Hiring an SEO agency is the most important task. In the SEO industry, there are lots of service providers, so it is not easy to differentiate between the bad and the good one. It is not easy to identify the skills and expertise, when you are not coming from an SEO background.
The reviews of the SEO firms that are available online are really important, you can trust them. Also, you can conduct an interview of an SEO firm can give you a clarity of what you’re actually buying.
In this particular blog, you will get a better exposure to choose the best SEO agency of your choice. With having a good list of questions to ask an SEO company helps you disclose the difference of unfriendly policies and outdated processes which might have a bad influence on your business in the future.
What questions you should ask before hiring an SEO expert or firm?
There are lots of questions to ask from an SEO firm. Let’s have a look at some of them:-
1. Why should I prefer you when there are several other service providers in the industry?
When an SEO firm promises you that they can instantly show your brand in the top list, you should think twice before you go further. Try to measure the caliber of the SEO company with the same criteria as you think of a candidate who came for a job.
Ask an SEO company about their successful projects and do a background check. The practice of hiring an SEO expert will be the same for the small and big firms. It is important for you to focus on every minute detail while appointing an SEO specialist because they can either ruin or improve the status of your business.
2. During the interview, you should inquire about these things:
- Name of previous successful projects.
- Ask them to show the list of satisfied clients with their contact information.
- Proofs that define their better reputation in the industry.
- After you ask all possible queries from your side, investigate everything from your end.
3. Assure that the SEO service provider can:
Enhance the rate of an interested audience for your online business. Make sure that your SEO expert can generate an interested audience in lieu of just getting traffic. They should be capable of boosting sales.
The aim of the firm which you are going to hire shouldn’t only enhance the quality of the traffic but also focus on doing effective time management.
Doing marketing is the most important and kind of a burden for the business owners. It is time-consuming in nature. A better firm allows you to work on what matters the most.
A professional SEO expert will communicate everything in advance. You should see whether the agency you hired is maintaining transparency and showing the reports that show the ongoing successes associated with your website.
4. Why should I assign my project to you?
It is the most important question that you should ask your SEO expert. When the website will not be optimized, it can have an adverse effect on your business. When you are going to hire an SEO expert for your company, you should approach someone who got better recognition. A fake practitioner can ruin your online business and you will have to pay penalty.
5. The answer to this particular question should have all these details:
Deep knowledge about the industry standards and dedication
Should know the ways to implement the online internet marketing strategy
In case, you do not get satisfaction from your online marketing campaigns, what all they can do is to resolve the issue.
Know the methods to achieve long-term success.
A professional SEO expert will provide you confidence that they can deliver you best results.
6. Can you provide the referral’s name?
Organizations usually don’t hire candidates without any reference. The same thing will implement when you appoint SEO experts who are responsible for your online business presence.
An authorized SEO expert can easily provide you name of clients for whom they have worked. In the current scenario, SEO firms will not mind providing testimonials because they understand what makes their clients happy.
For your safety, you can investigate things on your own to get the desired outcomes. There may be some professionals who will not want to disclose their client’s name. To handle such situations, you can have a look at social media pages to check the reviews.
7. What do you know about the Google Algorithm?
An SEO company or expert should be aware of Panda and Penguin updates. There are even other Google search algorithm updates about which an SEO professional should be aware of. It includes several things like Exact Match Domain update, DMCA Penalties, Knowledge Graph, Link Warnings, and many more. When you hire a recognized SEO firm, they will explain you everything what these updates do and what is their importance.
8. What is your point of view towards SEO?
When you ask this question to the SEO consultant, his focus would be on the website content. Relevant and unique content can change the whole scenario. According to Google’s algorithm, your website can get high rank when you will have informative content on your website.
When a search engine optimization professional only builds links for your website, the ranking of the website can be influenced adversely. You should serve as an expert source, the one which can resolve issues.
Whatever keywords you are searching to rank for, your first priority should be that your website’s content is capable of getting top position in search engine results.
9. Do you have experienced Content writers?
For a successful SEO, you should confirm several things. You can accomplish your business goals if the SEO agency you are going to hire will not have a skilled team of writers and content producers. Informative content is the base of any long term SEO strategy. An SEO firm should have the capability to produce effective content on regular basis. Below given strategies will not work due to low-quality content:
- SMM
- Relationship with the audience cannot build
- Viral marketing can be affected
- Guest posting strategy doesn’t work
- Content marketing
10. What is the time duration for improving the search engine rankings?
You need to be careful if someone replies to this answer in an unrealistic way. It is not in the hand of an SEO consultant to control Google’s ranking timeline, this can be done only by using Google.
11. Let’s have a look at further details:
Google will only have control over Google’s algorithm.
The consumer-preference, quality, and structure of your competitor’s website may have a greater influence on the rank of the website.
When you appoint a genuine digital marketing expert, they can’t promise you to achieve your goals instantly.
12. Are you handling projects of my competitors?
A recognized SEO company will explain you everything and tell you if they are working with your direct business rivals or not. If the circumstances are like that, you should decide whether you should work with such kind of agency or not. Take your time and finalize what suits your interest.
13. What is your approach towards link building?
Creating links to your online website is the most important aspect of SEO. Google considers only the natural links as a method to provide authority to websites.
The main goal of the SEO agency is to provide you a better recognition among competitors. They know the method to use profitable keywords in your industry and finally comes with a tailored and unique strategy for your business.
