What to Consider When Hiring an SEO Agency

If you’re considering hiring an SEO agency, an excellent time is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site.  That way, you and your SEO agency can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the get go.  Keep in mind, a good SEO agency can also help improve an existing site.

First of all, either be committed to implementing the recommended changes or ensure they will make them on your behalf.  Making the changes recommended by an SEO agency takes time and effort; if you aren’t going to take the time to make these changes yourself, be sure at the outset that they will be implementing them for you. (You’ll have to give them admin access to your site / control panel as well as read-only access to the Google Search Console account.)

Interview your potential SEO agency

Some useful questions to ask an SEO agency include:

1. Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
2. Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
3. Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
4. What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
5. Do you work primarily with B2B sites or B2C or both?
6. What’s your experience in developing multi-lingual sites?
7. What are your most important SEO strategies or tactics?
8. How long have you been in business?
9. How can I expect to communicate with you?
10. Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?
11. Is the SEO agency interested in you and your business?  If not, find someone who is.

Your SEO should ask you questions such as:

• What words or phrases do you think people use to find your business?
• Where do your prospective customers frequent online?
• How do you think most of your customers found you? (Organic search, advertising, social media, forums etc.)  It’s a good idea to ask your existing clients specifically how they found you.
• Why should someone do business with you rather than one of your competitors?
• Who are your ideal customers?  Have you created any customer personas?  (Detailed description of who are your best customers)
• How does your business make money, and how will better search results help?
• What other advertising or marketing channels are you using?
• Who are your competitors?  How are they marketing or advertising their business?

Check your SEO agency’s business references.

Ask past clients if they felt that this SEO provided useful service.

Was it easy to work with them?

What were the positive results?

Ask for a technical and search audit for your site to learn what they think needs to be done, why, and what the expected outcome should be.  You’ll probably have to pay for this.  You will probably have to give them read-only access to your site on Search Console.

Your prospective SEO agency should be able to give you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved.  If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, cross them off your list and find someone else.  No one can guarantee #1 in a Google search.

To learn more, see https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184

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