SEO Agency Experience
So, I answer the most questions on Reddits largest SEO forum (the world’s largest) and this is one of the most common questions. Also, as an SEO for 20 years – its something i have a lot of experience in – especially when I’m involved in taking over SEO projects that haven’t gone to plan. I understand how SEO is confusing to a lot of people – its inherently deeply technical and very difficult to put exact processes or know-how around. And its counter-intuitive – it doesn’t work like outbound marketing. But it works and it should be more repeatable and reliable than random.
But a lot of people don’t ask the right questions – they’re more concerned with over paying someone who just isn’t going to do anything that delivers quality leads and sales to their business. This is understandable – if you’re going to get started – it seems a better idea to get it wrong for $10k than $50k.
But that’s hardly a good way to pick an SEO expert. So I put this handy SEO questions for agencies and consultants guide together to help.
SEO Agency Questions from Reddit
This question gets asked frequently on Reddit, so I decided to blog about it just to have a handy and consistent reference
Some popular questions on Reddit are
- What SEO reports should you track
- What should you look for in an SEO vendor
- Frequently asked questions on SEO
Q&A on Reddit
This blog post is taken from an answer of mine on Reddit, as a thought in listicle format.
Questions you should ask an SEO Provider
- Do they rank
- No: then how do you know if they know SEO or just use the dog eat my homework/I’m too busy?
- No: Then why don’t they rank?
- They don’t have backlinks
- Either they don’t believe in backlinks or they don’t know how to source them
- They have lots of backlinks
- They got caught with the wrong backlinks
- No: Other
- Why would you want to hire them?
Do you REALLY understand their SEO strategy?
- Why? Business activity MUST be translated into business terms
- SEO is 26 years old – it is not so complex that it cannot be translated
- NASA translated space travel and rocket engines to business
- Your SEO should be able to do so
Do you understand their SEO Agency Reports?
Why? Business activity MUST be translated into business terms – SEO is 26 years old – it is not so complex that it cannot be translated into basic business terms. If NASA translated space travel and rocket engines to business, your SEO should be able to do so
Do you understand what you’re getting and why
These are things to ask for:
- What keywords will you rank for
- Why?
- How much traffic will you get?
- Did you apply the same logic from PPC to SEO?
- No?
- Why?
- I don’t do PPC because its too expensive
- No: It sounds like you don’t understand SEO or PPC
- SEO is not “free” – its just not billed per click
- Avoiding PPC means you don’t understand the user
- The user WILL click on Ads
- You also need to do the hard work on SEO as you would on PPC
What to ask SEO consultants?
These are some quick questions you should ask
- What is SEO authority?
- How do you track it?
- What do you do to increase it?
- Beware of buying backlinks
- What do you provide?
- Is it just content?
- What are the deliverables?
- How do they help?
- Can you share sample reports and KPIs?
- Whats your portfolio?
- Where can I see some vetted references and SEO Case Studies?
