What if an SEO company outsources without telling?
Ask the company in writing who did which parts of your work, review that work as if you were seeing it for the first time, and check that the rights to everything produced for you have reached you. Using freelancers, contractors, or partner firms is not wrong in itself. The problem is concealment: you chose the company partly on the people and methods it showed you, and if the work was passed to others without your knowledge, what you assessed is not what produced your results. How the company answers when you raise it tells you most of what you need to decide whether to continue.
Why undisclosed outsourcing matters
The first concern is quality control: a company that discloses its subcontractors can tell you how it reviews their work before it reaches you. When the arrangement is hidden, you cannot know whether anyone reviewed it at all.
The second is accountability: when a change hurts traffic or a link causes a problem, you need to know who made the decision and who will fix it. An unnamed third party sits between you and that answer.
The third is price: paying a company’s rate for work done by a cheaper provider can be fair if the company adds real strategy, review, and management. It is not fair if the company adds little and conceals that you are paying for expertise that is not being applied.
The rights to the work
Content, designs, and other work created by a subcontractor raise a question of ownership. Under US copyright law, the person who creates a work generally owns it unless it qualifies as a work made for hire or the rights are transferred, and Section 204 of the Copyright Act requires a transfer of ownership to be in writing and signed. If a company passed your content to a freelancer without a written agreement covering the rights, it may not hold the rights it promised to pass on to you. When you do not know the subcontractor exists, you cannot check. This is general information, not legal advice; a lawyer can review whether the rights to the work produced for you are secure.
What to do when you find out
Ask the company to list, in writing, which parts of your work were done by people outside it, who they were, and how their work was reviewed. Review the work they produced: the content for accuracy and originality, the links for where they come from and how they were obtained, and any technical changes for what exactly was changed. Ask the company to confirm that it holds the rights to the work produced by its subcontractors and that those rights pass to you under your agreement.
Then judge the response: a company that explains the arrangement, shows its review process, and offers to put disclosure into the contract has made a mistake that can be corrected. One that denies it, deflects, or cannot say who did the work has given you reason to reconsider the engagement.
Preventing it next time
Add a clause to your agreement requiring the company to disclose any subcontracting in advance, name the parts of the work involved, and confirm that it holds the rights to what subcontractors produce. Ask, too, that work be delivered with a note of who prepared it. Keep the accounts, such as your site, Search Console, analytics, and any link or content records, in your own name, so that the work is visible to you whoever does it.