SEO can enhance the user experience. It can enhance your business brand and distinguish you from your competitors.
If you have a business, you may realize the value of SEO. You may realize how it can attract website visitors, help you produce leads, and ultimately give you more sales in your business.
However, you may have been disappointed in the past with an SEO agency. They may have promised all the spectacular benefits of SEO to only come far short of actually producing any meaningful results.
Before you give up hope on an SEO marketing agency, you need to reevaluate what you think about them. You need to have a criterion that guides you when you hire an SEO marketing agency.
You need to think of it as a partnership when you do work with an SEO marketing agency.
Here’s the complete guide that can help you guide you when you hire an SEO agency.
What Do You Want to Accomplish?
Before you consider any SEO agency, you need to figure out what you want to accomplish as a business.
You need to figure out what your 6-month to 1-year goals are. This can help you evaluate what you need to do to reach your revenue goals. You may also have website traffic goals.
When you meet with an SEO agency, they will ask you what your overall goal is when you have an SEO optimized website. That way they can figure out what kind of SEO campaign you need to produce the best results.
This is why you need to figure out what your overall goals are with an SEO campaign. While you can accomplish a lot with SEO, you want to have a specific focus so it helps you determine what kind of strategy you need in place.
How Much Do You Know About Your Own SEO & Your Market?
Another area you need to evaluate before you hire an SEO and create a partnership is your own understanding of SEO and your market.
If you have a limited understanding of SEO, you don’t want to tell the SEO agency how to conduct their business. You don’t want to control their marketing strategy. They are professionals, so they should know everything about SEO and how to enhance it for your business.
However, it’s a good idea to have some basic understanding of SEO so you can have an idea of what is happening in the marketing campaign. You don’t want to be completely ignorant of what an SEO agency is doing to your website.
If you are unsure about their process and how they can enhance your business, don’t be afraid to ask them about it.
While you may not have a wealth of information about SEO, you should have a lot of information about your market. You need to tell whoever you hire everything about your target market.
This is critical if you want an SEO agency to understand your business. You need to explain who you’re ideal customer is and how you are helping them overcome a problem.
You should know the demographics of your target market, which includes their age, where they live, along with other information. This is critical if you want an SEO agency to have the most success.
It’s critical if you want the most success in your own business.
What’s an SEO Agency’s Past Experience?
After you’ve figured out the preliminary questions and what you want to accomplish, you now need to check out some SEO agencies.
One of the first and most important things you need to look at is their past experience. You want to see what the testimonials say on their website.
When you are considering a specific SEO agency, you want to ensure that they didn’t open up in the past year or two. You want a company that has 5 or 10+ years of experience.
You should then ask the agency what kind of results they achieved for businesses. While it’s important to ask about their success as an agency, it’s just important to ask about their failure.
When you understand the setbacks they’ve had as an agency and how they reconciled those setbacks, you have a better understanding of what they do to fix it.
What Is Your Niche and How Are You Different From Your Competitors?
When you are searching for SEO agencies, you also want to make sure they work in your niche.
If you had a specific business and worked with a specific set of customers, you to make sure that the SEO agency you are considering has worked in your niche. You want to make sure they have the experience and the success of having worked in your field.
A similar question to ask is how are they as an SEO agency different from their competitors. You want to assess if their methods are different, their success, or their experience.
The most distinguishable part of an SEO agency should ultimately be their success. They may have a different approach or more experience, but if they don’t have the success behind it, then it doesn’t matter how much experience they have.
You can determine how much success an SEO agency’s had by looking at their past work and what they were able to accomplish for businesses. You want to see if an SEO agency was able to produce more leads, more website, traffic and if not most importantly, more revenue.
How Much Do I Need to Spend on SEO?
Another factor to consider if you want a productive partnership with an SEO agency is to know how much to spend on an SEO marketing strategy.
A good SEO agency will tell you what your budget needs to be if you want to accomplish specific results. They will tell you how much you need to optimize your website.
