Okay, so you’ve determined that your company has to hire an outside SEO Agency. You’re left with only one difficult decision to make right now:
how do I choose the best SEO Company?
If you don’t have a solid grasp of search engine optimization, the process of screening experienced SEO businesses may be challenging.
It has happened innumerable times. A business is in need of SEO services and begins screening digital marketing providers for assistance, but it is unsure of where to begin. With this article, we hope to provide company owners with a resource that will enable them to recognize lies and scams.
To gather their opinions, we’ve been in touch with dozens of SEO professionals. We’ve created this list of the crucial inquiries to ask while assessing any SEO Agency based on their comments.
NOTE: You don’t have to ask each of these questions to each SEO Company. The subsequent questions can be a terrific source for more study, but it’s important to consider each provider’s responses to questions 1, 3, 4, and 7.
Key Learnings: When determining whether an SEO Agency is the ideal business partner for you:
- Look for testimonials from clients and case studies as examples of prior successes.
- Inquire about their methodology to see whether they have a formal framework in place to support your growth and how forthcoming they will be with you on deliverables and outcomes throughout the partnership.
- Make sure you can devote the time they require from you to produce outcomes.
- To ascertain how informed their team is regarding SEO, pose more specific inquiries.
1. Know the history of their organization
Try looking up for the Companies who can create SEO Strategy 2023 on review websites like Yelp, Facebook, and Google My Business. To get a sense of what a poor, average, and excellent experience with this firm would be like, look at their average rating and read a few of their 1, 3, and 5-star reviews.
Any company with a long history might expect a few unfavorable reviews, but seeing a large number of them ought to raise a concern.
Directories that are particular to an SEO Agency may be a useful resource for past work samples and client feedback. On the other hand, we do not advise choosing an SEO Company based on lists of the “X Best Marketing Agencies in [City]” that you may discover in SEO Agency directories.
Numerous of these directories give SEO Company placements a higher priority depending on who pays the most money and employ other dubious strategies like only highlighting agencies that have links back to the directory.
Here is an email from one of those directories that contacted us in June 2022 and offered to rank us #2 on their list of the top agencies in Denver in exchange for us including a link to their website.
2. Find out how they handle SEO.
The procedures used by each SEO Agency will be different. In any case, members of their team ought to feel confident discussing these procedures. During each round of the process, don’t be afraid to ask for a breakdown of their SEO strategies and accompanying deliverables.
- Inquire about the processes they follow in their audits if they indicate that they perform an SEO audit.
- Ask them how they come up with excellent keywords to target if they claim to do keyword research.
- If they bring up technical SEO, inquire as to what that entails.
Ask for clarification on what any of these deliverables involve if you’re still unclear. The salesperson’s responsibility includes explaining these deliverables in language that is accessible to all customers.
3. Inquire about the SEO services provider’s goals.
We occasionally speak with a potential client who believes that being high up on search engine results pages (SERPs) can be accomplished quickly. Then, we stress that SEO is a long-term endeavor and that benefits may not be seen for three to six months. We can assure you that any SEO Company that guarantees to place your website on the first page of Google within a week is full of s**t.
Although rare, spectacular short-term benefits do occasionally occur. Ask what a successful SEO campaign would look like and what outcomes you could anticipate the next time you make an inquiry about SEO services.
4. Request information about earlier SEO work
To see a case study from one of their prior clients, request to see one after hearing their benchmarks for expected results. However, not all businesses, especially young ones, may offer these. Case studies are a great way to compare great results for one service to another.
It should be noted that the results shown in the case study are unlikely to reflect the actual metrics that you can expect to see if you were to work with the firm because marketers always want to draw attention to the outliers.
For instance, this SEO case study features a customer who, over the course of nine months, benefited from our SEO + content marketing efforts and saw a 284.4% boost in organic search traffic.
For our Standard Growth Content Marketing Service, Streamline signed up. Normally, we would anticipate a 50% increase in organic traffic from this business over the course of a year. However, in this particular case study, we decided to draw attention to an anomaly.
Be aware of how out-of-date some case studies may be. Over the past five years, there have been tremendous changes in SEO. More recent case studies will give a far more accurate picture of the average outcomes that a firm might anticipate. Anything older than this is probably out-of-date, although case studies from the past two to three years could be expected.
5. Inquire about their progress’s openness.
TheCustomWebsites is a great believer in being completely transparent about all we do. For precisely that reason, we created this document with client FAQs.
For every customer we deal with, a growth hub is created. Clients have complete insight into the status of their SEO operations thanks to the Growth Hub. Clients get access to all key assets, receive real-time notifications when articles are ready for their approval, and more. Below is a detailed overview of the Growth Hub.
While many trustworthy SEO agencies will offer open communications, some won’t. Work with SEO agencies who are at ease with you seeing what they’re up to. Transparency in their work and the state of each delivery is necessary.
6. Inquire about reporting with the SEO Agency
The majority of trustworthy SEO service suppliers offer some kind of reporting for continuing connections. Request to view an example of the report they deliver to clients. Ask them about the main metrics that their organization uses to report on as well.
Inquire about the SEO reporting tools they employ. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz are some of our top tools. Will any of those tools be available to you so you can verify the accuracy of the metrics they share with you?
Good SEO agencies will provide reports on measures like backlink volume, high-volume keyword ranks, and growth in organic traffic. Great companies will take these measures and link your company’s income to them.
Having trouble locating a reliable SEO Agency? See if we may be of assistance.
7. Inquire about your time commitment.
When calculating the expenses of working with a certain business, consider the worth of time and money. Although both resources are limited, one will be more so.
These two prices will differ amongst SEO agencies. Some could anticipate 10 hours of labor from you each week, while others would anticipate 2 hours.
Although neither choice is better or worse, certain expenses will be more advantageous for certain businesses than others.
Prior to signing a contract with any SEO Company, be aware of how these expenses may affect your company. While some businesses demand a greater level of participation, others prefer a shorter time commitment. We take pleasure in requiring clients to spend the least amount of time possible. For some firms, this works fantastically, but not for others.
If you can get in touch with an SEO expert…
The greatest way to gauge the caliber of a company’s work is to speak with its SEO expert. Asking to talk with an SEO during the sales process is not common, but it doesn’t harm to try.
If the company does bring in an SEO specialist, ask the following questions:
8. Inquire About Link Building With Them
The caliber and volume of websites linking to you are the main determinants of search rankings.
The greatest strategy to raise your search engine rankings is to obtain links from trustworthy websites. The only exceptions to this rule are well-known brands and established market leaders.
Ask the SEO Agency why they did not discuss acquiring credible websites to connect to you. Link construction is too dangerous, according to some. That is untrue. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, link-building might be harmful. Link building should be the top goal for the majority of SEO activities since it is the quickest approach to increase ROI via SEO.
Ask the SEO Company how they obtain websites to link back to their clients if they engage in link building. Avoid any businesses that suggest “payment” or having a private blog network (often referred to as a “PBN”) of websites that can connect to you. These techniques, generally known as “black hat SEO,” may get you into trouble with Google.
Inquire about link development with the SEO expert using the following questions:
- How does their link outreach work?
- Do they have to use one of your company’s email accounts or may they use their own?
- How do they locate fresh chances for link building?
- How do they evaluate the value of a website before asking for a link?
- How do they track link-building reporting?
9. Inquire About How SEO Has Altered
A skilled SEO is aware of these changes since SEO is continuously evolving. They need should be able to provide you with a concise rundown of some of the most significant algorithm adjustments that the market has seen recently (and how those have changed their SEO strategies). Broaden your inquiry and offer them wide reign to react.