Link building strategy works, but you need to ensure that backlinks are directing consumers to your website. An efficient SEO expert will create backlinks which will help you get results as per your requirement.
Google is only focusing on providing meaningful content to consumers so an SEO professional should understand and make it as a part of their strategy.
14. Do you know about Google webmaster guidelines?
A reputed SEO firm should be aware of the rules and standards of Google webmaster.
Google’s motive is to show the good-quality and useful products at the top of their rankings. It follows such criteria to protect a user from terrible search experiences.
It is mandatory for you to ensure that the SEO agency is capable of meeting Google’s ultimate goal. You should not assign your project work to an incapable and incompetent company that doesn’t know how they can actually meet the business goals. It will not work if you are taking help of unauthorized actions to obtain high-ranking on Google.
Whenever you hire an SEO consultant, you should ask them, what they handled their client’s website for whom they worked earlier. To check the efficiency, you can ask what they can do for you to attain a higher rank. A bad strategy can penalize or may ban your online business because of any these reasons:
- Inappropriate links
- Redirecting businesses to a URL which has not been even requested
- Low-quality content
- Uploading pages with wrong keywords
15. Will you update me about the changes you apply to my website?
It should be your primary goal to maintain transparency, you need to maintain a long-term and healthy relationship with a professional. When you will be charged with additional money or find sudden changes to your website, you may have to face unnecessary situations.
SEO involves several adjustable changes to your website’s design. It involves adding relevant title tags to existing HTML code or static images. In case, an SEO consultant wants to make changes to your website structurally, you should understand how this can affect your website’s current look.
You need to know that what all things are responsible for making these changes which have been mentioned above. Before hiring an SEO professional, check whether you should hire a full-time employee for this work, or outsource the labor. Also, check if they will maintain transparency during the work. By gaining clarification about everything on everything before signing a contract, the chances of finding issues will be decreased.
16. What if I will stop taking service from you?
There are several SEO experts or companies that use artificial linking schemes to attain higher-rank for your company. You should make sure you have control over all the web content for which you have paid. It is better if you determine everything in advance when you hire an SEO company. More than 85% of the agencies implement this artificial linking strategy to promote their client business.
17. Things usually an SEO firm does:
Lots of SEO firms cheats online business by utilizing artificial links and by internal linking systems.
They may have their own blog network focusing to encourage clients to take their service. The SEO professionals use such blog networks which are against Google’s terms. These kinds of social networks will not be detected for a short period of time. If you are taking services from such type of SEO firms that are applying such methods, your rank will drop down after you stop taking service.
All the efforts which have been spent by you on building up the search rankings is a complete wastage. You will have to either face the situation or appoint an SEO company again. In the online marketing industry, using illegal practices are common.
18. How you execute the whole work process?
You need to know who actually is going to work on your project and how they work. There are SEO specialists who do nothing but wastes your money and time. An authorized and reputed agency will take things seriously. Apart from sending daily work reports, they will suggest you with new ideas and suggestions which will help you in the growth of your business.
19. A well-known agency will present you with foolproof plans that include:
Lists of services they will provide
The total number of hours invested in your project in a month.
A plan to create genuine backlinks.
Explain you about project reporting specifications.
Making plans is not only beneficial for the client, but it also adds an advantage for the SEO agencies.
20. How do you define success?
Ensuring immediate results is not the only thing, an authorized and eligible SEO agency can provide. You should even determine how an SEO professional defines the success.
Search engine optimization is not something which can be achieved in a short-term, it is a long-term process that requires lots of effort to attain success.
21. Important components of success:
Brand Awareness:
Brand awareness is the most important aspect of ensuring the success of your business. Your audience should have knowledge of your product and services in which you are dealing in.
Website Authority:
Getting authorization from known sites helps in building a better reputation for your brand. After you collaborate will reputable sites, it gets easy for you to boost your ratings with the help of higher quality links.
Quality Search Traffic:
Organic traffic which creates leads and sales helps you in improving the overall revenue. The aim of an SEO organization is to meet the ultimate goals for your online business.
22. Is there any future of SEO?
SEO isn’t something that can’t be defined in a short time span. This is a kind of question that helps you know about the SEO company’s ability to get adapted to sudden and instant changes.
There are certain things about online marketing which would appear for years. According to Google, it accepts only high-quality and informative content. It makes it possible by relying on digital news sources that use other reliable resources. This is why, the Digital PR has been called the future of SEO. It is applicable to achieve Google’s goal of authorizing the new resources of content.
An effective SEO means using right set of keywords and quality links which direct the users to your website, the aim of Digital PR is to enhance your brand value. This coordinates with traditional SEO methods to maintain a level of trust in your brand.
When an SEO agency will not be able to define the development of Digital PR, it clearly says that choosing such companies will have an adverse effect on your reputation. The SEO trends are changing every day, it would be great to choose such SEO firm that understands in and outs of an industry and can deliver the best results.
Conclusion
You should understand that hiring an SEO agency is an important job, it is a marketing effort that involves multiple things. You should approach a reputed firm that holds sufficient knowledge where professionals can give your business a new direction. It would be great to approach such agencies which have obtained skills in relationship building, writing, and know what would be the best marketing strategy for your business. Before hiring an SEO firm, you should ask them if they can maintain transparency during the work.