Honest advice
SEO Advice That Sometimes Loses Us the Sale.
We tell potential clients things that make some of them walk away. The ones who stay tend to stay for years.
"You don't need 12 months of SEO right now."
Sometimes the problem isn't strategy - it's technical. A site with blocked pages, broken redirects and no sitemap needs a clean-up before any content investment makes sense. We've told prospects to spend their first month on fixes, not articles. Some leave because they want to hear "we'll write 20 blog posts immediately." The ones who stay get a foundation that actually supports future work.
"Your traffic number is inflated."
This one makes agencies nervous. If a prospect's previous agency reported 40% traffic growth, and we say "some of that growth isn't human" - we're questioning the previous work. We do it anyway because starting with clean data is the only way to measure real progress.
"We don't know if this will work yet."
Before we've audited your site and market, we can't tell you what's possible. Anyone who guarantees outcomes before seeing the setup is guessing. We scope after reviewing, not before.
"You might be better off with Google Ads first."
If a business needs leads this month, SEO isn't the right answer. It takes 4-9 months for sustainable organic growth. We've recommended paid media as the starting point and lost the SEO retainer. But the advice was honest, and some clients came back for SEO after their ads were working.
"We're not the right fit."
A client who wants guaranteed rankings, 50-page content dumps, or a London office address - we're not their agency. We'd rather lose the sale than misrepresent what we do. This approach doesn't scale fast. It builds the kind of client list we want.
If this sounds like the kind of agency you'd rather work with, we should talk.