[kugelblitz]

I suppose hiring an SEO agency to do marketing is like hiring a painter to remodel a house to sell it.

You sort of already decided what you want to focus on. But maybe the remodeling needs other things first, e.g. someone to clear out the stuff to clear the pathways, add new furniture, redo some of the floors, redo the tiles in the bathroom.

Same with the site, maybe you need someone to optimize the web site performance, maybe you need to create a funnel and several landing pages, maybe more marketing in LinkedIn groups.

SEO is important, but it should be part of a holistic approach towards marketing.

And if it looks spammy to you, it most likely is. I'd stop the cooperation immediately to prevent further reputational damage. Don't just check page views, but also if people are staying longer, clocking through the site, ordering anything, etc.

[qax]

Agreed. We have a marketing strategy and SEO is just a part of it. I asked only about SEO since I found SEO to be the most opaque and hardest to calculate ROI on.