATA on organic conversions, average order value increases, and revenue increases attributable to SEO efforts.
In an ideal partnership, an agency would be transparent about who’s actually doing the work, consistently offer actionable insights on metrics that matter most, and proactively recommend changes when they identify areas that need to improve. Ultimately, we need an SEO partner who understands our fiercely competitive vertical and delivers measurable results that drive long-term growth.
Sofia Wang, Sr. Marketing & Sales Specialist, EMPAVA
Conclusion
Selecting the right SEO agency isn’t just a marketing decision, it’s a strategic investment that can make or break your brand’s online visibility and revenue. As these 13 experts have highlighted, the key lies in transparency, accountability, and a proven ability to drive real, measurable results.
Whether it’s demanding clear reporting, verifying case studies, or insisting on direct access to experienced SEO professionals, the road to finding the right partner starts with asking the tough questions. In a space crowded with noise and empty promises, the best agencies stand out by showing not just telling what they can deliver.
At WP Creative, we’re proud to be one of the leading SEO agencies in Australia, trusted by businesses that value performance, clarity, and long-term success. Alongside our WordPress expertise, we also offer specialised Webflow SEO services, helping brands maximise their visibility on one of the fastest-growing platforms. If you’re ready to work with a partner that prioritises real results, we’re here to help.
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