The Ultimate Guide to Avoiding Roofing SEO Scams

The next thing they do after watching the course is starting to hammer business owners with phone calls and emails offering expert SEO services. And one of their main targets happen to be roofers.

I hear you saying: “Why roofers?!”

Well, the majority of local SEO courses that are currently available take roofing as the main example. Sometimes it’s dentists or lawyers, but in most cases it’s roofers. The roofing niche is presented as fairly easy and at the same time very profitable.

They say that since an average price of a roof is around $10,000-$15,000, you only need to get roofers one lead, and your SEO services have paid off.

This, of course, is very far from the truth since the profit margin of that 10-15 thousand is only 20-30%. But – they don’t know that. 

Seeing the roofing industry as an easy target, the majority of the SEO rookies find their victims there. In the dental or lawyer industry, the competition is very stiff and things are simply too difficult for them to handle.

Affordable Price, In-credible Value (Pun Intended)

Another card these rookies are playing on is affordability. That’s why they’ll win you over with wordy pitches and some REALLY great prices.

I mean, who would turn down $500 or $1,000-dollar deals that promise to bring you tens of thousands of dollars in revenue?

What you don’t know is that they’ll do just a couple of hours of very basic SEO and tell you (this is the true part) you’ll be able to see the results in a few months.

So you’ll keep paying them for the next 3-6 months and wait for the results to start showing. But – [SPOILER ALERT] there won’t be any.

Of course, once you realize you’ve been scammed, you’ll fire them. But they won’t really care because they’ve already taken your money and probably moved on to the next client.

And that’s how the scamming circle continues.

How to Recognize an SEO Fraud?

As much as 75% of SEOs are scammers, wannabe gurus, and inexperienced beginners. About 15% are high-level, globally-oriented agencies that don’t deal with local contractors.

That leaves you with only about 10% of dedicated SEO professionals who know how to work with local roofing contractors and how to do SEO.

The trick question is: how to tell whether your chosen agency belongs to the above mentioned 75%?

Here are the three main things that tell them apart:

1. They Offer SEO Services for a Couple Hundred Bucks a Month

Scammers will offer their SEO services for as little as $500. While that might look like a great deal, you first need to understand the amount of work that goes into SEO and compare the work with the price.

On average, a solid SEO campaign, done by a real marketing company, will require somewhere around 50 to 150 hours of work a month, even when the competition is not that tough.

You can’t expect someone to do any kind of quality work working for 5 bucks an hour. That’s not even minimum wage, which means it’s a scam from the get-go.

If working at a minimum wage, it already amounts to somewhere around $1,000 or more. This is still too low because you can’t expect a person who is supposed to increase your income to work for the same wage (or less) as the person flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

2. They Offer Predefined SEO Packages and Plans

Another thing you should steer clear from is SEO packages and fixed prices. Why? Well because every niche is different, every industry, every city, every market is different, demanding different approaches, techniques, and amounts of SEO efforts.

Professional SEO agencies will never have fixed prices and packages because they know how SEO works.

They know they have to make an estimate, strategize with the client, research their market, define long-term goals, understand what the client wants and needs, define a strategy and dive into the project. It is only then that the price can be defined.

Those who have predefined $500, $1,000, $1,500-packages, clearly don’t know how SEO works.

I mean, how can you know how much work an SEO campaign will require, what you will need to do for the client’s specific market, to rank them for their specific keywords, if you haven’t talked to your client, if you haven’t had a meeting, if you don’t know what their goal is for the next 12-36 months?

3. They Don’t Have Case Studies or References on Their Website

If the SEO agency doesn’t have case studies or references from previous clients on their website or in the offers they’ve sent you – make sure to ask for some.

Many roofers tend to overlook this, but it is extremely important and also one of the best ways of determining whether the company is legitimate or they’re certified scammers.

You need some proof that they have experience in your area, that they have successfully managed other SEO campaigns, and that their previous clients were satisfied with them.

So look for some case studies, or ask them to provide you with contacts of at least one or two former clients that you can call, and that will confirm and verify the SEO agency’s credibility.

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What to Look for Then?

Look for a roofing SEO company that offers complete marketing services. A company that will take care of every last detail and manage all the marketing efforts for you, from building the perfect web page, to creating the perfect ads.

Look for a company that provides results and reports them to you regularly. A company that adapts to the changes in the market, to the changes that Google frequently implements in their algorithms, and a company that understands the need to constantly adapt and improve.

A Few Examples of SEO Scammers

1. Use Our SEO Services, You’ll Get a FREE Roofing Website

First of all, I’d like to mention a company that often comes up in my correspondence with roofers.

They claim to be “talented local search experts” and “webmasters”, but they’re also talented in scamming local roofing business all over the US.

This company offers a FREE website to anyone who subscribes to uses their SEO services.

Fast forward a few months later when you decide you no longer need their SEO services and you want to finalize the cooperation.

That’s when you get burned with an unexpected surprise: you are not getting your website until you pay them the activation fee that was supposed to be free – $1,500 to be specific.     

Hey, that’s $1,500 for something that was originally FREE, according to the contract and the deal you made.

So there you have it – you either pay them to get your website, or pay someone else to build you a new one. Either way – you are losing money, and these scammers just move on to the next victim.

2. We Have Very Transparent SEO Packages that Provide Real Value

Here I will give you an example of a pricing structure I found, which I believe is complete nonsense.

(Remember: The package offer is already a warning sign in itself.)

This company’s SEO pricing structure is 6 mouse scrolls long. If you know nothing about SEO, the sheer length of the chart and the number of items it contains will make you feel confident that their packages provide real value for your money.

But let’s just stop for a moment and look at some of the items (commenting on all of them would make for another, separate blog post):

 Pricing: On the one hand not enough to manage a real SEO campaign, on the other hand too much for the things included in the package.

 Number of keyphrases optimized: Why only 80/150/300? Why not all of them? You can’t know what people will type into Google. You’re paying for more clients each month, not for rankings.

 Google Analytics Setup W/ Conversion Tracking: You can set it up in 5 minutes.

 Creation and registrations of sitemap.xml: Sitemaps are automatically generated by any of the available online tools in a matter of seconds.

 Optimization of robots.txt & GoogleBot crawls: Done in a few minutes by adding or removing a few lines of text.

 Ongoing Quarterly Keyword Reporting: You can track keyword rankings yourself completely free.

 Keyword Rank Checker Access with Weekly Updates: Once again, you can track keywords yourself completely free.

I could go on to cover at least half of the items on their list, but it would be a separate blog post so I’ll just stop here.

3. We Have Plenty of Real Customer Testimonials

Now, this SEO company claims to offer “professional services” and “proven results”, and their Testimonials page is supposed to back up these claims.

But when you have a look at it, it just screams: Run, run as fast as you can.

Fake names, no surnames, no business references, poor English… A picture is worth a thousand words so I’ll just leave this here:

Final Piece of Advice

Finally, roofers, never hire agencies that don’t have experience in the roofing industry, that don’t know the difference between different types of roofs, between commercial and residential roofing, the types of roofing leads you are after, and where you can make the most out of your money.

They need to know about certain aspects of roofing and the services you offer in order to rank for the right keywords in the right location, and to get your money’s worth.

If you need any help, advice, or additional information on the subject, or have some suspicions about the agencies you are working with, feel free to contact me, or let me know in the comments below. I’ll be glad to help.