What Should You Look for When Hiring Someone for SEO Help?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important digital marketing strategy that helps your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). When your website sits on the first page of Google for keywords specific to your industry, searchers can find your website more easily and are more likely to want to work with you! After all, 75% of searchers do not scroll past the first page of Google after typing a query (a question) into a search bar!
SEO helps your website gain warm leads, so it’s easy to see why SEO agencies and companies are in such high demand. How do you know which SEO company to work with though? Today, TM SEO Services goes over what you should look for before hiring an SEO company to help you with your website’s SEO.
What Questions Should You Ask an SEO Company Before Hiring Them?
As you evaluate SEO companies, be sure to ask these businesses the following questions before hiring them:
What Type of SEO Strategy Do You Propose for My Website?
Gain some insight into what strategies this company puts in place to improve SEO. We recommend asking if those strategies have also been successful in the past. If so, how? What improved? Did their SEO efforts increase website visitors, clicks, or impressions? If so, by how much and in what span of time?
More qualified traffic increases your ability to make more sales. SEO is not just about optimizing a website for a search engine; it is also about optimizing your website for your target audience. That is what separates a great SEO company from an average one. You do not want to have a website that ranks on Google’s first page if it cannot convert.
How Do You Measure Website Performance Metrics?
Ask how the company measures how well your website is performing. Here are some of the ways to measure website performance:
· Impressions (how many times your website pages were viewed on a search engine results page)
· Clicks (how many times your website was clicked)
· Rankings (how high your website ranks on a search engine results page)
· Sessions (the number of visits from organic searches)
· Visitors (the number of visitors who came to your website organically)
You can see these metrics with a tool like Google Analytics 4 and/or Google Search Console.
What Weekly/Monthly Deliverables Can I Expect from Your Company?
It is important to understand what you can expect weekly and/or monthly from your SEO company. SEO is a marathon and not a sprint, so remember it does take time to start to see results. It is common to have weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly updates, but this does depend on the company and what they are willing to do. Will the company work with you to provide you with an appropriate number of check-ins that make you feel comfortable?
What SEO Strategies Do You Suggest We Implement?
The SEO company you work with should have on-page and off-page SEO strategies in place. Here are some of the SEO strategies we recommend asking about:
· Keyword research, tracking, and monitoring
· Website content optimization
· Directory submission
· Google Business setup and maintenance
· Website auditing
· Backlink generation
Do keep in mind that an SEO company should absolutely conduct keyword research for you and run a website crawl as well. If you find a company that doesn’t do those two things, find a different one.
What SEO Tools Do You Use?
This is a common question to ask before hiring an SEO company. Make sure that this company uses a reputable SEO tool such as Moz, SEMrush, or Ahrefs. The company should also be very familiar with Google Business, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.
How Long Do You Recommend We Work Together?
Ask the SEO company how long they suggest working together. It is common to have an SEO company request to work together for at least 6 months, although we recommend a full year (Google will tell you it will take up to 1 year to see changes). The reason is that it takes some time for your keyword rankings to improve. It could take anywhere from 3 months to 12 months to see your website rankings improve. It often takes 12 months for an SEO company to improve those rankings, improve on-page SEO, and grow off-page SEO (and this could take longer if you’re in a competitive market).
TM SEO Services also recommends monthly SEO maintenance on your website as well. We suggest a monthly SEO audit as well as ongoing content optimization to ensure your website rankings do not go down. Remember, search engines like to see new content that is relevant and informative for their searchers.
When Can I Expect to See My Website’s SEO Improve?
While it can take some time to see results with SEO, the right SEO company will be able to give you a timeline for when you can expect to see some results. We also recommend asking if this company has worked with businesses like yours in the past and what their results timeline looked like as well.
We tell our clients that it takes anywhere from 3 to 12 months to see a change in rankings, although this varies based on the industry you’re in, how competitive the market is, and when we’re able to actually implement change on your website. We have seen a client’s rankings improve in as little as 2 months and as long as 1 year.
Be wary of SEO companies that guarantee that they can get you on the first page of Google in a certain amount of time. There is no sure way to know this as we cannot predict Google’s actions. Therefore, you cannot legally state that you can do so.
What Will Be My Role in This SEO Process?
You want to ask what your responsibilities will be during this process. Does the SEO company require you to have a more hands-on approach? If so, is that something you can commit to? Or is the SEO company going to take care of everything for you? Ask for clarification on what the company needs from you before moving forward.
At TM SEO Services, we tell all our clients we just need access to their website and Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Business accounts. After we conduct an SEO strategy session with you, you don’t have to do much else besides get updates from us. You can choose to have weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly updates either via email or Zoom, depending on your schedule.
What Is Your Pricing Model?
Pricing should be transparent. Ask the SEO company you are vetting what their pricing models are, which package is the most popular, and WHY. Be wary of companies that aren’t transparent about pricing and avoid telling you what they charge.
At TM SEO Services, we offer hourly rates as well as membership pricing. We charge $150/hour and offer 6-month and 12-month memberships. We also charge monthly SEO maintenance packages that start at $250.
You are also welcome to send us an email to request a quote for a specific project as well. We are happy to work with you.
Which Keywords Does Your Company Rank For?
Does the SEO company you are going to hire rank on Google’s first page for competitive keywords? If you cannot find this company on Google, you should be concerned. An SEO company should have great, if not fantastic, SEO.
How TM SEO Services Stands Out as an SEO Company
At TM SEO Services, we pride ourselves on our transparency, skills, and hard work. We do not outsource our work to a foreign country. All our work is done by our CEO, Tori Morrison, and her team of on-page and off-page SEO specialists in California. We are transparent with our pricing model and our SEO process. Our SEO process consists of the following:
· SEO consultation to go over if we think SEO would be a good idea for you (complimentary)
· SEO package choice (we discuss which package is right for you or create one if you require something a little different)
· SEO strategy session (we go over how we are going to improve your SEO)
· SEO package/offering kicks into gear (you sit back and let us do the work)
· Updates are sent out (you receive weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly updates)
Our CEO loves meeting potential clients or current clients in person too! We proudly work with local yoga studios, chiropractors, nutritionists, activewear boutiques, lawyers, personal trainers, and business coaches in the North County San Diego area and surrounding areas.
Feel free to get in touch with us today if you would like to learn more about our SEO offerings.