What Questions Should I Ask an SEO Company Before Hiring?
Your business is your baby and so you need to take utmost care of it to become healthy. Whether you have your own company or you are a marketer tasked with the role of increase a business organic traffic from Google and leads, you need to partner with the right SEO company to achieve the set goals.
Hiring an SEO company is one of the most critical decisions that you have to make. If you find the right one, overtime, it will catapult your website to the first page of Google and help you get qualified leads. On the other hand, the wrong SEO company will do more harm than good to your digital marketing efforts.
In the past, I have hired several SEO companies to work on specific projects for my clients. Today, I reveal to you the most critical questions that you need to ask before hiring any SEO service provider in your list.
1. How long will it take to rank on Google?
This is one of the first tricky questions that will help you to determine if you should proceed with the discussions. If an SEO company responds to this question by saying, “We’ll be able to get your business to rank within the first 1–2 months,” run for the hills.
These kinds of SEO companies are out to make a quick buck and will use any means necessary including Black Hat SEO strategies to give their clients positive results. Well, there are some adjustments that can be made on a site that already has a good backlink profile and solid domain authority to move it to the first page of Google. However, there are no guarantees and no SEO service provider can give you a solid answer to this question without doing some background research about your company first.
The best SEO company will carry out extensive research about your company and give you an estimated based on strategy and competitiveness, but it will not guarantee first page results within a specific time frame.
2. What strategy will you use to get backlinks?
It mind-boggling to know so many businesses do not have a solid backlink strategy. For starters, backlink is one of the primary factors that Google uses to rank websites. It is the foundation to Google algorithm and so if you do not have quality backlinks to your business website, it will be difficult to rank on Google.
Compare your domain authority with your competitors to know how well you rank on Google. You can also use other advanced tools such as Moz to see recently discovered links that are pointing to your website.
Back to the question, the SEO company should give you clear details of the strategy they will use to get other websites to point to your site. Request to see the backlink profile to be sure that all the links are legitimate.
3. Will you do any on-site optimisation?
In addition to backlinks, user experience is another important factor that Google uses to gauge websites. How long do website visitors stay on your website and do they have a good experience? A high bounce rate is a sign that your site does not offer the best user experience.
The right SEO company should do a comprehensive website audit to determine bounce rate, most trafficked pages, and pages that need to be improved. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process and so the SEO service provider should be able to tweak the problematic pages and monitor them to determine if the improvements are working as expected.
4. Which local SEO strategy will you use?
If you offer your service in a specific locality, then you need to have a robust local SEO strategy to help your brand get a higher cutting edge. Ask the SEO agency the specific improvements they will make on your website to help it net more customers from the local market.
Here are some of the questions that you need to ask.
· Is my NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) consistent in all sections of the website and in local directories?
· Are my title tags optimised for the local market?
· Has my business being submitted to any local directory?
· Are you listed in one of the “best of” directories in your local market or the local area you operate in?
5. How will reports be generated and the frequency?
Moz is by far one of the best software for both experienced and SEO experts and businesses. You can use to track all your target keywords rankings on Google without breaking a sweat.
Before you start engaging the SEO company, have a list of all the relevant keywords that you want your website to rank for tracking purposes. This initial keyword list will be the benchmark of the progress made by the SEO company over time.
For example, if you start in position 30 on Google for a keyword such as “Singapore digital marketer” obviously, over time you want to see some progress after the SEO company starts working on your website.
However, the keyword list should not be overly complicated, as that will make the process of getting to the first page of Google more difficult. The leading SEO companies in Singapore, MediaOne Marketing, compiles a list of 20 most relevant keywords for the brand to monitor and this greatly helps to ensure that the site ranks for laser-specific keywords. This strategy also helps to display the website to the target audiences and save money which would have been spent trying to rank for unrelated keywords.
6. Will you do keyword research?
Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO strategy. If the SEO company is not going to do any keyword research, then it is definitely not worth your time and money. Unlike in the past, there are more advanced keyword tools than Google Analytics even though the latter still comes in handy.
Ideally, your preferred Singapore SEO agency should provide a list of popular keyword variations for your homepage and other target pages that can drive traffic and leads.
Bonus Tip: If you do a Google search for a term that is related to your niche, at the bottom of the first page, you will find a list of “related search terms” that Google will find online. Consider including these keyword variations in your on-site and off-site to enhance the SEO strategy presented by the company. Go an extra mile and ask the SEO service provider if they use this free method to find keyword various or use other tools such as SEM Rush to find relevant keywords.
7. What is the blog strategy?
While many SEO companies will supply a ton of generic blogs, you need to ask yourself if the blogs are relevant to your business.
Blogging is great for SEO and Google loves quality blogs that offer relevant information to the audience. The rule of the thumb is that, the blogs are only worth the hype if the content drives relevant traffic to your business.
Currently, question-based blogs perform better than general blogs. For example, many SEO companies compete for keywords such as “SEO company in Singapore” but there is less competition for terms such as “questions you should ask your Singapore SEO company.” One of the benefits of focussing on this kind of term is that you not only just rank for the local market but also global search terms. Readers who come across the post have a higher intent and chances are that they will convert.
8. Do you have referees I can reach out to know more about your company?
The best SEO service provider such as MediaOne Marketing that is based in Singapore has hundreds of references that you can contact to learn more about the company. Ask for their contacts and reach out to them to get a clearer perspective of the services that the company offers.
Do not forget to do some research on Google to see if the SEO company you are about to do business with actually ranks in its local market. If not, ask why it does not practice what it preaches. Needless to say, it should rank well in the local market to help you also rank in your target geographic location.
SEO is a giant puzzle
SEO is a giant puzzle that is difficult to comprehend especially if you are just starting out. A professional SEO company such as MediaOne Marketing will help you to understand all aspects that can make a major difference on your website ranking on Google. The team will also keep you on the loop on the progress of the SEO strategy to avoid any confusion.
