Almost every business will, at some point, work with an SEO agency or freelancer to help with digital marketing. SEO is so complex that the average person can’t hope to handle it alone – especially when they’re also managing a startup. You pay others to handle this, and agencies/freelancers are more cost-effective than building an internal team. They promise things like x amount of new traffic every week, increases in revenue, better lead generation, etc.
Most agencies back this up with genuine results – but what happens when the results don’t come?
You’ve spent thousands of dollars paying someone to improve your SEO, and yet the improvements and benefits aren’t there. Here’s an explanation of what happens in this situation, and what you’re entitled to do.
Look At Their Claims & Promises
Sadly, you’re not always entitled to results when paying for SEO services. The nature of this work means nobody can guarantee that they’ll provide positive results – but the key is what your SEO agency claimed or promised it could do for you.
Look back over communications and pore through contracts to see if they:
- Promised to improve your rankings by a certain time
- Guaranteed that you’d see certain benefits
- Sold you the idea that their service would absolutely work
You should also check their website to see how they promote their services – do they mention any guarantees on there or claim that clients will see certain results? If they did any of this, you are absolutely entitled to request a refund or take legal action.
Did Their Work Damage Your Business?
On the other hand, if the agency made no claims or promises about delivering results, then you can’t always request refunds or take legal action. Instead, you should look at whether their work damaged your business in any way.
The most common example is that they used black hat SEO techniques that penalized your website.
Effectively, this means they used illegal means to try to boost your ranking, to the point where search engines flag and blacklist your site. It makes it nigh-on impossible for you to rank well now, and they’re not allowed to do that. In this circumstance, you can take action to get your money back.
Reclaiming Your Lost Investment
If you feel like the SEO agency has cost you valuable money and breached their promises or claims, you can take them to court to gain a refund plus any additional compensation for the damages caused. You’ll need an expert witness to support your case, which is a special type of SEO expert who’s been involved in litigation before and can present the facts to a judge. Essentially, they will prove that the SEO agency has done wrong by you and that you deserve a full refund plus compensation.
Don’t fancy going to court? That’s fair, but your only other option is to contact the agency or freelancer and request a full refund. They might agree to this, purely to save face and avoid a highly negative review from your business. Also, if they promised things beforehand, then some agencies will have a money-back guarantee. This means you are entitled to a full refund, provided they’ve not delivered on their promises as part of the money-back guarantee.
In summary, you could be entitled to a refund or compensation if an SEO agency doesn’t produce results, but it depends on what they stipulated beforehand. If you signed up for a service that didn’t make any promises, you’ve got no leg to stand on – unless they used black hat/illegal techniques that have damaged your website. In that case, you’re also allowed to seek legal action.