Top 10 Questions To Ask Your SEO Company

SEO companies can do wonders for your company, helping you boost your rankings on search engines and earning you more visitors to your website. In today’s world that revolves around the internet, more and more SEO companies are starting to appear, but not all are created equally. Before hiring one to promote your brand, you will want to make sure that they have the experience and skills necessary to live up to their promises. To help make sure you select the best company, ask them the following questions before hiring.

1. Can You Guarantee I’ll Get To The Top Quickly?

A great way to see whether or not an SEO company is able to live up to their promises is to ask them whether they can actually guarantee you will make the first page on Google results within a short period of time. Untrustworthy companies may say this is possible as long as you pay enough, but it simply isn’t possible without using bad techniques that can hurt your company in the long run. Instead, reputable companies will tell you that they will work hard to boost your search engine rankings as quickly as possible but explain that this is a time-consuming process. The best results occur organically, meaning you need to invest time and create new content.

2. What SEO Methods Do You Use?

Some less reputable companies will avoid giving you any information regarding their SEO methods and techniques that boost your search rankings. Good businesses understand that there is no reason to hide this information from their clients. Only SEO experts have the knowledge, time, and tools to actually act on these methods. The best SEO companies will at least briefly tell you several methods of boosting your SEO, such as editing existing content, generating new content, making recommendations based on your current page, or building links.

Make sure that company you choose also stays up to date with the newest changes to search engine algorithms and adjusts their SEO methods based on these adjustments.

3. Do You Follow Webmaster Guidelines?

Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have their own sets of public webmaster guidelines and best practices. This list prohibits a dozen SEO tricks that can be used to falsely boost your rankings, like creating spam content that builds links. Avoid working with an SEO company who won’t follow these guidelines as following these poor practices can lead to negative consequences from Google, such as a dramatic drop in rankings or even bans rom search results.

4. What Kind Of Reports Do You Give?

When hiring an SEO company, you want to make sure that they interact with you on a regular basis. The best businesses will want to keep their clients constantly updated as this lets you see the results and gain confidence. The worst companies will just give you a printout, such as data from Google Analytics that they didn’t even compile themselves. The best ones will give you this information in addition to their own evaluations and analytics. Most importantly, they should include an explanation of what the data means and what recommendations they have based on the information.

5. Can I Contact You?

Most of the time, the SEO consultant you hire will initiate communications. This will be done to provide you with updates on the changes made to your website or the progress that they have achieved. You should still make sure that you have a method of contacting them if something important happens, such as your site goes down. Make sure that both parties know the preferred communication methods of the other one.

6. Who Are Your Clients?

SEO companies recognize that it is a competitive field, which is why most will always have a list handy of the clients they currently work with or have done work with in the past. The list will likely include several businesses or websites you have heard of or at least information regarding the results the company was able to achieve. If you contact a current or previous client, don’t expect them to share specifics with you; they will, however, probably tell you if they saw positive results after working with the SEO company.

7. What Experience Do You Have With Local Search Results?

Some websites aim to optimize their rankings overall while others want to boost local results in particular. This is especially important for those with a physical store front. You want to make sure that the company you hire to work with you is able to provide local SEO services in addition to general ones. They will include your city and state in the keywords they use and make sure you are listed on all the search engines’ directories.

8. Will You Work With Other Marketing?

In today’s world, some SEO agencies now do more than just search engine optimization. They may actually offer additional digital marketing strategies or inbound marketing. This should not be a requirement for your SEO company, but it is good to know whether the business you are hiring can provide more than just SEO services for you.

9. What Happens After The Contract?

You need to make sure that after the contract ends, you will be the owner of all the web content that was optimized for you and you paid for. Ensure that your contract has a clause that your consultants or SEO company won’t remove or change any adjustments they made to your page during the optimization.

10. How Much Do Your SEO Services Cost?

As with any company that you hire to work with you, you need to be clear on the fees that an SEO business will charge you. The most common method is a set fee per project, but others may charge based on the time spent working on the website. Some consultants will also prefer to have you pay a retainer. Make sure you know what services are included in the discussed fees and what will require extra charges. Finally, ask how often they expect to receive payments and whether they charge interest for late ones.

 

Sources

http://www.quicksprout.com/2015/08/24/dont-get-fooled-17-questions-to-ask-before-hiring-an-seo-company/

 

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