Match the agency to how you sell. Online stores and lead-generation companies with room to invest should look at Coalition Technologies, brands that want SEO tied to paid media and creative at Wpromote, law firms at Hennessey Digital, medical and dental practices at Zevi Digital, and smaller Valley businesses that want an all-in-one local team at Melleka Marketing. Whoever you choose, ask how the agency produces content, who reviews it, how it builds links and what happens to the work if you part ways, and make sure any chat widget or tracking code it adds to your site follows California’s rules.
What do Google’s spam policies mean when you hire an SEO agency?
In March 2024 Google added spam policies aimed at tactics some agencies still sell. Scaled content abuse means generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings rather than to help users, however they are produced; site reputation abuse means publishing third-party pages on a strong site to borrow its ranking signals, a policy Google began enforcing in May 2024 and clarified in November 2024 to apply even when the host site oversees the content; and expired domain abuse means buying old domains to host low-value content. Ask any agency how many pages it plans to publish, who writes and edits them, and whether it uses expired domains or paid placements on other sites.
Can a website chatbot pretend to be a person in California?
No. California’s bot disclosure law, operative since July 1, 2019, makes it unlawful to use a bot to communicate with a person in California online with the intent to mislead them about its artificial identity in order to encourage a purchase or influence a vote, unless the bot clearly and conspicuously discloses that it is a bot. If your SEO or marketing agency adds an AI chat assistant to your site, make sure it identifies itself as automated.
Do tracking pixels have to respect browser privacy signals?
For businesses covered by California’s privacy law that sell or share personal information, including through some advertising pixels, yes. The California Attorney General has said businesses must treat opt-out requests sent through user-enabled global privacy controls, such as the Global Privacy Control browser setting, the same as clicks on a “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” link, and in August 2022 Sephora agreed to pay $1.2 million in a settlement that included its failure to process those signals. When an agency installs analytics or ad tags, ask how they will honor these opt-outs.
