If you've had a website for more than six months, you've received at least three emails about your 'critical SEO errors.' The audit is a template. The goal is a call. Here's how to tell the real ones from the bulk campaigns in under five minutes.
If you've had a website for more than six months, you've received at least three emails telling you your site has 'critical SEO errors' and they'd love to help. They're almost always automated. The 'audit' is a template — the same output gets sent to every site in the scrape list. The 'errors' are generic placeholders. And the goal is to get you on a call before you've had time to think about it too hard. Here's how to tell the difference in five minutes.
Real outreach — the rare kind — is specific. If someone genuinely reviewed your site, they can name the page, the problem, and why it matters. If they respond with 'your site has significant technical issues affecting your rankings' or 'your pages aren't optimised for your target keywords,' those are template responses. Push back with specifics. Ask: which page? What's the issue? What keyword? A legitimate person has real answers. A bulk campaign does not.
Not a logo wall — actual before/after results with traffic or ranking data, from a business doing something similar to yours in a similar market. If they can't produce this in one reply, they either don't have it or they don't want you to see it. Any agency doing real work for real clients should be able to point to at least one case study with measurable outcomes.
Link building is where the SEO scam industry concentrates. The standard pitch: 'we build high-authority backlinks that improve your domain rating.' What this often means: bought links, spammy guest articles, private blog networks. A legitimate answer describes real outreach, editorial links, or content that earns links organically. Vague promises about 'high-DA links at volume' are a sign to move on.
Scam operations lock you into 12-month contracts before you've seen a single result. Legitimate agencies are either month-to-month or have short initial commitments with clearly defined deliverables. An agency that's confident in their results doesn't need to trap you. If they push back hard on this question or frame a long contract as standard practice — walk.
The fastest filter
Ask: 'How did you find my contact details, and what specifically made you reach out to my business?' Legitimate agencies have a real answer. Bulk email operations will either not respond, give a vague non-answer, or pivot immediately to their pitch. That pivot is your answer.
For the record
We don't cold email. If you found this guide, it's because you searched for something and this page answered it — which is exactly how we think marketing should work. We take the same approach we'd recommend to any client.
Reply to the email with this, word for word:
"Can you tell me specifically which pages on my site have the issues you mentioned, and what those issues are?"
If the reply is specific and useful — a real URL, a real problem, a real explanation — it might be worth a conversation.
If the reply is vague
Delete it and move on. If it's generic, jumps straight to booking a call, or repeats the same claims without specifics — you just saved yourself 45 minutes on a call that was never going anywhere useful.
Hiring & Vetting
The questions to ask, the red flags to run from, and what good results actually look like.
SEO Fundamentals
Crawling, indexing, ranking — the mechanics behind how Google decides who wins.
SEO Fundamentals
Busting the myths that cost small businesses money and time.
You found this page because it answered a question you were searching for. That's the only kind of outreach we do — and it's the same approach we build for clients. If you want to work with us, the contact form is straightforward.
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