How To Hire A Search Engine Optimization Company
Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science and the kind of work and level service each company provides varies greatly. Knowing what questions you should ask is critical to deciding who to hire and who to stay away from. We decided to put together a list of questions a business should ask when evaluating and hiring a search engine optimization company. We did this because we want to help businesses stay out of trouble and get good quality search engine optimization services.
All of these questions are more or less equally important so we’ve not placed them in any particular order. You should evaluate 3-4 search engine optimization companies first, and only choose firms who put this service as their first core competency (Don’t choose developers or designers who also have an SEO service). Ask each company to answer these questions below.
- What kind of contract do you have - is it month to month, or longer term?
You should not sign a long term contract. The SEO company should be willing to go month to month as long as they are meeting your expectations. If you have to sign a long term contract you should make sure that there are metrics in place to gauge the quality of service each month. The contract should also stipulate in your favor - that a failure to provide status reports and stats should allow you out of the contract obligations. - What is your search engine optimization process?
They don’t have to give away their secrets, but they should be able to explain in simple terms their strategy for getting you to outrank your competition. - Please explain what you do for our account every month?
They should be able to explain in simple terms the activities they perform for you on a monthly basis - and how those activities contribute to your search engine optimization. - What is your process for developing back links to our site?
Does it include link exchange services or are they attempting to develop naturally occurring back links that will endure beyond the life of your contract with their company? You should never rent links for two reasons. First, they don’t last forever. Second, the search engines are cracking down on it. - Please describe your monthly status reporting.
Will they be providing you with monthly status reports which cover such things as keyword rankings, analytics and the quality of traffic coming to your site, work performed, and work planned for the coming month(s)? Beware if they don’t provide this information. - What do you do to stay current?
What is their company doing to stay abreast of the changes in search engine optimization strategies and techniques? Search engines are constantly changing and therefor so are the strategies. Staying abreast of the industry is critical to high quality search engine optimization services. - Do you include Pay Per Click positions in your evaluation of Search Engine Optimization rankings?
Even if the company is offering Pay Per Click for free as part of your search engine optimization - you should not allow the PPC positions to be included in your search engine optimization evaluation because pay per click positions are “rented” and are not part of the organic search results. - Please provide us with a list of search engine optimization references and examples of ranking results.
Are they willing to provide you with a list of references that can be called? How well are these sites ranking for their terms? - What kind of on-line reputation does the company have?
Search their company and see what you can find. Do the same for the key staff members. Make sure you like what you read about them! - How do you charge for your services?
Some companies use a pay for performance model, while others charge a flat monthly fee. Regardless of the method it should be reasonable and fair, and easily measured and calculated. - Do you offer a guarantee to get us first place positions?
You should not accept any offer that guarantees first page placements. The search engines favor no one, and therefor it is impossible to guarantee any position. Some guarantees are acceptable. For example, a company may guarantee to “improve” your rankings against a baseline set of measurements calculated prior to the commencement of their work. This would be an acceptable guarantee because if they can’t make any improvements, why should you continue paying? - What are your core values and vision?
You should ask about their core values and vision - are they in line with yours? Remember that you’re trusting future revenue to this company - you’d better have similar values!
Now that you have the answers to these questions put them in a spreadsheet where you can easily see the questions and answers provided by each search engine optimization company. Review the answers and rank the companies based on their answers. Now think about it. Consider your gut feelings - would you be comfortable working with the company you ranked number 1? If yes you should finally ask to speak the people who will be working on your account, and then if you’re happy - sign the deal and feel good about it.
January 12th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Very Informative, Thanks for the Advice!
January 12th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I just don’t understand the point of hiring an SEO firm.
When hiring a web developer make sure that they use semantic web development and stick reasonably close the accepted web standards.
When writing web content make sure that your include your keywords in your content.
Go get some links, and when you’ve done all that…..
…..go get some more links.
It’s not rocket science, and it’s stuff that needs to be implemented RIGHT FROM THE START of a web project.
IMHO the only thing SEO companies are good for is the ability they have to buy short-term links to get a site indexed - want to keep that link pointing to your site? You’re going to keep paying for it!
Cheers
Stu
January 13th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Very informative post for SEO hiring. It’s amazing how much you can learn and apply by getting on some credible forums and SEO blogs.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Hey “the Iphone Australia blog” thanks for the comment - it’s one of the best so far!
I do have to disagree with you on this point. There are far too many businesses who don’t know how to hire the right web developer, and far too many web developers don’t follow standards because they are not interested in internet marketing or search engines.
While some business may stumble across the right developer - most of them don’t!
A good search engine optimization firm works very hard to develop strong naturall occuring back links and only when necessary resorts to purchasing links - but then only from above the board places suchas Yahoo!, Business.com and Best Of The Web to name a few.
Based on your comments it sounds like you alot about Internet Marketing - which is why you’ve formed this opinion. The troubel is that most business owners don’t have this understanding - simply because their in a different business!
Thanks!
January 13th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
What a great article.
I’d definitely love to have a seo company working for me.
They can get quite expensive though.
Very good information.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Thank you!
Very informative and useful post.
Great article!
January 14th, 2008 at 10:27 am
You’re welcome deschain!
January 17th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Hey Ckata,
I’m actually a web developer (and copy-writer) by trade, and I’m consistently amazed at how much “SEO” companies charge for doing things which I just do as a matter of course when developing a site.
Developing site structure? Might as well get the keywords in the title, H1, H2 etc while you’re there.
Writing some website copy? Well let’s make sure we get our keyword densities around the mark while we’re writing the copy rather than trying to stuff them in later.
I also have prepared materials which explain to my clients how to search technorati etc to find blogs in their market, and get involved in the conversation. As a result of this, they get their link out there. I also explain to them that it’s in their best interestes to try to keep building quality links over a long period of time.
I’d re-iterate my previous comment by saying what I said before - The one key thing that (good) SEO firms have at their disposal is a bucketload of authority places to drop links. But be careful, because once you stop paying, those links disappear, and your ranking plummets.
Good, solid SEO can be done by a developer who has a very basic understanding of site structure, a copywriter who knows how to count how many time their keyword appears on a page, and a client who is willing to do the hard yards over a long period of time building links.
That is all….
January 17th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Hey “the Iphone Australia blog”
Thanks for elaborating! I love the discussion. I think we’re largely on the same page here with respect to this discussion because everything your saying is absolutely true except for the fact that there are very few developers who know how to build a website to rank well with the search engines. I can say that with confidence because I worked as a solution architect and project manager for over 10 years in the industry - and this is what drove me into SEO.
All of our clients have had websites built that had virtually NO thinking about search engines put into them, let alone the copy writing for the target audience.
Finally, the most crucial part is link building - we end up doing it on their behalf because the clients we deal with our busy running their business and are not interested in bulding the links themselves. That being said, we do work hard to involve clients in the link building process especially where it’s easily done. Such as posting on their blog and promoting the content in various places.
I’m also proud to say I don’t have a big bag of high PR sites I can buy links from. Given the climate these days around link buying that’s a dangerous prospect for our clients which we avoid.
In conclusion - you are an SEO! The only difference is that you do it on a project basis with no interest in working with clients longer term on their accounts! I have a local contractor who does SEO for Agencies in exactly this manner - on a project basis with no longer term contract with the clients!
February 21st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Learn a bit about black hat SEO so that you are on top of what an unethical SEO firm could be doing with your site. You don’t want to risk your rankings with this type of firm.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Great advice thanks alot!
July 15th, 2008 at 9:47 am
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