What are red flags when hiring a web agency?

"We guarantee page one" is a sales pattern: nobody controls the ranking systems, and we do not promise it either. Buying or incentivizing reviews is a policy violation, prohibited by Google's contribution policies. Review or AggregateRating markup on the agency's own site is a policy violation — Google prohibits the self-serving kind. A city page per town with the name swapped is a policy violation, and it is the spam policies' own description of doorway pages.

No copyright assignment clause is an ownership default: under 17 USC 101 a website is not automatically work made for hire. The domain registered in their name is an ownership default too — ICANN gives the registrant the rights, not the builder. And a $99-a-month AI ranking tool is a sales pattern: the risk lands on your domain, not their tool.

Those two ownership rows are why our own clients register their own domains, in their own name, on their own card, on day one.

Not policy violations, and they cost more over five years. No named deliverable in the monthly: "SEO and maintenance" is a category, not work — ask what happened last month and what changed because of it.

Results with no exported data. A case study whose numbers cannot be traced to a Search Console or analytics export is a claim. Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides an advertiser needs substantiation for what an endorsement conveys, so asking for it is asking for something they should already hold.

And agreement with everything in the sales call. An agency that will not tell you a page is unnecessary is selling pages.

This is how the statute and the policies read; it is not legal advice, and a contract question is a question for a lawyer.