Rank-tracking theatre instead of query economics
Fifty keywords in a tool, half branded, half impossible head terms, reported in green. Nobody maps them to URLs or rupees. The founder thinks SEO is “working” because a blog rank moved from 37 to 22.
Ask for the ten money phrases, their landing URLs, and GSC clicks. If the agency cannot produce that without a week of delay, you are buying theatre.
Branded rank #1 is not a case study
Ranking first for your own name is table stakes. Put it in a footnote, not the cover slide.
Guest-post farms, PBNs, and “DA 50” shopping lists
Off-page as a commodity SKU is how sites get hit years later. A real mention from a relevant Indian publication is rare and slow. A spreadsheet of “posts delivered” is a smell.
If they cannot show the live URL, the byline, and why that site would mention you without payment, it is not PR. See quality off-page in the three-way split.
Keyword stuffing in Indian English
“Best SEO company in Chennai Chennai Chennai for Chennai businesses in Chennai.” Users bounce. Overviews skip. E-E-A-T dies. Write like a person in Thousand Lights, then place the city where it is true.
Stuffing Tamil keywords into English sentences is not bilingual SEO. It is unreadable. Follow keyword research.
Meta descriptions as keyword luggage
A meta is an ad. If it cannot be spoken aloud, rewrite it. CTR is a ranking input you actually influence.
Duplicate city pages as a default package
The 2020 playbook still sells. Google’s doorway language still exists. Unique facts or no URL — programmatic vs handwritten.
If your domain already has 300 thin cities, the first month of good SEO is deletion and redirects, not more cities. Demand a kill list.
Subdomains named after every pincode
Worse than folders. Split authority, mess up GSC, look like a malware network. Do not.
Ignoring technical SEO and Core Web Vitals
Content on a 12-second Elementor museum. No sitemap. Mixed www. Index bloat. The content intern cannot fix that. Technical work is in CWV and the technical third of the stack.
Agencies that “do not touch the site” are copy vendors. Call them that. Do not pay SEO rates for blog-only.
Staging noindex left on for six months
We have inherited this more than once. If they never logged into GSC coverage, they never saw it. That is malpractice.
No Search Console, Analytics, or GBP in your name
If you cannot log in, you cannot leave. Also you cannot see the truth. Ownership is the first clause in our contracts.
Screenshots of “their” rank tool are not a substitute for GSC. Tools disagree; GSC is the primary source for Google Search.
Personal Gmail of a former intern
Recover now. Google account recovery after a vendor dispute is a worse project than SEO. Do it this week.
Fake AI Overview and ChatGPT retainers
GEO and AEO are real crafts. Guarantee products are not. Anyone selling a numbered citation quota is guessing. Align with AI Overviews work you can inspect: schema, direct answers, crawl access.
llms.txt as a ₹40,000 standalone invoice is a cousin of this mistake. The file is cheap plumbing — llms.txt.
ChatGPT screenshots from a custom GPT stuffed with your URLs
That is not the market. Test consumer products, clean session, Indian IP. Anything else is a demo.
Reports without leads, calls, or revenue language
A useful report: GSC money queries, GBP calls, site forms, notable technical risks, next month’s URL plan. An useless report: 18 charts, no owner, no ask.
If they cannot sit on a call with sales, they cannot do SEO for a service business. E-E-A-T includes knowing what you sell.
Traffic up, spam queries up
Ranking for “job” and “syllabus” can inflate sessions. Filter. Celebrate converting queries only.
Blogs on a subdomain nobody links
blog.brand.com with no internal links from the money site is a diary. Put commercial content on the same host unless you have a strong reason. Then actually link it.
Orphan content also fails GEO retrieval. Engines cannot cite what they barely discover.
Guest writers with no editor
AI sludge under your logo is your E-E-A-T. Approve or do not publish. There is no “the intern posted it” defence with customers.
How to audit an incumbent in one afternoon
1) Asset ownership. 2) GSC coverage and money queries. 3) Sample of published URLs versus doorway risk. 4) Backlink sample. 5) GBP owner. 6) Last three months of “work” versus those artefacts. 7) Contract promises versus physics.
Then decide: keep, narrow the SOW, or replace. Replacement options include in-house — agency vs in-house. We would rather you choose deliberately than rage-quit into another theatre vendor.
What a clean retainer looks like at our floor
₹15,000/mo: mapped terms, on-page + technical within bounds, local if relevant, content you would sign, monthly GSC truth, assets in your name. Ads separate at ₹20,000/mo + spend. Contact if that is the working relationship you wanted all along.
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