Standards and accountability
The standard marketing agencies should be held to
The commitments we make about how work is done, how results are reported, and what we will never claim — written down so you can hold us to them.
Why this page exists
Most of what damages this industry is not incompetence
It is misrepresentation. Reports built on metrics that sound impressive and mean nothing. Rankings claimed for searches nobody makes. Links bought on a client’s domain without telling them, leaving the risk with the client and the fee with the agency. Contracts written so the client cannot leave with their own website.
None of that requires bad people. It requires an incentive to look successful and no obligation to be checked. So the useful thing an agency can do is write down what it will and will not do, in specific terms, and accept being held to it.
The commitments below cost us work. That is what makes them worth publishing.
How work gets done
Commitments about the work
We commit to
- Publishing only content a named person has reviewed and is willing to stand behind
- Sourcing every statistic we publish, with a link and a date
- Building sites that meet published performance and accessibility thresholds, not "as fast as we could get it"
- Recommending the cheaper option when it is the right one
- Telling you early when something is not working
- Leaving you with every account, asset and document in your name
We will never
- Buy, exchange or rent links that pass ranking signals
- Publish content we would not put our own name on
- Create thin location or industry pages by swapping nouns
- Write, buy, incentivise or gate reviews
- Mark up content with structured data the page does not visibly support
- Hold a website, domain or profile hostage at the end of a contract
How results get reported
Commitments about claims
This is where most of the industry’s dishonesty lives. These are the specific claims we refuse to make, including ones that would help us win business.
What we will tell you
- What we expected to happen, and whether it did
- Which work produced the movement, and which did not
- Where the numbers are uncertain, and why
- When a channel is not earning its budget
- When a competitor is simply better resourced than you in a category
What we will never claim
- A specific ranking position on any search engine
- A traffic, lead, sales or revenue figure before the work exists to support it
- A guaranteed return on ad spend
- Guaranteed appearance or citation in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity
- A special relationship with Google, Microsoft or any platform
- Awards, client counts, team size or results totals we cannot substantiate
Use this on anyone
Questions worth asking any agency, including us
If you are comparing agencies, these questions separate the ones with a method from the ones with a pitch. The answers should be specific and given without hesitation.
- Who owns the accounts, the content and the code if we stop working together?
- What exactly will you deliver in the first ninety days?
- Which of your recommendations would you drop first if my budget halved?
- How do you build links, in detail, and would you show me the last ten you earned?
- What would make you tell me to stop spending with you?
- Who writes the content, and who reviews it for accuracy?
- How does your reporting reconcile with what my CRM says?
- What have you promised that did not happen, and what did you do about it?
Hold us to this
If you are considering working with us, bring the questions above to the strategy call. If we cannot answer them clearly, you have learned something useful.
If we don't deliver the work we agreed to deliver for reasons within our control, you don't pay for the undelivered work. Read our guarantee
Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal