In my early twenties, I worked at a black hat SEO company. I wasn’t a developer or an SEO. I was the person who called customers to ask if they were happy with the service.
A lot of them weren’t. This is what I learned from those calls, and why I’m picky about how SEO gets done now.
So what’s the difference?
SEO is the work of making your business easier to find when people search. There are two broad ways to go about it.
White hat SEO plays by the search engines’ rules. It means building a website that works, writing content that’s useful to real people, and earning links honestly. It takes time and ongoing attention. Results still depend on your market, competition, and changes to search.
Black hat SEO is about tricking the system. It’s the stuff that aims to manipulate rankings instead of earning them: stuffing a page with keywords, buying or fabricating links, hiding text, and so on. Google’s spam policies lay this out plainly. Sites that violate them may rank lower in results or not appear at all. The shortcuts don’t just stop working. They can actively hurt you.
I didn’t know any of that at the time. I just knew something felt off.
The call I still think about
One call has stuck with me for years. I was talking with an older woman who had signed up for the service because she thought she was helping her daughter. The website was supposed to be for her daughter’s business. As far as I could tell, that website didn’t exist. I never found out exactly what she’d been promised, but I know what she was being charged: around $300 a month. She didn’t even own a computer.
I cancelled her service so she wouldn’t be billed again.
Even though I was reprimanded for it, I didn’t care. I knew in my heart that what the company was doing was deceptive, and I wasn’t going to be the person who let it keep happening.
The store that ranked for the wrong thing
Then there was the musical instrument store. They’d been ranking number one, which sounds great until you find out it was for an escort service. Not guitars. Not drum kits. You can imagine how the call went. The owner threatened legal action, and honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
They were refunded in full. But think about what nearly happened there. A small business owner trusted a company to help them get found, and instead their name got attached to something they never wanted to be associated with. That’s the thing about tricks. When they backfire, the customer takes the hit.
What was really going on
My job wasn’t only callbacks. The company also wanted me to move customers’ billing from credit or debit cards over to eChecks, so they could pull money straight from the bank. It would also have made charges a lot harder to dispute.
That detail told me more about the business model than any sales pitch could. A company confident in its work doesn’t need to make it harder to dispute a charge. Good service doesn’t need a trap door.
Quietly doing the right thing
For the rest of my time there, I quietly did my own version of the job. I made sure customers were actually happy, and when they weren’t, I passed it along to my managers. If I found out a customer had already talked to a manager and was still unhappy, I’d cancel the contract again.
They needed staff, so they kept me. But it didn’t take long before I quit. It’s one of those things that quietly eats away at you until you can’t take it anymore.
How to spot the shady stuff
You don’t need to become an SEO expert to protect yourself. A few things should raise your eyebrows:
Anyone who guarantees a number one ranking is selling you something, because no one controls the search results. Be wary of agencies that email you out of the blue, which is one of the red flags Google itself lists on its “Do You Need an SEO?” page, along with the point that you should never have to link to your SEO. Be careful with anyone who can’t explain, in plain language, what they’re doing for you and why. And if the billing setup seems designed to make it hard to stop paying, walk away. Good providers don’t need to lock you in. Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO
You can learn more about how to size up a provider in our piece on why hiring SEO services makes sense for busy business owners.
What I do differently now
I started 1st Class SEO because I wanted to prove there was a better way. We explain the work, agree on the scope and price, and give you room to decide. You can choose one-time projects or individual tasks without a monthly retainer, and you don’t need a sales call to get started. Prefer email or text? That works too.
Our philosophy is simple: we don’t lock in loyalty, we earn it. If you come back for your next project, we want it to be because you remember how you were treated, not because a contract made you.
You can read more about us or browse our SEO services. If you’re not sure where to start, take our free 12-question quiz. It takes about three minutes and doesn’t ask for an email or a signup. And if a term in here tripped you up, our SEO glossary will translate.
When you’re ready to talk, reach out here. We’d love to hear about your business.
About the author: Breana Ceballos is the co-founder and CEO of 1st Class SEO. Her earlier work handling customer callbacks informs her focus on honest recommendations, clear project scopes, and respectful service.