Our standard

What we refuse to do

Every agency tells you what it can do. This is the list of things KB Studio won’t do, whoever asks and whatever it pays. It’s public so you can hold us to it.

Why this page exists

Almost everything on the list below would make a client money in the short term. That’s exactly why it’s worth publishing.

I’ve been doing this since 2008, and the pattern hasn’t changed. The tactics that produce a fast win are usually the same ones that produce a slow, expensive unwind. Fabricated reviews put a Google Business Profile at risk. Bought links invite a manual action. Fifty templated city pages get a site treated as scaled content abuse under Google’s spam policies.

Nobody hires a marketing partner hoping to find out later which corners got cut. So here they are, before you ask.

If a tactic only works while nobody’s looking, it isn’t a strategy. It’s a loan.
The list

Six things we turn down, and what sits under each

This is the working list our own audits check against, published as written.

Reviews and social proof

  • Fabricating reviews. Not once, not for anyone, at any price.
  • Testimonials attributed to people who didn’t say them
  • Review gating, meaning asking only the customers you expect to be happy
  • Review incentives that aren’t clearly disclosed
  • Rating schema that doesn’t match the real review data

Content at scale

  • Programmatic city pages: one template, swapped place name, no real local knowledge
  • AI-written articles published without a human editor
  • Ten posts built on one skeleton
  • Word count padded to hit a target
  • “Updated” posts that changed a date and nothing else
  • Thin pages published to hit a quota

Links

  • Paid link schemes
  • Private blog networks
  • Link exchanges as a primary strategy
  • Comment and forum spam
  • Link-buying outreach during a ranking dip, when it’s most tempting

Attribution and bylines

  • Corporate “team” bylines on work that needs a named expert behind it
  • Ghostwriting credited to someone who never read it
  • Stock photos presented as your team, your work, or your customers
  • AI drafts published with no human named as the reviewer

Schema and technical

  • Structured data claiming something the page doesn’t actually show
  • Unresolved template variables shipped live, like [year] or {{brand}}
  • Markup that contradicts the visible headline, price, or image
  • Content written for crawlers and hidden from people

Ads, landing pages, and AI

  • Claims your service can’t actually support
  • Ad copy that doesn’t match the page it lands on
  • Countdown timers that reset, or “only 3 left” when there are 300
  • Before-and-after images that aren’t real or aren’t permissioned
  • AI as the author. It’s an assistant here, never a byline.
  • AI-generated customer quotes or case studies
The other half

Saying no is easy. Here’s the version of yes.

Every refusal has a route that gets you the same outcome without the risk. Usually it’s slower to start and better to own.

Instead ofBuying reviews or asking only your happiest customers
We do thisA review request to everyone from your last 90 days, worded to comply with Google’s policy and the FTC’s rules on endorsements
Instead ofFifty templated location pages by Friday
We do thisFar fewer pages, each carrying genuine local detail: real service areas, real projects, real photos
Instead ofAI writing at volume
We do thisAI for research, outlines, and first drafts, with a named human editor on every piece and a publishing pace that editor can actually sustain
Instead ofBuying links
We do thisEarned coverage, real partnerships, community involvement, and resources people link to because they’re useful
Instead ofInvented case studies and rounded-up numbers
We do thisReal figures pulled from your own analytics, named and published only once you’ve approved them in writing
The awkward part

What happens if you ask us to anyway

It comes up. Usually from a good business under real pressure. Here’s how I handle it, so there’s no surprise later.

I’ll name the specific risk

Not a lecture about ethics. The actual consequence, applied to your business: what gets suspended, what triggers a manual action, what it costs to recover and how long that takes.

I’ll offer the version that holds up

There’s nearly always a legitimate route to the same goal. It’s usually slower to start, and it doesn’t evaporate the next time Google updates something.

If you still want it, we part ways

That’s a real outcome, not a bluff. Losing one client who wants a shortcut costs me less than watching a client I care about dig out of a penalty. I won’t hand the questionable part to a contractor either. My name is on it either way.

The practical case

This isn’t only about principle

It’s worth being precise here, because plenty of marketing pages get this wrong.

Google folded its helpful content system into core ranking in March 2024. There’s no separate switch to trip and no isolated penalty to dodge. Quality is now assessed continuously and across your whole site, which makes shortcuts harder to escape rather than easier.

The same year, Google’s spam policies added an explicit rule on scaled content abuse: pages produced mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help the person reading them. Google’s own Search Quality Rater Guidelines treat that pattern as a lowest-quality signal.

So the honest version of this work and the effective version are the same version. That’s the entire argument, and it’s why this list costs less to follow than to ignore.

Next step

If that’s how you’d want your marketing run, let’s talk

KB Studio works with a small number of service companies at a time. Month to month, from $3,000, with nothing to sign and no notice period.

Check if we’re a fit See what we do