5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Company
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I love the world of digital marketing and SEO. Love it. The strategies and tactics involved in this field are fun for me, and one of the best feelings you can experience is when you help a client succeed. It’s definitely something I’m passionate about, which makes what I’m about to write about all the more frustrating - bad SEO companies.
First, let me be clear: there are plenty of great SEO agencies that do solid work. Absolutely no problem there. But, there are also many SEO companies who market themselves as “fast and easy,” two things that great search engine optimization are most definitely not.
The problem with companies like this is that they are often hired due to their seemingly affordable (cheap) pricing, but the work they do typically reflects that. I’ve personally worked on client SEO projects where we uncover a whole slew of both technical and content issues that were there due to some less-than-impressive work from an SEO company in the past.
I’m not saying that every organization needs to spend a fortune on SEO services (if you have the budget, investing in search is one of the best ways to spend it), but I am saying that it’s critical for you to complete your due diligence before partnering with an agency for optimization.
To help do that, here are 5 questions you need to ask before hiring an SEO company.
1) Do you complete a technical SEO audit?
When you think of SEO, your first thoughts are typically going to be about keywords and links, but the world of search can (and does) get far more technical than that.
Great optimization typically starts with a deep dive into your website, looking at everything from load times to duplicate content, and robots.txt to XML sitemaps. These things all matter to your long-term search success, and should be considered.
To make sure you are getting the most out of your engagement, you should always ask if a technical site audit is going to be conducted, and if so, what does that process look like? (Note: Depending on your budget, this audit may not be included. But, the company should be able to provide it if the budget is there).
2) What does your process look like?
A common sign of a “bad” SEO company is very little discussion or clarity around their process. By that, I’m talking about what they do and how they plan on doing it.
At Regal Creative, for example, we outline the various tactics we’ll be executing, how we are doing them, and why they matter in the first place. We want to ensure that our clients experience a transparent process - it gives a sense of added accountability to our team and comfort to the client.
If no clear process is in place, it can become difficult for you and your organization to understand what you are actually receiving for your money.
3) Do you research our audience and competitors?
When you just stuff a bunch of keywords on a page, there isn’t a lot of research or strategy that goes into that (and, it does more SEO harm than good). Unfortunately, that’s what many organizations receive when they pay for SEO services.
Ideally, your partner in search should invest some time (how much time always depends on the budget) to learn about your audience, as well as your competition. Will they uncover the goals and challenges of your ideal audience? The language they use? Will they crawl your competitor’s websites to see what search tactics they are implementing?
Great optimization is about optimizing for people, not just search engines, and understanding your audience and competition is a vital part of the process.
4) Do you offer any strategic recommendations moving forward?
This is one of the biggest shortcomings I’ve heard clients experience - a lack of strategic insight for ongoing SEO success. For many, it seems as if the project is over and they never hear from the company again.
From my perspective, I’d expect any SEO company I work with to provide a list of actionable tactics that i can implement in the future, when resources allow. Ideally, most organizations should invest in ongoing SEO work (SEO by itself isn’t really a one-time investment, it is part of the greater methodology that is digital marketing). But, when the budget isn’t there, having a list of recommendations to draw on at a later date to improve your SEO, content, and lead generation strategy, is incredibly valuable.
5) What’s the most important element of SEO?
This question often showcases subjective answers, but that’s a good thing. In general, asking an SEO company what part(s) of SEO they consider the most important for your success will help paint a picture of their search expertise and methodology.
If the answer is simplistic or outdated, like “keywords on the pages and meta descriptions,” chances are the “optimization” you receive will be…simplistic or outdated.
You are looking for answers that focus on delivering a great user experience, matching searcher intent, having a technically perfect website, etc. Again, these answers are subjective, but they should give you a firm grasp of whether or not this company is up-to-date on the most modern search engine insights.
Next Steps
Yes, I’m a big believer in the SEO services we offer here at Regal Creative, but believe it or not, that’s not the point of this post. I genuinely want organizations to complete their due diligence when searching for a partner so they can receive the best results possible within their budget. Plus, if your company hires an SEO agency that delivers sub-par work, it can tarnish your belief in search engine optimization in the future - which is the worst case scenario. SEO truly does work - you just need the right partner.
