What a bad pitch sounds like
None of these are proof of anything on their own. Two or three together, in the same conversation, are a pattern worth respecting.
The trade has been sold to badly for twenty years, and most owners reading this have already paid for one bad engagement. The useful skill is not suspicion, which costs you good agencies too. It is knowing which specific things predict trouble.
In the pitch
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A guaranteed number-one ranking.
Positions vary by searcher, device and location, so there is no single value to guarantee. An honest guarantee promises a remedy rather than a position.
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A price that arrives only after they know your revenue.
Pricing shaped by what you can pay is pricing shaped by what you can pay.
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Results with no client name, no period and no starting point.
A three hundred percent increase over what, from what, and when.
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Pressure tied to a discount expiring.
Search work does not have a seasonal sale. Urgency in the pitch is about their month, not your rankings.
In the paperwork
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Terms that will not be shared before a verbal commitment.
The ordering is the signal. A company confident in its terms sends them.
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An automatic renewal with a short cancellation window, on a long term.
Twelve months renewing into twelve more, with thirty days to object, is a two-year decision presented as a one-year one.
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Silence on who owns the website and the Business Profile.
Twenty of the twenty-four companies here publish nothing about data ownership. Silence is common, so treat it as a question rather than a verdict, but do ask it.
In the delivery
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Location pages that differ only by the town name.
Ask to see four from an existing client. If you can swap the nouns and get the other three, that is what yours will be.
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Reporting that only ever goes up.
Every account has bad quarters. A report with no bad quarters is a report that has been designed rather than produced.
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Nobody on the account who has worked heating before.
Ask the practitioner a trade question. Why a heat pump page is not a furnace page is a fair one and the answer is immediate if they know.
The thing that is not a red flag, despite being treated as one: a twelve-month initial term. Organic search does not produce in ninety days, and an agency asking for a full cycle so the strategy can work is being straightforward about how the channel behaves. What matters is whether the term comes with a published exit and a stated position on who owns the site at the end.
Judge the exit, not the length.