Daniel
3 months is NOT long enough.
2000 gbp is nothing for proper SEO.
Why did you sign a contract for 12 months?

Cody
We have ZERO idea what they were doing for you / we don't know your industry or location to conclude specific types of variables.
$2000 over 3 months is really nothing though. We need more info specific to what's going on before we can give any real input

Daniel
Going to take a lot longer than 3 months, especially with a budget that small.
Also, the reality is that no one can guarantee results with Google without fail. They can do what seems like all of the right things a Google update comes along and rewrite the rules.
Unless they guaranteed specific results and it's in a contract I'd say you have very little hope of seeing anything back and as long as they're doing work that's fair. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn't a golden bullet, unfortunately.
Aasim
Sorry to hear that. Did you also checked the rankings for the keywords? While budget is on the lower side, there must be some improvement.

Quinton
Let's start with a Google search of "how long does SEO take?" The 90 day concern is a very real thing with clients. I try to make sure to schedule a call to address it.
I understand the fear. SEO can be a black box. Express your concerns to your agency and let them step up and provide a better explanation of the timeframes and the actions they are taking to move the campaign forward.
Ask them why they feel your campaign is declining. You are in a YMYL niche. How are they building the authority you need to play in this niche? Also, the site received an algorithmic penalty in December. Id' want them to speak to that.
One of the big concerns with the campaign is why the /tagged/ pages are still showing up in Google. That can really hurt an ecom site.
Good luck on the campaign. Hopefully this helps you have a productive conversation with them.

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James
From the thread, there is a lot to take in here.
Just because there is no uptick in analytics, does not necessarily mean they are doing a bad job. If your pages were nowhere to be seen within the first 100 results and they've managed to get this to say page 2/3, you will still see no users come from that search but there has been major progress.
However looking in Google Search Console under impressions will help you discover if there has been some increase over the past month(s).
Now, with that being said that is under the assumption that rankings have increased which may also not be true.
I would ask what they've done for the budget you've handed over and what's the roadmap. Some companies are skeptical to give this information over though but it may shed some light.
Really they should be keeping you up to date with which keywords they're tracking and the progression of these rankings monthly.
With SEO you are playing the long game and it can take at least several months to start seeing major impacts for the website. It's also difficult to comment considering we don't know what keywords are being targeted and the competition level.
Ultimately people can comment as much as they want but you'd need someone to look into it much further before commenting on facts.

Dave
Note for next time (if you ever do it again) if the contract has a get out clause or minimum time frame, they are going to cheat you 🤷‍♂️

Ember
What results are / were you expecting? Are leads or sakes coming in? Reduced metrics might mean reduced clutter and unqualified traffic. Keyword rankings don't mean a lot. What kind of reports are you getting? 3 months is tip of the iceberg and $2k is a VERY small budget depending on your SOW. Is it just on-page SEO? What about technical SEO, local, off-page, content marketing? What's driving traffic to your site?

Ogletree
If you are making all changes they request quickly then they are bad. If you don't know what they have done run. At this point they should have improved your site speed and added content.

Justin
lol! That's like suing the radio station because the ad you bought didn't give you more calls. You're paying for marketing assistance and there isn't any legal recourse here unless there was a promize made. In that case it'd be breach of contract and the terms would be outlined in the contract for what happens then.

Steve
Not a lawyer, but my first question would be what does the contract actually say they will do? Very unlikely they would guarantee rankings or traffic.

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Fahim
3 months is not enough actually. And without the URL, can't even say what they missed doing right. Whether it's they didn't do the right thing or did it right but just waiting to see the result, can't say without looking at the site
Abbas
SEO company can't make people come to the site if consumer demand is down. And it probably is. You need to bear that in mind.

