Hiring a digital agency for your SEO affairs is certainly not an easy task. When looking at an SEO agency, you should ask these 5 important questions before making a hiring decision. These particular questions will give you a better idea as to which company is best suited for the job.
What Is Your Professional Philosophy?
Search engine optimization (SEO) methods differ greatly from one client to the next. For example, one digital agency will handle the promotion of your website differently than their competitor. One SEO company may specialize in link building while the specialty of another may be content marketing. There are quite a few ways to bring about great SEO results for a client. A potential digital agency should tell you why they use their particular methods and how it can help your business.
Do You Outsource A Portion Of Your SEO Projects?
Some SEO companies take on so much work that they are not able to handle all of the projects personally. For this reason, a few agencies will outsource the work to people outside of the company. These outsourcers usually don’t have the level of experience and knowledge needed to rank your website in the search engines. To keep your website out of the hands of inexperienced workers, refuse to work with agencies that do not do 100 % of the SEO work on all of their clients’ websites.
How Do You Stay Current On Changes in Google’s Algorithms?
A competent SEO professional will attend conferences, read countless industry articles and attend webinars to keep abreast of SEO changes. The industry can change in an instant, so it is vitally important for SEO workers to remain up-to-date on issues that can affect the businesses of their clients.
Unfortunately, there are still digital agencies out there that use outdated SEO practices. To ensure that these methods aren’t being used on your website, ask about the education practices of the professionals at a digital agency.
Do You Work With My Competitors?
Ethical SEO companies will tell all of their potential clients if they are or have worked with one of the clients’ competitors. If it turns out that the agency does work with one of your competitors, you will need to figure out whether you as a business owner are comfortable with this. During this time, you will want to think about whether you can deal with potential breaches of confidence from your SEO agency. If the idea of this bothers you, seek out SEO services elsewhere.
How Often Will The Two Parties Be In Contact?
You do not want to sign up for SEO services at a digital agency, only to have your point of contact fall off the face of the Earth. You will want to figure out how often you will receive status updates from the account manager at the agency, as well as determining the channels of communication that you can use to ask them questions or have them address concerns. For example, will you be contacting them through email? How often? Will the point person at the agency be available by phone in an emergency? Determining this beforehand can better ensure a smoother working relationship with your SEO agency.