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Glossary · Agency & pricing

white-label SEO

Also called white label agency

Reviewed 31 Oct 2026 By Madiha Fatima 3 min read Check it yourself: yes, free

3 min
Definition

White-label SEO is search work done by one company and sold to you under another company's name. Your web designer or marketing agency signs the contract, a subcontractor you never meet does the keyword research, writing and links, and the reports arrive with the front company's logo on them. The practice itself is legal and common.

The problem is not the arrangement but the silence around it. You cannot judge the people doing the work, you pay a mark-up for the hand-off and when results stall nobody in the room can explain why.

Short version: someone else's work, sold under the name on your invoice.
Why it matters for your business

Ask who is actually
touching your site.

White-label SEO is how a one-person web design studio can offer full-service SEO overnight. The studio resells a package from a wholesale provider, often overseas, and adds its margin. You are now two companies away from the person writing your pages, and the scope of work you signed was written by someone who has never seen your business.

The risks are practical. Reseller packages tend to be the same for a dental clinic and a plumber, so the content is generic. The cheap link packages inside them are where link insertions and paid links come from, and a penalty lands on your domain, not the reseller's. When you ask a question, the answer takes a week because it has to travel down the chain and back.

A fair arrangement is disclosed. The agency tells you who does what, you can speak to that person and the fee reflects that two parties are involved. Everything on our price list is done in house by the people you meet on the call, which is the standard we would suggest you hold anyone to.

Example

A Shopify store buys SEO
from its web designer.

What the owner sees

The designer who built the store offers a monthly SEO add-on. Reports arrive on the designer's letterhead: keywords tracked, blog posts published, links acquired. The posts read oddly and mention products the store does not sell.

What is happening

The designer resells a wholesale SEO package. A content farm writes the posts from the product titles alone. The links acquired are paid placements on sites nobody reads. When the store's traffic drops after a Google update, the designer cannot say why, because the designer did not do the work. The fix starts with one question: who wrote this post?

How to check it on your site

Four questions that reveal a white label.

Tick each one as you go. 0 of 4 checked on your site.

  1. Ask for the name of the person doing the work

    A good answer is a name, a role and the offer of a call with them. A bad answer is "our SEO team" or "our partners". Partners means a different company.

  2. Ask to see the writer's other work

    In-house writers can show you pages they wrote for other clients and talk about them. A reseller has to ask the provider, and the samples that come back will be generic.

  3. Read a report for the second logo

    Reseller reports are often templates with the provider's branding swapped out, and sometimes it is not swapped out completely. Check the footer, the file name and the document properties.

  4. Look at the links you are being sent

    In Search Console open Links, then Top linking sites. Links from sites with no readers, odd domain names or pages full of unrelated outbound links are package links, and package links point to a wholesale provider.

Related terms

Usually in the same sentence.

Read next

Where this shows up in practice.

Pricing & transparency Agency vs freelancer vs DIY website

Who actually does the work under each option, and what you give up when it is passed down a chain.

 Pricing & transparency The fees agencies hide

The reseller mark-up is one of the quietest. Here is where it hides in a proposal.

 Service SEO & AI search

What the rolling SEO work contains and who does it, all in house.
Related service

All of our SEO, content and links are done in house by the people on the call, and the person who writes your pages is named in the scope. Prices are on the price list, not on a call.

See the price list
Reviewed by Madiha Fatima, founder of 99creatix

Every entry in this glossary is written and checked by the person who runs the agency, reviewed at least once a quarter and dated. Last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Spotted an error or a term we are missing? Tell us and it is fixed within the week.

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Next step

Not sure who is
doing your SEO?

Bring a recent report to the fit call. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to tell whether the work was done by the agency you pay or passed down a chain, and what to ask next.

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