Mike
Not to be a jerk, but if you want legal advice on getting out of a contract, you really should be talking to a lawyer and not us idiots in an SEO Facebook Group.
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Roger
NOBODY can guarantee rankings. As I understand it, and you should consult with an attorney, a contract is not only invalid if the outcome depends on a third party who is not a party to the contract, but in many places that kind of contract is illegal. In this case, the third party is Google.
For example, you can't sign a contract with a client to guarantee them that Joe Blow will fall in love with the client within sixty days.
You may also have some standing if their practices violate Google's Guidelines for best practices. In which case you COULD have standing to claim malpractice on their part, but you'll have to consult with an attorney or slug it out in small claims court (if the dollar amount qualifies).
I know that in the Local Search space there are many parasites who call themselves SEO users whose only activity is to generate an end of month report documenting all the keywords the client ranked for in the previous month. That's all. Zero work.
This is a scam that has been going on for awhile now. I first noticed it around 2003 when a client, the CEO of a B2B, referred his uncle to me who it turned out was being scammed by someone in Scottsdale, AZ. I helped turn his local based business around for him and he sold it to a dotcommer a few years later.
$2,000 for three months of work is not much money so I suspect that they probably haven't been doing much.
Alejandro
Please don't take this the wrong way, but been at both sides of the SEO agency world for quite a while (client, daily, SEO provider, daily) and here's my 2 cents.
1. Deliverables – What have they done on the site over the last 3 months?
2. Does it match the roadmap they gave you, or come close to?
3. Keyword movements. Where did you start at (total keywords, and position of your main targets) and where are you? This is a fundamental KPI.
Also note:
A) 12 month contracts typically mean what Steve above me just said. "We'll do a f*ckload at the beginning and have 0 profit, the site will eventually pick up, and we will do a little less and make profit over the 2nd half of the contract"
😎 We don't know how fundamentally f*cked up your SEO was to start with.
C) $2k for 3 months is the tiniest budget ever. EDIT: seen you're in Health & Hemp. Then even $2k/mo is insufficient for a decent agency to even fire up Ahrefs.
Ultimately I see:
That the agency didn't set proper expectations in terms of results, timeline, roadmap, deliverables.
That your base expectations are also entirely off. Both from an SEO and a legal POV.
Keith L Evans ^🎓
Advice for Everyone: choose SEO users who don't use contracts. Lots of us do it.
You will pay experts who deliver results. No agreements necessary.
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Reece
Look beyond traffic. I've tanked somebody's traffic but increased their revenue on many an occasion. It's a strategic move to nix useless traffic and bring in traffic that'll convert.
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Andrew ^🎓 » Wick
I want to make sure you ask the right questions before you seek to terminate.
1. Local SEO is primarily about the GMB and you shouldn't look too closely to Google Analytics as the barometer of success.
2. Did any of your URLs need to change during the 3-month campaign? Rankings will drop initially when the URL structure changes.
3. Has the company given you a view into the project management dashboard so you know what they are working on?
4. Do you have a rank tracker currently active and does it tell the same story as the above screenshot?
5. SEO gains typically take around 4 months and major wins usually take around 6-8 months (depending on the budget).
I don't know the company but I want to make sure you aren't jumping the gun. If you'd like me to review the website and evaluate their work, I'm happy to do so. I've done most of my work for the month so I have a bit of free time I was about to spend on learning a new course. If you get back to me before April 1 I'll have time. Anytime after that and I can't do it.
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Bea RG
To be fair, 2k over 3 months for health and hemp niche is super tiny.
On the other hand we are working on the SEO for a client in that same industry and have seen better results. We are investing a lot on content and Backlinks though.

Jeff
Haven't used a contract in 14 years , if I don't deliver within a discussed time period , I'm ok with them leaving and confident I can replace them, Altho it's never really happened 🤔 I also hand pick my clients over a decent sized education session on SEO and my methods including setting expectations… this is where I intentionally drop comments that are a test to hear their response. If they respond with odd?'s & comments about wanting to rank unrealistically, or for a dream budget… then I have in the past taken a pass. Life's too short to not work with great people and companies.

Scott
I never make my clients sign long term contracts. That means that I have to earn their trust each and every month by getting results and justifying my expense to them. You should ask for a report of what they have done. Although $2k may be small beans to some, it is a lot of money to others and you deserve an explanation.
Jeff
What the name of the agency?

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Brent
Hey Adam, I see this very often. See, the really hard thing is vetting an SEO company because the bar to become an SEO is as low as calling yourself an SEO. Nobody checks. They use fancy terms, and throw some metrics at you in order to get you as far. I am more than willing to check what is wrong, and what they did. (Audit their work) but for 865 a month, I don't believe they should have signed you. I did the same thing in my early days when I began… and what agencies often forget is that you actually need some budget in order to book some results. Of course, many factors are at play here and I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong but we can't say much without having an idea of what's going on here.
Colman » Wick
I am going to be straight with you. 2k is bare bones and opting out of a contract 2 months in is redic. If you wanted instant results you should have went with ppc or social paid (even those take months of optimization)
Now I'm not saying it's not their fault. But you need to look at the facts.
1) if you only started 2 months ago, the results above are indicators of SEO or growth BEFORE the agency took over
2) it's not all about traffic, but conversion. For instance if you are getting a large amount of traffic for a pricing page, but you are local, 95% of that traffic is pointless
3) communicate with them, ask them why and ask for keyword growth metrics to get an idea.
4) unfortunately lengthy contracts are in place for this reason, you should be building a relationship with an agency where it's a two way street. Agencies put these stipulations in place as prospects expect the world over night. Life and business doesn't work that way.
The only thing you can do is communicate with them, and if they aren't giving you the answers or results they promized, ask them for a better option for cancelling.
I'm an agency owner and I spend more on employees to do our SEO. If 1k a month doesn't fit into your 10-20% marketing budget, you most likely weren't ready to do SEO as your biz wasn't to that phase yet