While it’s important to know how much to spend, you ultimately want to figure out what value you are getting with whatever you spend your money on.
This is something you should ask an SEO agency directly. You should ask them what results in you will be getting and how soon you will get them.
Do You Provide a Free Website Audit?
While you are looking for an SEO agency, you should ask them if they do a free website audit. This is when they analyze your website for free and assess how much traffic you are getting per day.
Not all SEO agencies offer this free assessment. That’s why it’s important to find an SEO agency who does offer it because they can help you without charging a fee. Some agencies just want to make a quick buck by offering a paid website audit.
What Is Your Research Process?
When you are looking for an SEO agency and you want to build a relationship with them, you need to figure out what makes them different.
You want to see how they produce results for businesses. This is why you should consider asking them what their research process is. You should know how they analyze websites, who they search for keywords, and how they create a campaign that is effective.
The research process is critical in an SEO agency. If they have the proper keywords or the right targeting, it could result in catastrophe. The more you know about their research process and what makes it effective, the more comfortable you are.
How Long Until I See Results?
Another consideration before you hire an SEO agency is figuring out how long it takes before you see results.
You may want more leads and sales in the next couple of weeks but the SEO agency you are considering says it will take months. This should give you some doubt if you should hire that specific agency.
You also want to see how long it takes before you receive more website traffic or how long it takes before you are on the first page of Google with your SEO content.
When you have a proper understanding of how long it will take before you see any results, you are more patient. In addition, the relationship between you and the SEO company isn’t fractured.
There’s a mutual understanding of what you are expecting and when you will see results.
How Often Are We Communicating?
Another critical aspect of creating a mutual partnership between you and the SEO company is communication.
After you’ve hired an SEO agency, you want to make sure there’s some level of communication. At the same time, you don’t want to be bombarded with calls from the agency.
You want to make sure there’s some level of independence as well as trust. You should trust what they are going to do in your business without you needing to have oversight on everything.
You should consider communicating once a week to every other week. You want a full report on how the SEO campaign is doing. You also want to make sure that the SEO agency sets the agency, taking command of communication.
When they take command, it can give you some assurance that they know how to communicate with their clients.
Why Shouldn’t I Just Do SEO Myself?
As a business, you might be wondering why you wouldn’t do SEO campaigns yourself. If you had a lot of SEO knowledge, you might be considering to do everything yourself to save yourself money and possible disappointment from hiring an SEO agency.
However, doing SEO yourself will only make it more difficult for you to run your business.
When you hire an SEO agency that has the experience and expertise, they should give you more free time to focus on big picture projects. They should give you more time to focus on another aspect of your business.
If the SEO agency does a good job of bringing in leads, you can focus on the sales aspect of your business. You can focus on anything else in your business that needs your attention instead of trying to figure and manage SEO campaigns.
How Do You Price Your Packages & What Are Your Packages?
The final factor to consider when you are looking for an SEO agency is seeing what they have to offer. You want to see what packages are offered and the variety of ways an agency can help you.
You want to see if an agency offers more than SEO. You want to see if they also offer consulting services. This means they can provide insight as well as a plan on what you should do with your SEO services.
Consulting services can provide you with much-needed assistance on what you are doing wrong with your current SEO campaign. It can also be a great way to see how an SEO does work for you before you have them take over your SEO campaign.
Now You Are Ready to Hire an SEO Marketing Agency
While you may be skeptical of hiring an SEO marketing agency, this guide should give you the confidence and the assurance of hiring a quality agency. You now know what you need to look for in an SEO agency in order to give you the results you want in your business.
With Riserr, you get everything you need in an SEO agency. You get the experience, the knowledge, and the success stories, which can found on your website with case studies. Riserr also offers a variety of packages to match what you are looking for and are trying to accomplish in your business.
If you want help from one of the best SEO agencies, you can contact us here.
