My client paid a guy in Tampa $500 for "SEO" and got 40 blog posts written by AI
Found this out last Tuesday when I audited a bakery owner's site after she hired me to fix her rankings. Her traffic dropped 60% in 3 months and when I checked her backlink profile, it was full of spun content on sites like "best-recipe-tips-247.info". The worst part is the guy told her Google "loves fresh content" so he pumped out 40 posts in 2 weeks. I see this same mistake from small business owners constantly, they think volume beats quality every time. Has anyone else had to clean up a mess like this for a client?
My cousin ran a food truck in Austin and dropped $800 on something just like this back in 2021. The guy set her up with 60 posts about "best tacos near me" that all said the same five things in different order. Google tanked her site by Thanksgiving and she had to start a whole new domain, which meant losing 4 years of reviews and photos. The funny part is her sales barely moved during all of it because her regulars just follow the truck on Instagram. So the SEO mess hurt her website but her actual business was fine, which tells you how much those rankings really mattered for a truck parked at the same spot every day. Still felt bad watching her panic over it though.