3 Questions to ask before hiring an SEO Agency

Hiring an SEO agency is an important step in your marketing strategy. People that come to the point of implementing Search Engine Optimization for their business are likely well-educated on the effectiveness of this marketing technique and the tremendous ROI that it can yield.

However, you have to be extra careful about choosing the company that you are going to hire for your SEO. The reason is because SEO is so complicated that if you don’t understand the industry, your local “SEO expert” might just take you for a ride without producing any meaningful results for your business. Although paying someone for 6-12 months without producing any results to your business may sound bad, that’s not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is that an uneducated SEO without proper experience may cause permanent damage to your website. If the SEO agency uses Black Hat (unethical) techniques that go against Google’s guidelines then you are in big trouble.

Make sure that the SEO agency that you are going to work with knows their thing.

Since SEO agencies will need time to produce the initial results (usually 6-12 months), it will be hard for you to understand what’s really going on behind the scenes. When it comes to SEO, the best approach will always be for you to educate yourself in SEO so you can do the correct screening before hiring an SEO company.

In order for you to do the right screening, we prepared some questions that you can use in order to find out if your prospective SEO agency really knows what they are doing.

3 Questions to ask before hiring an SEO Agency

Question 1: “What is your process for creating the strategy for an SEO campaign”

Why you should ask this question: You need to understand if the SEO Agency can set a clear and structured path that can be followed in order to help you achieve your goals. In other words, you should be looking to hear about deliverables per month, time frames etc.

What you should look for in an answer:

• Are they proposing a deliverable, oriented approach? For example, Optimizing x number of pages per month and building X number of backlinks per month?
• Do they provide an accurate time frame? For example, are they suggesting that they are going to spend 2-3 weeks auditing the website, then 4-8 weeks dealing with Technical SEO etc?

How to decide?

If the Agency’s answer is both specific and deliverable-based, then this is a yes. Although SEO cannot be guaranteed, an agency that works with a specific strategy plan in mind is more likely to provide better results than an agency that doesn’t follow a structured plan.

Question 2: “Explain how communication will work between our teams.”

Why you should ask this question: Frequent and honest communication is an essential element for an SEO campaign.

What you should look for in an answer:

• Are you going to use a specific platform for communication?
• How often will you have catch up calls or meetings?
• What’s the ad hoc meeting availability?

How to decide?

In order to increase the chances of succeeding in SEO, the agency needs to be transparent with their tasks and their planning. If the communication plan makes sense to you and the Agency allows at least monthly meetings/calls then everything should be fine.

Question 3: “What’s your approach to SEO”

Why you should ask this question: You need to ask this question in order to help you understand the agency’s philosophy, and determine if there is strategic alignment with your business.

What you should look for in an answer:

• Do they spend enough time auditing your site?
• Do they spend enough time analyzing your industry?
• Do they care about your users/visitors?
• Is it a data-driven SEO agency?
• Do they set specific goals?

How to decide?

You definitely can trust a company that spends enough time analyzing your data, your site and your industry. Furthermore, make sure that you choose an agency with a white-hat approach since black hat and grey hat techniques often lead to poor performance in the Search Engine Result Pages.

Conclusion

Choosing an SEO agency is a tough decision. However, by educating yourself in the industry of SEO it will allow you to make an educated choice that reduces the chance of being burned. 

Yoshiro Digital is a leading SEO Agency in Cyprus. Get in touch with us for a FREE SEO consultation session that can help you understand how SEO can help you achieve your business goals!