SEO is the foundation of your marketing campaign - at least
it should be. Aside from any other marketing that you
participate in, you should also make sure your site is
ranked in the top of the engines so you can tap into the
millions (actually over 400 million) searches performed
daily.
So, how do you pick an SEO Firm? It is a very important
decision.
I was talking to a man recently who told me the problem was
he didn't even know what questions to ask, let alone how to
evaluate the answers.
Here is some guidance on what to ask and what to expect in
response.
Do you have any initial or set up fees? How much and what
are they for? Are there ongoing fees and how much are they?
They should be able to outline all fees and tell you
exactly what is included. Different firms price things
differently. If they require full payment up front, that
may concern me. Most firms will require some payment up
front, and that is to be expected. You need to look at
what they are proposing, make sure it is clear to you and
make sure you are OK with it.
Is monthly maintenance necessary?
Any SEO Firm that knows what they are talking about should
tell you that maintenance and monitoring of rankings is
required to ensure you don't start losing rankings. If they
tell you that you will lose rankings as soon as you leave
them, they are lying—or more accurately they are just
guessing. They don't really know for sure. However
experience shows us that rankings do tend to maintain until
the next major algorithm shift and then if no one is
maintaining them for you, they may begin to drop. SEO is
not the kind of thing you do once and then you are done.
To maintain and hopefully even increase your rankings, you
need to have someone continually working on your behalf.
Alternatively, you could learn to handle some of the
maintenance items yourself. But the key is to realize that
someone needs to monitor your rankings and work on your in
order to hold on to your top rankings and grow them. Don't
forget the engines themselves reported that approximately
25% of searches each month are never before seen phrases.
So, at the very least you'll want to monitor what new
phrases are popping up and make sure you are getting
exposure for them.
How long is my term of service?
Typically you should hear anywhere from 3—12 months.
Anything less than 3 months isn't long enough to see any
matured results. Six months seems to be the industry
standard middle ground. With six months you aren't locked
in too long, but it does allow time for the campaign to
mature.
Do you offer a Guarantee?
Contrary to popular belief, guarantees aren't all bad. You
just have to make sure you aren't being promised something
that no one can actually deliver.
- Top rankings in less than 30 days? Not likely.
- Guaranteed amount of site visitors or conversions? With
regular SEO and no other services no SEO Firm can guarantee
the precise number of visitors or the conversion rates.
- If you are told you will get rankings on a precise
keyword within a precise amount of time, that just isn't
possible unless they are doing PPC or have magic fairy dust.
The kind of guarantee that is safe is the kind where the
company states they don't control the engines and can't
predict exact timeframes but they will not stop working
until they have delivered what they promised (ex: 20
rankings within the top 20 for 6 months—so they may
have to work 8 or 9 months of real time to deliver the full
6 months of "guaranteed" time.) This offers you protection
but it also honest and lets you know that the Firm does not
control the engines.
Do I own the work you do for me? Where does it reside?
The answers should be: yes you own the work (once it is
paid for in full) and it resides on your server. If they
are hosting content on another server or another domain,
you want to think twice before getting involved.
Do you provide regular reports and how often are they
provided?
You should be provided reports once a month to show the
results and your site's rankings.
When will I start seeing results?
That is a question that varies from site to site. Your
site's history and competitiveness of the industry are big
factors and the SEO firm should try to answer honestly
considering what they know about your site. Any blanket
statement is just a guess. They could also tell you their
average time for other clients and that is a good indicator
of what you could expect.
What engines do you submit to?
This could change as things in the industry change.
Basically you'll want to look at the list of engines they
give you and make sure you have heard of them all. Most
Firms focus on the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) and then
about 6 or so other engines.
What about past results?
Do you provide references and testimonials? The answer
should be YES! They should be happy to show off past
results.
What techniques do you use to optimize my site?
An ethical SEO Firm will focus on content and on-page
optimization as the foundation. They should also look at
whether you are in need of links and may include linking as
part of their strategy. More people tend to get links on
their own, but they don't focus on the on-page portion, so
maybe all you need is the on-page work. The SEO Firm
should evaluate that and let you know what your specific
needs are.
They shouldn't hide any text or code on your site, and they
should be willing to explain every step of their process
and not want to hide any information from you.
If they tell you they have a special relationship with
Google, or proprietary techniques that should be a warning
sign to you.
Do I have access to anyone on your staff, so I receive
personalized service and can ask questions at anytime?
The answer should be yes. SEO can be confusing and you need
a Firm that will work FOR you and WITH you.
Any SEO Firm that is worth working with should be happy to
spend time going over each of these questions with you.
Selecting an SEO Firm can feel intimidating but if you use
these questions as a guide and follow your instincts, you
should be fine.
----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for
EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer's expertise
in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has
helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a
downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO
and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the
popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter.
Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social
media and more.
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