How Do You Know What You’re Paying For with SEO?

I’ll be completely honest with you. After two decades working in digital marketing, I’ve seen some absolute shockers when it comes to SEO services. Recently, I reviewed a website for an Illawarra air conditioning company that had been paying an SEO agency for twelve months. When I dug into their backlink profile, I found links from cryptocurrency gambling sites, dodgy pharmaceutical pages, and websites written entirely in languages their customers would never speak. The business owner was mortified. They’d been handing over four figures each month, trusting that someone was doing good work on their behalf, and instead they’d been sold a pack of lies that could actually damage their reputation.

This isn’t an isolated case. It’s a pattern I’ve seen repeatedly. If you’re a business owner paying for SEO services and you’re not entirely sure what you’re getting for your money, this article is for you.

The fundamental challenge with SEO is that most of the work happens behind the scenes. Unlike a new logo or a redesigned shopfront, you can’t see it or touch it. This invisibility creates the perfect environment for dodgy operators to flourish. They know that most business owners don’t have the time or technical knowledge to audit what’s actually being done, so they hide behind jargon, generic reports, and promises of “secret strategies” that will magically boost your rankings.

Here’s what makes me particularly frustrated: legitimate SEO takes time, expertise, and genuine strategic thinking. It’s not about gaming the system or finding shortcuts. It’s about making your website genuinely useful and authoritative for the people searching for your services. When cowboy operators flood the market with cheap, nasty tactics, they don’t just hurt their own clients. They make all business owners more sceptical and confused about what good SEO actually looks like.

Let me walk you through some warning signs that your SEO provider might not be delivering value for money. These aren’t theoretical concerns. These are actual issues I’ve found when auditing websites for businesses throughout the Illawarra and broader NSW region.

The first red flag is a complete lack of transparency about what work is being done. If your SEO provider sends you a monthly report that’s full of graphs and numbers but never actually explains what actions they’ve taken, that’s a problem. Good SEO agencies should be able to tell you exactly what they’ve worked on each month, whether that’s optimising specific pages, creating content, fixing technical issues, or building relationships for quality backlinks.

Another major warning sign is when you see backlinks appearing from completely irrelevant or low-quality websites. I reviewed a site last month for a Kiama-based plumber who had links from Eastern European blog networks and Asian gaming sites. These links weren’t just useless, they were actively harmful. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough to recognise manipulative link schemes, and the penalties can be severe. Your SEO provider should be able to show you where your backlinks are coming from and explain why each one is relevant to your business and your local market.

Here’s something else that should concern you: if your SEO provider never asks questions about your business, your customers, or your goals, they’re almost certainly running a cookie-cutter approach. Effective SEO for a Shellharbour café is completely different from SEO for a Dapto law firm or a Fairy Meadow physiotherapy clinic. The strategies, keywords, and content approaches need to be tailored to your specific situation. If your provider treats your business like every other client on their books, you’re not getting the strategic thinking you’re paying for.

So what should you actually be getting from a quality SEO service? Let me break this down in practical terms, using examples from the kind of work we do at Top Gong Digital Marketing with our Illawarra clients.

Good SEO starts with understanding your business and your customers. Before any technical work begins, there should be conversations about who you’re trying to reach, what problems you solve for them, and what makes your business different from competitors. For a local business, this means understanding your geographic service area, the specific suburbs you want to target, and the way local customers search for your services.

From there, quality SEO involves making your website genuinely useful and technically sound. This includes ensuring your site loads quickly, works properly on mobile devices, has clear navigation, and provides valuable information that answers the questions your potential customers are asking. It’s not sexy work, but it’s fundamental. I’ve seen businesses spending thousands on link building or flashy videos while their website takes fifteen seconds to load on a mobile phone. That’s like paying someone to hand out flyers for a shop with a broken front door.

Content creation is another crucial component, but it needs to be strategic and relevant. For local businesses, this might mean creating pages that target specific service areas, writing articles that address common customer questions, or developing case studies that demonstrate your expertise. The content should sound like it comes from a real person who understands the local area and the industry, not like it was churned out by someone overseas who’s never set foot in Australia.

When it comes to link building, quality always trumps quantity. One link from a respected local business directory, a relevant industry association, or a genuine local news article is worth more than fifty links from random blog networks. Your SEO provider should be able to explain their approach to earning links and show you examples of the kinds of sites they’re targeting.

If you’re currently paying for SEO services, here are some straightforward questions you have every right to ask. A good provider will welcome these questions and answer them clearly. A dodgy one will dodge, deflect, or try to blind you with technical jargon.

Ask them to show you exactly what work they completed last month. Not in vague terms, but specifically. Which pages did they optimise? What content did they create? What technical issues did they fix? If they can’t give you clear answers, that’s a significant concern.

Request access to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These are free tools that show how your website is performing in search results and how visitors are interacting with your site. Any legitimate SEO provider should have these set up and be reviewing them regularly. If they’re reluctant to give you access or claim these tools aren’t necessary, that’s a red flag.

Ask to see your backlink profile and have them walk you through where your links are coming from. Use a tool like Mangools, Ahrefs or SEMrush (many offer free limited versions) to check this yourself. If you see links from gambling sites, pharmaceutical pages, or networks of low-quality blogs, you need to have a serious conversation with your provider.

Finally, ask about their approach to local SEO specifically. For a business operating in the Illawarra or anywhere in regional NSW, local search visibility is often more valuable than ranking nationally. Your provider should be working on your Google Business Profile, targeting location-specific keywords, and building relevance within your local area.

The best SEO relationships I’ve seen are built on transparency, regular communication, and a shared understanding of goals. Your provider should be educating you about what they’re doing and why, not keeping you in the dark. They should be setting realistic expectations about timeframes and not promising overnight results. And they should be willing to adjust their approach based on what’s working and what isn’t.

At Top Gong Digital Marketing, we’ve built our reputation on being straight with clients about what’s possible and what’s not. We’d rather have a difficult conversation upfront about realistic expectations than over-promise and under-deliver. That’s the kind of relationship you should expect from any agency you’re paying to handle something as important as your online visibility.

SEO isn’t magic, and it isn’t a black box that only experts can understand. Yes, it’s technical and constantly evolving, but the fundamentals are straightforward. You deserve to know what you’re paying for, to see evidence that the work is being done properly, and to feel confident that your investment is building genuine value for your business rather than creating problems you’ll need to fix down the track.

If you’re reading this and feeling uneasy about your current SEO arrangement, trust that instinct. Ask the questions, request the evidence, and don’t accept vague answers. Your business deserves better than dodgy backlinks and empty promises.