It continues to be the elephant in the room for small business owners. How to trust an SEO agency. It’s kale and you know you should eat it. But you hate it.
As a small business owner, you may see SEO as an unnecessary expense. You may even believe it is not worth your time and effort because SEO is dying anyway — but this could not be further from the truth. SEO is constantly growing in importance and expanding into new areas. Before, it played a major role for large and midsize businesses. Now it is just as crucial for small businesses.
Inside Google Marketing: 3 ways we think about SEO
Here are important questions you need to ask your future SEO agency or consultant:
Qualifying Questions
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- How long have you been performing SEO?
- How did you learn SEO?
- How do you stay up to date on SEO changes?
- Who will be working on my project?
- What will you do as part of our engagement?
- Will we have a formal project plan and list of activities?
- How will we communicate?
- How often will we interact or speak live?
- How long will the engagement last?
- What will we measure to judge progress and ultimate success?
- Will you audit my website?
- Will you review technical SEO as part of the engagement?
- Do you review website personas and map the customer journey?
- How will we perform keyword research?
- Do you map keywords to content?
- Who is responsible for writing content?
- Do you have resources available to help create new content?
- What’s involved in the content optimization process?
- Who is responsible for updating the website?
- Will I be able to review changes before they go live?
Just Don’t …
Start the conversation with a request for backlinks.
Require industry experience unless you’re in a high touch industry like healthcare and pharma.
Ask for guaranteed results.
Ask for a prediction of ROI (return on investment).
Ask for a “quick win” or limited engagement.
Expect a discount or special pricing.
Expect you’ll have a hands-off project.
Credit: What Questions Should You Be Asking Your Future SEO Agency?
The Takeaway
To thrive and survive in the business world today, you need SEO. Whether you have a local business with a brick and mortar presence or you are a niche company with a specialized audience, you will fail without SEO. Without SEO, you have no
visibility online, which means when a consumer searches for what you do, they can’t find you and do business with you.
Extras
Do you want to speak personally on the phone to the CEO of the SEO agency you’re checking out? Want to receive a free SEO and Marketing Assessment?
Check out our High-Performance Local SEO. Then email or call Marcia at 561-906-3436.