7 Things to ask SEO consultants before working with them
7 Things to ask seo consultants before working with them
If your website doesn’t show up on the first page of google search results, customers may not even know that your business exists. Search engine optimization is a crucial component that is the process of maximising the amount of traffic to your website. By completing keyword research, optimising your websites title tags, meta descriptions, H1’s and more, SEO experts are able to increase your website traffic by boosting your page ranking on google search for relevant keywords. This helps potential clients find your website easily. This can lead to more leads, customers and increase brand awareness.
You may be thinking; that all sounds great, but you lost me at “meta descriptions”.. If this sounds like you, then It makes sense to hire an SEO expert. Before hiring a SEO consultant, you must know what questions to ask to assure you know a red flag when you see one. We’ve come up with the 7 most important questions to ask a SEO agency before you agree to working with them.
1. How are you going to improve my search engine rankings?
All seo consultants should be transparent and upfront about their seo strategies and techniques. In saying this, they should also estimate (realistically) how long it will take to achieve the seo campaigns that you agree on. Knowing this goal and estimated time frame will give you clarity that they are working towards your goal with you.
Moving forward, it is important to make sure that the SEO consultants proposal includes an inceptive review of your website; this means to remove any barriers that may lower your search engine ranking. This including, broken links, error pages and more.
SEO consultants should also provide you with details around ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ optimization.
- ‘On page’ optimization is a process that should make your website as ‘search engine’ friendly as possible. This involves, improving your website’s URL & internal linking structure, developing web page titles, headings and tags.
- ‘Off page’ SEO strategies will include backlink campaigns and increasing content on social media platforms.
2. Are you experienced at improving local seo results?
If you are a small business, this one is a MUST to ask; because appearing in the top local seo search results is crucial to attracting customers nearby your business. Hiring a consultant that has expertise in local seo is significantly important for your businesses seo and website.
3. Can you guarantee my website will be number one on google search?
If your consultant says yes, RED FLAG. It is impossible for seo consultants to know if you will make it to number one on google search. It is only google that can control how high your ranking is on google search and I may be going on a whim here, but I doubt your seo consultant has a special relationship with google that will get your website priority search engine rankings. Being number one on google should NOT be a guarantee.
4. Will you share all the changes you make on my website?
It is highly likely that your search engine optimisation will require quite a few changes to your existing website. With this in mind, it is significantly important to ask and know exactly what adjustments and changes they are making. Seek your consultant to ask them to let you know prior, to ensure you are kept in the loop of what they are doing.
Some other key questions to ask could be:
- Do you include web development in your SEO service? Or do you provide recommendations for us to impliment?
- ‘Will you add new title tags to our existing HTML code, or modify the existing ones?’
- ‘Will you provide additional copywriting content that highlights our products and services to enhance the number of visible on-page keywords relevant to potential customers / our target market?’
- ‘Do you plan to redesign any of our existing websites, and add any more pages?’
At the end of the day it is your website and you should know the changes that are being made to it. Your potential consultant should have open communication with you and walk alongside you to ensure the best SEO outcome.
5. How will we communicate and how often?
Communication is KEY. This question is a must to ensure your potential consultant is on the same page, and has the same level of importance on communication. Your consultant is ultimately responsible for your SEO, website and how much it improves. This leads us to the next important question…
6. How do you measure the success of your SEO campaigns, do I get to see graphs or analytics?
Tracking how much organic traffic is coming to your website and where it is coming from can determine the success of how they are supporting your website. Once they have agreed to share google analytics and graphs with you, it is important to ask how often, and when to expect to see results.
All SEO consultants should be experienced in google analytics.
7. Does your service include link building? Or just give link building recommendations?
Moving forward, it is important to ask about link building. Link building is an SEO tool that helps towards giving your domain authority. It is important to ask if they attain the backlinks for your company or if they give you recommendations and you have to add them yourself.
Conclusion
You can also ask about your content, and if it is the correct ‘seo content’ that supports your H1 which in simple terms means ‘Heading’ for your content pages; this creates better page optimization. Does your SEO consultant use a content scanner? This means they are able to give you all of the key words to give to you to write in your content that is relevant and what google suggests most people search to get to YOUR website.
Hopefully you have a more clear understanding of what to ask your SEO consultant, and realise the importance of how it can boost your businesses success, leads, and sales. Ensuring you have both a high quality website and seo, you are creating a strong foundation for your business.