Ramona
I find it troubling that you need to tell them all this. A SEO consultant should know that technical SEO is important, the loading speed is mandatory to be as fast as possible, backlinks are good, indeed, but the on-site SEO should be also top-notch. If I need to hand-hold my SEO users, I'd look for someone else. I work as a medical SEO consultant and my clients don't have to do anything, just to send me some photos / info and see my reports / strategies. I mean that's why I get the big bucks, to let them manage their business, not have to tell me what to do 🙁
Michahu
Fire them. They should be doing a lot more than just backlinks. They should be taking the lead with all the questions you asked and explaining it to you. Find a reputable SEO.
Cadman » Michahu
Without knowing the site this is a ludicrous answer.
Michahu
I'm going by the balance of probabilities. There is a 0.000001% chance that on page optimization has been done properly by someone who knows nothing about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Molina
HOLD ON
(1) Are they only doing backlinks? And where did you meet these people, online? A lot of scammy SEO is done by people overseas who use cheap backlinks tactics which could hurt your business in the long run.
(2) If they are American, what did your conversation with them sound like? How big is their company? Is this just the phase that they are on? I'm not calling you out but to put it in perspective SEO isn't an overnight job and a lot of business owners are paying good money for SEO so they think they should be getting immediate results when that's generally not the case. Most companies have a concise plan and estimate 1 to 3 months before results.
(3) When you hired them did they ONLY offer backlink creation? A lot of cheap SEO "companies" are one trick ponies meant to get you a quick result that in the long run doesn't last. Check your contract. If there isn't a contract then lesson learned.
Kaul ^✍️
We didn't make any contracts
Molina » Kaul
If it's okay, can I ask if you are a large or small business?
Kaul ^✍️ » Molina
Very small business based in India, we hired indian company and we are paying $500 a month. Believe it or not, it's a lot of money here. They also seem to dominate all words related to SEO in Google India
Phil » Kaul
The question is .. for how long will they dominate?
I found a company high up for SEO in New York. I did some research. They'd recently started the company and pumped it full of dreadful links.
By the time they stop ranking (Google will find them out), they'll have convinced a lot of customers to part with a lot of money.
BE CAREFUL!
Kasey
It just depends on what type of business you run! Did they lay out their service suite and strategy with you during onboarding? For instance, I work with local service-based businesses, so our service program is specific to them + outlines every piece of the puzzle – It's a pre determined service suite that they know about up front.
Kaul ^✍️
They just have various packages listed on their website, I can pm you what i bought
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Patricio ^🎓
Fire them lmao
if you need to tell them what to do, they are shit. If they think ranking is based only on how many links you have, you need to fire them immediately. This will hurt your website like it's not even funny. You would see yourself de-ranked if they made you 100+ links all of a sudden in a month. I know an enterprise that did that and had a company create 300+ backlinks for them. They saw themselves to Page 8 of Google after a month and it resulted in other heavier penalties.
They need to give you results, you shouldn't have to worry about your SEO optimization as a whole because that is what you are paying them for. Unless of course the payment you make is only for backlinks. However if you have opted in for the full SEO suite then they are not giving you the value for your money.

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Lori Appleman ^🎓
Did they begin with a ROBUST audit or are using an audit you purchased elsewhere? Proper process- audit site for both technical and content issues. Fix main problems first. Build a core keyword list that is based on your objectives and your competitive market. THEN an internal linking and content strategy. You have to have content that is worth linking to (and you may that's part of your audit). THEN you start with backlinks.
Kaul ^✍️ » Lori Appleman
They didn't conduct any audit, I think you have pointed out a very important thing, thank you. I will tell them to present a proper SEO report.
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Lori Appleman ^🎓
lots of people claim they do Search Engine Optimization (SEO), few do it all and do it all well. But the audit is the key to determining what you need done. Even there, there's quick audits – I can run an SEMrush audit and report the same day with a list of stuff, some important some not so much. But good SEO audits use far more tools than this including speed tools, Google Search Console (GSC), Bing Webmaster, more than one crawler, competitive and keyword research. Then you get a list of technical fixes, and both a keywords you really want, and keywords where your competitors are weak and you can score rank faster. Then there's the "write on these topics." We call it the "low hanging fruit" list. A monthly client would also either get great articles (big area many fail is they produce short, low quality content), or templates for them to write themselves.
Sachin
Let me tell u something from their side too ,
As i guess you are from India , people from other country easily pay around 1k dollar per month to their SEO's, but in India we accept someone to do the same work for 5k to 10k, this is where the issues come, quality has price so if u r paying some normal to a good amount then it is justifiable ,
The third thing is they didn't tell u and u didn't ask also to them that how will you improve your site, why did u on the first hand gave your site to him, on what basis you gave them your site?
In a clap, both hands are used.
Waiting for ur reply for more clarification.
Kaul ^✍️ » Sachin
Paying close to 25000 inr.
Also cost of living in India is very low and all my competitors are Indians using Indian SEO
Sachin
Then u have got the wrong SEO,
It was ur responsibility to inquire from them isn't it?
Mike ^🎓
If you have to tell them what to do, you hired the wrong company.
Jason
They should be telling you what they are going to do and why. They shouldn't need you to tell them what to do. If they are only link building I would question them. That is important, but is that going to increase the number of keywords. your website ranks for? Probably not
Devik
Backlinks are important but that doesn't make them prioritize On Page as well as Technical part.
Ask them to fully optimized on page as well as Technical part no matter the amount you are paying. Because unless your on page and technical part is not best, backlinks are just a subsidiary.
Tell them to half their efforts on backlinking and start working on other aspects also otherwise just change the company.
There are tons of other companies out there, you just need to Google it.
Cadman » Devik
This is OK but if the competition have loads more links that are giving them that place. Emulating this is the only way forward once on page SEO has been utilised. The client needs to ask them what their approach is to get them to their goal.
Anurag
The balance of on-page and off page SEO should be 70:30. Always give importance to your on page parameters like User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), missing alt tags in images, meta tags, title optimization, description optimization, included your business related schema, keywords research and positioning, content gap, info-graphics inclusion, speed, removing unnecessary scripts, internal linking, social media inclusion, citations, and much more. Backlinks work but sometimes for easy and fast results SEO agencies creates bulk backlinks which is bad in long run. Google checks age and content when you start ranking in top for not so easy keywords. If found violating there norms then can hand over you a manual penalty.

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