Jenks
It's tough legally. No SEO can guarantee results (or shouldn't) because there are some factors we can't control. Namely what the competition is doing and what Google do.
$2000 isn't a lot unless it's just local you're looking at. Essentially, you're talking $1000 of work and $1000 profit margin. If the average hourly rate is $25 per hour for just a low-level SEO, we're talking 40 hours, but some of those will be analysis, preparing reports. Some of that will go to content creation and a large chunk will go getting links.
I work as an SEO consultant, but I don't work with clients, I only work with agencies as a strategist and consultant. So if you want, you can PM me, I'll review what they've done and let you know if I feel they're doing the right activities.
I don't think you could take legal action but you might be able to threaten it, if they haven't done a lot they might buckle and allow you to break your contract for free.
I'll give you unbiased advice, I'm not going to pitch you any services, but likewise, I'll be fair to the SEO users you hired too. Just let me know Adam » Joe Youngblood ^🎓
Your first problem is you hired a Florida based "Agency" that charged less than $2,000 in 3 months.
That's our minimum monthly rate.
Your other problem is expecting positive results in 3 months. There are few things an SEO can do to generate results that fast but there's a lot your former agency or you could have done to cause a drop.
Without knowing what work they have done and what their plan moving foward is there isn't much advice to give here except that you should wait at least 6 months before making a judgement call.
If they are not doing work that's a totally different story though…
William
If you share your website with me I'll tell you what their doing wrong. Always happy to give free advice. $2,000 for 3 months of SEO is crazy low. Anyone telling you any difference most likely can't deliver results. My minimum in $3,500 per month. But I have Tons of Google analytics accounts that show anywhere from $40k – $130k per mon in organic income.
Mark
I'm a former lawyer and my advice is to consult a lawyer, not Facebook. This is a contractual issue.
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Noah Lopata ^🎓
The budget you describe is a drop in the bucket in your niche.
Unfortunately anyone who took on the job for that price might not know any better.
That's one of the most highly competitive and dirty trick filled markets at the moment. That's not even talking about having to deal with the over optimization issues because the same word is repeated hundreds if not thousands of times per page.
I'd hire a firm with some experience in the niche that you are able to verify and expect to have a large budget to be competitive.

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Mike
3 months is too short if you are working on organic my friend… the first evaluation should be after and every 6 months.
Google is slow at updating organic results nowadays.
However if you are spending money on GMB , you should start seeing results after a month.
Eddy
more traffic and increase rankings you can only get with more content.. (it is the content that ranks in Google) ask them what content they are (have been) adding (daily/weekly/monthly) then check for correlation. You can point a finger at content, if what they promized isn't there (or doesn't look the way it should) then there is a performance problem; if mentioned in the contract (eg. publish 10 new pages per week) then performance can be tracked and measured. However hardly anybody will note down the SEO performance. Most SEO contracts are subscription- based contracts, if you don't like what they do for you then tough luck (similar to joining a book-club, you subscribe, they send you books you don't want to read, you complain and stop reading their books, despite you keep paying until your contract ends). Mike is absolutely right as well (have wait for results) but if there is no content (at all) then you can wait a very long time for nothing. You can do an SEO check the content that was created for you, but don't put all your faith in Google statistics. Cheers.
Colin
Way too soon to judge, especially if they are having to clean ur your backlink profile or undo any previous black hat. It takes months and months to see major shifts. As some one else said, every 6 months is appropriate to review.. altho I see no harm in a 3 month review to see exactly what they have done, their findings, observations and an action plan with milestones for a 6 months review.
Aaron
Step should be to talk to the SEO you hired and tell them your issue and see what their response is. I think it's fair to give them a chance to fix it. I'm assuming sales are down to accordingly… as i've been in a situation with a client where users were down, but $ sales,number of sales, return sales, items per sale and average spend were all up significantly… client complained to me about the down traffic, completely forgetting the traffic he had been getting (95%) was garbage, from the wrong location (china,russia,india,philipines) all bouncing, where i'd blocked it all and built traffic from the target market in the USA.
Note: If this regards your CBD business, my personal opinion is $2k of 3 months is a bit lite for big upward movement, however i wouldn't expect worse given Retail numbers on cbd/cannabis sales so I share your concerns
Vladimir
Such hypocrisy citing the lack of money, hibestly everyone above saying 2k is not enough is getting on my blacklist of hacks. 3 months and all results are negative? That's horrendous. Anyway, did you define deliverables in the contract?

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