Questions To Ask Before Hiring An SEO Agency

Author: Seoexpert Goldcoast

All e-commerce sites in order to gain the best exposure and sales need to have optimum search engine visibility and show up on the first page of Google search results to be invisible to your potential customers.

The most cost effective way to do this is to hire an SEO agency that can accomplish this is for you. The problem is that there are so many self-proclaimed agencies that it is hard to know which SEO agency to trust who also has the technical expertise and the ability to get you on top of the list.

Some of the most essential Questions you need to ask before hiring an SEO agency are:

1. Can you provide references from some of your clients that you have successfully provided SEO consultancy to?

This is so you can gauge how effective the consultant's efforts on their behalf were.

  1. Ask them if they strictly abide by Google's publicly and webmasters best practice policies?
  2. Ask for information on how they will go about improving your SEO rankings.
  3. Ask them to explain several alternative strategies and campaigns they would use, especially for your site to drive up your search engine rankings. They should also be able to give a realistic time frame of how long it would take to achieve the goals you agree on.
  4. Ask for a technical review of your website to find any potential problems. This is important so any problems that could lower your rankings are eliminated.
  5. Ask if they will provide on page optimization to all web pages, webpage titles, headings and tags, links and backlinks where applicable, as well as off page SEO strategies to increase your web presence with social media platforms, blogs and press releases.
  6. Ask them if they can guarantee you will get to the top of the web ratings and number one or two spot. If they imply or say yes they can, find another SEO agency on the Gold Coast, as it is impossible to guarantee this result. But they should tell you they will get you on the first page.
  7. Ask them if they are experienced with local SEO techniques and will they optimize your site to cater for your specific geographic area.
  8. Find out if they will make changes to your web page coding and will they notify you of all changes and provide details. Will they also add copywriting in your name to all changes or new pages they add to your site?
  9. Are they experienced in using Google Analytics so you and they can track the improvements, including the number of links from other websites that are driving traffic to yours and much more? How often will they check the analytics and how they will use the data to continually improve your SEO and website traffic?
  10. Ask how often they will give you progress reports and how you will communicate, i.e. in person, via video chat, phone calls, email, texting or all.
  11. Find out what their exact fees and if they require a retainer and also have a cost ceiling level. Do they charge per contract, project, or hourly rate? How often are invoices due, 7 days or monthly?
  12. When the contract expires or if it is terminated early are there any fees? Can they guarantee you will own all of the optimized web content you have paid for and that they will not remove or change any content you have paid for?