FoundlyAgency

Plain language

What the jargon actually means.

A client once asked us what “20 social bookmarks + 5 image links + 1 guest post” was supposed to do for them. The honest answer was: almost nothing. So we wrote this — every term we use in public, in words you can check, with a verdict on whether the thing is worth money.

Including the things we sell. One of the entries below is about a service we used to charge for and stopped, because we could not show it worked.

Checking whether it worked

The four numbers that tell you the truth. All free, all yours.

Google Search Console

A free Google dashboard that shows what people typed into Google before they landed on your website — and how many actually clicked.

It is the only place the truth lives. Not a report an agency typed up for you: Google's own numbers, in your own account. If someone is doing SEO for you and you do not have this login, you cannot check a single thing they tell you.

Our verdict — worth it

Free, and it belongs to you, not your agency. Of the twelve Malaysian firms whose packages we read, seven never mention connecting it at all. Ask for the login on day one.

Impressions vs clicks

An impression means your link appeared on someone's screen. A click means they actually came to your website. They are wildly different numbers.

A real example from one of our own clients: 4,180 impressions in 41 days, and 61 clicks. That is 1.5 people a day. Publishing the 4,180 and leaving out the 61 would have been true in every word and false as a whole — which is exactly how this industry usually presents results.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

If a case study shows you impressions without clicks beside it, that is the tell. Ask for the click number. There is one reason it was left out.

Indexed

Google has crawled your page, decided it is worth keeping, and put it in the library it searches. A page that is not indexed cannot appear for anything, ever.

Published is not indexed. Plenty of pages get written, paid for, and never make it in — and almost nobody checks, because checking requires the Search Console login most clients never receive.

Our verdict — worth it

This is the one part of SEO almost entirely within an agency's control, which is why it is the one part we guarantee: indexed within 14 days, screenshot sent, or that month is free.

Search term (query)

The actual words a person typed into Google. Not what you wish they typed.

The list of search terms bringing people to you is the most useful page in Search Console, because it tells you what your customers actually call the thing you sell — which is very often not what you call it.

Our verdict — worth it

Watch whether this list gets longer over months. A growing list means new doors are opening. It is a better health check than any single ranking position.

Being found locally

For a shop with an address, this often matters more than the website.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

The business card Google shows on the right-hand side when someone searches your shop name — with your phone number, opening hours, photos and reviews. It is free, and it is separate from your website.

For a local business this is often the biggest free source of customers, and it bypasses your website entirely: people read the card, tap the phone number, and call. That traffic never shows up in website analytics, which is why businesses routinely under-count it.

Our verdict — worth it

Free, and for a shop with a physical address it usually matters more than the website does.

GBP posts ("4 posts a month")

Short updates you can publish onto that Google business card. They sink out of view after about a week.

This is one of the most commonly sold line items in Malaysian monthly packages, because it is easy to produce and easy to count. What is rarely said out loud: Google has never confirmed that posts affect where you rank.

Our verdict — mostly worthless

We used to sell this and we stopped. What actually moves the map pack is reviews and correct information — so that is what we do instead, and you can count the reviews at month end. If a package leads with post count, ask what evidence they have that it works.

Map pack (local 3-pack)

The box of three businesses Google shows on a little map, above the normal results, when a search looks local.

Those three slots take most of the clicks on local searches. What gets you in is mostly distance, review volume and rating, and how complete and consistent your business information is — not how often you post.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

Worth working towards, but be suspicious of anyone who guarantees a slot. One of our clients holds two of the three positions in their area — that came from fifty years of trading and 290 reviews, not from anything an agency did.

Content and languages

How new doors get opened — and how packages get compared unfairly.

hreflang

A tag that tells Google "this English page and this Chinese page are the same page in different languages" — so it shows the right one to the right person.

Without it, your language versions can end up competing with each other, and Google may treat them as duplicates. With it, a Malaysian searching in 中文 gets the Chinese page and someone searching in English gets the English one.

Our verdict — worth it

Essential the moment you have more than one language — and routinely missing. Of thirteen Malaysian firms whose pricing pages we read, none mentioned it. We also shipped 39 pages with a broken version of it ourselves before we caught it.

"10 keywords" pricing

Charging by how many search phrases they promise to work on. Twenty-six of the twenty-nine Malaysian packages we priced are sold this way.

The problem is that keywords are not equal units. "Plumber Subang Jaya" and "plumber Malaysia" are one keyword each, and one of them is perhaps fifty times harder. A count tells you nothing about difficulty, and it is the buyer who cannot tell the difference.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

Not dishonest by itself, but it makes packages look comparable when they are not. If you are quoted a keyword count, ask which keywords, and go type them into Google yourself to see who you would have to beat.

Links — where the money quietly goes

The least visible part of any package, and the easiest to pad.

Social bookmarking ("20 bookmarks")

Submitting your web address to bookmark sites like Pinterest or Reddit to manufacture links pointing at you.

A technique from around 2010. Links from these sites are usually marked nofollow, which explicitly tells Google not to treat them as a recommendation, and bulk submissions have been treated as spam since Google's Penguin update in 2012. Twenty of them is about twenty minutes of mechanical work.

Our verdict — mostly worthless

Close to worthless, and it is padding a lot of Malaysian packages right now. We are stating industry consensus and Google's published policy here, not a test we ran ourselves — but if a package leads with a bookmark count, that is what you are paying for.

Directory listings ("40 classified ads")

Submitting your business details to online directories and listing sites.

This splits sharply in two. Real directories — Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, industry associations — are worth doing, because consistent name, address and phone across them is something Google genuinely uses. Junk directories, the ones anyone can post to for free, are worth nothing.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

In all of Malaysia there are maybe ten to twenty directories worth being in. So when a package promises forty, the arithmetic tells you which kind they are — there aren't forty good ones to submit to.

Guest post

An article published on someone else's website, with a link back to yours.

This is the one item on the usual list that can be genuinely valuable — if the host site has real readers. If it is a site that exists to sell placements, the link is worth nothing and buying it is against Google's published policy on link schemes.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

Everything depends on where it lands, and the price tells you a lot. Ask which site, then go read that site and see whether anyone else is reading it.

Domain Authority / DR

A 0–100 score invented by SEO tool companies (Moz, Ahrefs) to estimate how strong a website is.

Useful for rough comparison. It is worth being clear about one thing: Google does not use these scores. They are a third party's guess at Google's opinion, and they are frequently quoted in sales decks as though they came from Google.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

Fine as a rough gauge, misleading as a target. A low score on a site that gets real customers is not a problem worth paying to fix.

What you actually pay

SST

Malaysia's Sales and Service Tax — 8% on digital and advertising services, charged by providers who are SST-registered.

Whether it lands on your invoice depends on whether the provider is registered, so an unregistered small agency and a registered larger one can quote the same number and cost you 8% apart.

Our verdict — depends entirely on execution

Only two of the twelve firms we audited state their SST position anywhere. Two questions settle it: are you SST-registered, and does your quote include it?

Why this page exists

Confusion is the product being sold.

If you cannot tell what a line item does, you cannot tell whether it was worth the money, and you cannot tell whether it was done at all. That is not an accident in this industry — it is the business model. Every package that leads with a count of something is counting on you not asking what the something is.

It took us a month of full-time work to understand some of the terms on this page. Expecting a business owner to understand them while being sold to is not a fair fight, so we wrote down the answers instead.

See what we charge, in the same plain language

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