Hiring a company to carry out a service like SEO, when you are not sure not only what is involved or what results should even look like can be a daunting process. It is crucial to work with legitimate SEO companies to ensure effective and ethical practices. Our inboxes are often spammed daily with offers to help us improve our visibility with baffling problems they have found with our website. Understanding customer search behavior through keyword research is essential for a successful SEO strategy.
So Exactly how do you know who to choose? Here we give you 12 questions to ask when hiring an SEO company.
How Will You Monitor SEO Strategy Performance?
SEO is a marketing campaign and needs to be treated as such. It is not about time on-site or ranking for words, it is about the goal of the website, whether that is a sale, a download or someone picking up the phone, you need to be clear about the results you want. Monitoring performance on search engine results pages (SERPs) is crucial for understanding the impact of your SEO efforts. Many SEO’s will call ranking for a certain phrase a result, it really isn’t. Search rankings are a key indicator of performance and should be evaluated regularly. The key result is the business owners’ goals for starting the campaign.
2)When Can I expect results?
The hardest part of SEO is predicting results, as search engines play a crucial role in determining rankings. Unfortunately, with any marketing campaign (especially one as fluid as SEO) forecasting and predictions are about as good as it gets. That is not to say you should not expect tangible results but try and avoid anyone who promises to rank for a keyword, or guaranteed no.1 position for a certain keyphrase you want to rank for. These predictions will depend on a number of factors including:
• How competitive the market/niche you are trying to rank for is. • How much work you have already done on the site (i.e., current rankings/age of the site/content etc) • Your Budget • When you need to achieve results by
Having a good SEO strategy is essential to achieve sustainable results and adapt to changes in search engines’ algorithms.
3)What Is Needed From Me?
One of the biggest reasons SEO campaigns fail is because the SEO company doesn’t advise what is expected from the client and the client being unable to provide the details. Questions to ask yourself and the SEO company are: –
• Will You Require logins to the site?
• Who will carry out recommendations? (do you have a sign off procedure or an internal team that will carry this out? (Do they have the scope/time to carry out the changes?) A knowledgeable SEO team is crucial to ensure that recommendations are effectively implemented.
• Access to tools like Google Analytics/Google Search Console (do you have passwords or logins available?)
• New or updated content. Do you have the resources to put together content for the site? is this included in the SEO work? Can you easily change the site?
• Technical SEO work – Does the scope of the SEO work cover technical work like page speed optimisation? Collaboration in SEO efforts is essential to ensure all aspects of the campaign are aligned and executed smoothly.
4)Testimonials/Reviews
Like any service you are investing in you want to be able to make sure the company you are working with are trustworthy. It is important to consider many SEO agencies to find the right fit for your needs. Do they have reviews/testimonials from clients that you can follow up on? How upto date are these recommendations? If the last testimonial was over 6 years ago, does this mean they are not keeping upto date with new strategies?
5)Will I have a dedicated account manager?
One of the main objections we hear to taking on an SEO company is the lack of communication and account management. Having an SEO expert manage your account ensures that you receive authentic expertise and tangible results. Not being able to speak to the person who carries out the work or give any input. We use a project management tool called Basecamp, which allows us to answer queries, set tasks and show what we are upto every step of the way. We found that people receiving a monthly report with no explanation of what it means is one of the biggest grumbles people have in monitoring results. 6)Have They Worked With Similar Companies Before.
Have they examples of clients in similar niches they have worked with? For instance, we have our key sectors of clients we love to work with, that we know we can get results for. Certain niches have certain strategies that will be effective. Finding someone with prior results in the niche you are looking for, can affect timescales of results and the money you invest before you see results.
7)Who Will Carry Out Changes
Like point 3, you need to be clear about your own time and resources. You do not want to be duplicating work or find out that you are responsible for tasks you do not have the time or the inclination to do. It is crucial to choose the right SEO provider who understands recent algorithm changes and has a good reputation. Normal SEO tasks include content creation and technical website fixes. If you already have a copywriter or a web design/developer on board, you can reduce investment by getting them to carry out the tasks for you. Word of warning though, the above tasks can be paramount to the success of a campaign. If you are going to be waiting months for implementation you could be creating a bottleneck to success.
8)KPi’s or What Success Looks Like
Before you even start looking for an SEO company you need to figure out exactly what success looks like, for what are you trying to achieve. An SEO agency can play a crucial role in implementing the necessary changes to achieve your goals. What is the goal? Set number of leads? Increase your checkout conversion rate? More telephone calls or downloads. Get clear about what it is. This will really help the SEO company put together something concrete to achieve your goals.
9)Keywords Vs Pages
Every SEO company will work differently. A comprehensive SEO strategy is crucial for achieving success, as it aligns with client goals and adapts to algorithm changes. Ask if the budget covers x number of keywords or x number of pages to optimise. In my opinion, I would not suggest targeting keywords anymore as a metric. They should be plotted to show results and momentum, but in this day of topics, entities and Google using natural language processing, you will find you get found for keywords you never even optimised for. This and with the intent of the keyword being paramount to be found, I find pages a much easier metric to track. Say you have a service page; the goal is for someone to fill in their details as a lead magnet. Tracking which keywords triggered the form to be filled in can be difficult (especially since Google stopped giving us this data for privacy reasons). Instead trying to improve the number of times the page is interacted with is a much easier way to work.
10)Offpage Work
The biggest change to the SEO world for the 13 years I have been doing this, has to be offpage optimisation or link building, which underscores the importance of keyword research. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what is acceptable and what is not, but everyone agrees the rules have changed. Modern search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in targeting keywords and pages effectively. One of the questions I would consider vital to ask, is what kind of link building strategies they invest in? Key things to look out for are: – • Relevancy – they build links relevant to your niche. • Organic – Links should be built naturally and not in bulk. • Outreach/editorials – will they be investing in reaching out to publications and journalists? Avoid anyone who mentions guest posting for SEO purposes alone. Ask the question if Google did not exist would this make sense? If the links they are building do not raise your visibility, why are they building them? • Will you get a spreadsheet or report showing the live links they have built?
11)Where are they based?
Whilst I am not saying you should not hire anyone internationally, be careful of hiring from some companies just because they are cheap. If the email you receive is full of grammatical or spelling mistakes, what does this say about the quality of their work? The pandemic has meant visiting offices or premises difficult to do but a quick Google search will tell you if they have premises and how long the company has been going.
- Be cautious of unscrupulous link-building practices, such as using private blog networks (PBNs), which can lead to Google penalties and lack long-term value.
Working with legitimate SEO companies is crucial for offpage work. They ensure geo-specific content creation, optimize Google My Business profiles, maintain consistency across online platforms, and provide detailed information to effectively conduct SEO work.
12)What other services do they offer?
Controversial but we do SEO, we are good at it. Choosing the right SEO companies is crucial for a successful SEO strategy. We offer other services through partners, but we are not experts. I believe digital marketers should stick to the niche they are good at. Having your SEO done by your web design company who offer the basics, will not often give you the results you desire. In a similar way, whilst copywriters can optimise articles and content to be SEO friendly, they are not qualified in technical SEO or offpage work, both vital parts of SEO Work. Professional SEO services are essential to achieve the desired results.
