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Have you decided that it is time to stop doing your SEO 100% in-house? Is it time to start looking for an SEO agency to help you meet your goals? It is a decision most businesses have to make at one point or another, especially when things start picking up for a brand (and frankly the work required to maintain a good online presence just gets to be too much). For many, the solution is to hire an SEO agency to help not only pick up your extra work, but use their knowledge to help take you to the next level. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find a good agency that works for your business.
It is crucial that you ask the right questions and you know what answers to expect when thinking of hiring an SEO agency. You want to make sure that there is a good fit with the company you are working with, and the questions below should help you answer that. Before you begin to look, however, it is important to prepare, 3Q Digital states it beautifully when they say you should:
- Know your company’s goals
- Know your competition
- Establish proper on-page set up
- Have a little knowledge of SEO and link-building before you go in
- Know your options (i.e, an individual vs. a company)
- Have a schedule or an ideal way to monitor progress and work with the company that you end up hiring.
And so without further ado, below are 10 questions you must ask before you begin outsourcing your SEO if you want to be successful:
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Have you ever worked with a business in my industry?
It is really helpful to identify from the very beginning whether or not the SEO agency has worked with another business that is similar you yours. This may give them an edge on knowing how to go about certain aspects of development on behalf of your company. SEO can be very different depending on industry and company size, so the more direct experience an agency can have the better.
What you are looking to hear:
Ideally, you want to hear “yes” and see some examples of companies they have worked with to support their claim. However, do not dismiss the company right away if the answer is “no.” It is possible that they have worked with similar brands and are equally positioned to help your company be successful. In this case the key is the portfolio examples they provide, so that you can make a judgment call to see if the work they do for others will benefit you.
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Can you guarantee results for my company’s SEO?
A lot of SEO companies try to claim that they can “guarantee” results or somehow have a “proven” relationship with the search engines. The most common guarantee sounds something like “Guaranteed a page one ranking for any keyword within the first 6 months.”
What you are looking to hear:
The answer to this is “no”—there is absolutely no way to “guarantee” SEO results or have some sort of secret expertise that other companies (or even in-house specialists) do not. You want to find an agency that is confident they can help you, but will be honest, realistic, and legal in the work they are going to do on your behalf. If they use black hat tactics to get ahead, you’ll be in much more trouble than before you hired the agency and you’ll have to dig yourself out of a hole, which will be incredibly time consuming.
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What aspects of SEO should we consider outsourcing?
SEO is multi-dimensional, and if you decide to go with an agency you do not necessarily have to outsource every part of your SEO work. The company you are interviewing should be able to give you a solid idea of at least three aspects of SEO that are a top priority for outsourcing.
What you are looking to hear:
Obviously, in an ideal would the SEO agency should be able to handle any aspect of SEO work that is thrown at them (you want them to state that they can handle any part of the process). However, they should be able to give you some recommendations on specific aspects that you could get started on with them. For example, you want them to acknowledge that they do their own link building, strategy development, and content creation. If you hear that any of these three aspects are outsourced further, definitely be skeptical, these are three important aspects of SEO that you want to be directly handled by the agency.
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What metrics are the most valuable to analyze/ which metrics are a top priority?
This is a good question to examine what their best practice is when looking at you metrics from very beginning. This is one thing that may change from company to company, so have an idea of what you’d like to see in your head before asking the question, and then see if an agency has reason to prove you wrong.
What you are looking to hear:
Effective SEO account management should be focused on increasing (1) leads and (2) sales, which is why you are outsourcing. As such, these two metrics should be an agency’s top priority. Of course, metric analysis is multi-faceted—rankings, traffic, and back-link numbers are all important—and you should hear them mention something about these as well. Keep in mind that SEO is about more than increasing rankings, decreasing bounce rates, or improving your traffic levels. Effective SEO puts the business itself as a priority, and leads/sales are essential to improving SEO for the business as a whole.
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What are a few of your best clients or examples of case studies?
An SEO agency’s portfolio is extremely important and they should be able to provide you with a few examples of their best client success stories. This should include lots of data and testimonials along with actual screenshot examples.
What you are looking to hear:
“Absolutely!” They should be able to show you a few sites and case studies that will lead you to any further line of questioning about your own business site. Be wary if they don’t have any examples that they can see relating to your company’s situation.
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What kind of reports or monitoring updates will we be receiving?
Knowing what week-by-week and month-by-month is going to look like with this company is essential. Communication isn’t always easy in SEO, but it has to be if you’re going to work with a third-party company.
What you are looking to hear:
You want them to not only show you the reports they will provide, but also walk you through them. You want a report that is clearly explained and easily understood by you and other members of your team. According to Digital Current, a report should be able to answer the following questions:
- “What was done, and why?
- What have the impacts of previous changes been?
- What kinds of returns have been generated?
- What obstacles still stand in the way?
- What must be done to overcome them?
- What’s are the next steps?”
Below is an image from TrackPal that shows a potential report an SEO company might give you each week. As you can see, the metrics are summarized so the client (you) is not too overwhelmed and it’s easy to understand.
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What can our team continue to work on in-house? Is there anything that we need to do that your agency will not be handling?
In most cases, hiring an SEO agency means most of the issues surrounding SEO will be handled through outsourcing the workload. However, this does not mean your team gets to neglect all further work in-house.
What you are looking to hear:
They should reaffirm that their company will be handling the majority of the workload, but that there are always areas you can keep SEO in mind. For example, if any of the team is still handling content development in one way, shape or form (such as repurposing content or writing new blog posts) then it is important to be connected to the agency about what to do for that content specifically.
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How do you select top keywords for our brand?
As we have already made clear in this article, SEO is multi-dimensional and there is no one thing that should be driving this answer. This is one question where you should be open-minded but really focus on the reasons that an agency gives.
What you are looking to hear:
There is no one right answer to this, and I’ll tell you, it is definitely not “traffic” and traffic alone. When they talk about choosing your keywords, you want them to speak to the fact that relevance, searcher intent, traffic volumes, and competition level are all important aspects to consider in keyword selection.
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How long does it take to start seeing results and improvements?
This is going to vary widely depending on how established your company is and what kinds of improvements need to be made. Again, you have to be flexible here but have a good idea of what you used to accomplish in-house and what you hope to see.
What you are looking to hear:
You want to hear honesty. Anything less than 6-months should make you feel skeptical. Unless you are already a top-ranking source for your industry and you are hiring an SEO agency for maintenance, they should be able to explain that it takes time and that improvements are certainly not an overnight situation.
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How is your company positioned in the current climate of “change” in the SEO world?
Let’s face it. SEO has changed a lot over the past few years. Between updates and engine changes, crawling tactics, or what is valued as most important in the search results, things sometimes change in a matter of weeks. An agency needs to understand this and be able to understand how their processes fit into the picture.
What you are looking to hear:
If the SEO agency you are interviewing suggests in their response that SEO has remained pretty consistent over time, definitely be cautious. Core, fundamental, aspects of SEO haven’t changed much, but there are a lot o highly specific tactics that have had to be updated in order to keep up with the updates. Make sure they can walk you through the recent changes and be able to explain what is going on in terms that you will understand. You want to be sure that they are a company that will be able to position themselves successfully no matter what changes occur over the next couple of years.
Be cautious and well informed before deciding to outsource your SEO. These questions should help you get to the bottom of whether or not the company you are interviewing is a good fit!