8 Questions To Ask When Hiring A New SEO Agency

Choosing an SEO agency can be overwhelming if you do not know what to look for in a new company. Search engine optimization in the past few years has been evolving rapidly and is requiring more of your time to stay up to date with the changes, with about updates in the last two years. This will make keeping up with SEO a lot more difficult. So if you want to hire an SEO agency or switch agencies, what are some of the things that you should ask the SEO agency before you hire them?

1. 1. How long will it take to see results in my organic rankings?
      • This is an important question to ask to your potential SEO agency because this can signal if they are honest or not. If they give you a specific time frame or a guarantee on results then this should be a major signal to not choose this agency because results cannot be guaranteed. Search engine ranking factors are not made public, so an SEO has to use the most up to date best SEO practices to ensure that your website performs well, and thus cannot guarantee results. Google has made it known that on average, SEO efforts take anywhere from four months to a year to see the results.
   2. What type of data goes into your monthly reporting?
      • There is an enormous amount of data that can be reported on your website’s traffic. But the question is, which data points should you focus on the most? This all depends on what you are looking to gain from a SEO strategy. Make your objectives known to your SEO agency. Other than the obvious of more organic search engine traffic to your website, is there anything else that you are looking to gain from your visitors? One example could be a lower bounce rate. This means that users left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page. This could mean that your page has the right content that users are searching for. Another example of a data point that could be valuable to your business is a conversion point within your website. Are people filling out your contact form or clicking on your pop up? If results are lower than you want them, you can let your SEO agency know that you would like to see this metric increase.
      • Let your goals be known to your new SEO agency during the kick off call. This will make their efforts more effective and can provide you with the results you are looking for quickly and more efficiently.
   3. Looking to switch agencies but do not know how to transition your data and strategy? A few things to do before you switch.
      • Take Google Analytics access and any other data access away from the previous agency. This will keep you from dealing with any potential headaches of trying to make sure that your Google Analytics does not end up in a competitor’s hands.
      • Keep a list of the most recent keyword strategy that was implemented by your previous agency. This will give your future agency insight on what was already done, and how they can improve on previous reporting.
      • Any piece of reporting that was delivered by the previous agency can be beneficial to audit previous numbers for accuracy.
   4. What, if any work will I have to do on my end with an SEO agency?
      • Your approval of the recommendations that the SEO agency presents you with. A good SEO agency will be open to showing you and explaining the reasoning behind it. Once approved, the SEO Agency should reach out to your website developer and ask them to implement the recommendations.
   5. I am currently running other marketing efforts, should my SEO agency be aware of this?
      • Yes having your SEO agency be aware of other efforts can help them provide accurate reporting numbers and be able to differentiate which specific channel is the cause for the increase in website traffic. For example, if your company is doing a new press release through television, this could cause higher organic numbers. An honest SEO agency will attribute the spike to the press release.
   6. What types of SEO services do you offer? A large SEO company should be able to specialize in a few of the different services mentioned below.
      • On-page optimization: This is important in making sure that all of the copy on the page is clear and specific for the user. If the page is talking about multiple topics, this will confuse the search engine crawlers and the users.
      • Link earning: This is one of the largest factors for better search engine rankings in Googles eyes. Creating content that is valuable to other readers will lead to other websites finding your content valuable to their readers and will link out to your content. The more links your website has, the  more brand awareness that will lead to more website traffic.
      • Conversion Rate Optimization: C.R.O. finds any barriers that are stopping your visitors from converting. A/B tests are implemented to different conversion points within a website to increase click through rate.  Since SEO services will get more users to your website, you will want to make sure that the users are engaging with the website the way you intended them to.

1. Can you help me rank locally?
   • Any qualified SEO agency should be able to provide the best strategy to rank organically within the areas you service. One major component to making sure that you are showing up for local searches within the local 3-pack is if there is a Google My Business page created for your business. A Google My Business page will be your digital storefront, this is what the Google search algorithm determines what to show when someone is searching for one of your services within the area.
     
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2. How often will meetings or calls be?
   • Any reputable SEO agency should be flexible with you on meeting times. But on average, meeting once a month over the phone or in person will be enough time to see how well your website is performing in the search engines with having a month worth of traffic.