Top Questions to Vet Your Next SEO Agency!

James Dooley: So if I am looking to hire an SEO agency and I want to make certain I'm actually going to get results, what are some questions that I should be asking before hiring an SEO agency? So the first question I'd want to know is legally, the contracts that's going to be put in place. Is it a 12 month contract, is it a 24 month contract, is it a three month SEO contract or is it a rolling contract? In an ideal world I would always want to team up with an SEO agency that's got a rolling contract, just so I'm not tied into long term. I might not be happy with the quality of the content or the quality of the links, and if I'm tied into a 12 month contract it's going to be hard for me to get out of it. So the first thing I would be asking in general with any SEO agency is how long are the contracts that you're looking to tie me in for.

Kasra Dash: That's a really good point and obviously tracking every month like, okay what's going on. In some cases if you're a newer business or a newer website where you've not got that much history, you can't really track it every single month because what they might do in January, you might only see the results in March as well. So just bear that in mind if you are looking to hire an SEO agency. It's not just like a one month and then boom, we're ranking further with them. The next thing that I would probably be asking is, what are the actual effects? What's the actual strategy going in place? Is it a black hat SEO strategy, is it white hat? If it is going to be black hat are you okay with that, because Google might end up penalising your website. So just knowing a little bit more about the actual strategy. Potentially you might even want to watch a couple of YouTube videos to just understand a little bit more on SEO, because I think when you're hiring or when you're Outsourcing something it's probably good to be able to understand and speak the actual lingo.

James Dooley: For sure. Another one that I'd want to look at is case studies. So how many other websites have you done search engine optimisation for in my niche? So if I do solar panels or I do finance or I do gambling, they have very different SEO strategies that's needed to take place. So I'd want to see some sort of case studies in place to show, okay yes I have ranked in the UK for solar panels or yes I have ranked in law firm or legal industry in Orlando. Whatever it is, I'd want to try to go yes, I think these are the right person. They specifically understand my industry and my niche, and therefore yes the case studies is a really important question I would ask for an SEO agency.

Kasra Dash: Another thing that I would also be doing a little bit of digging on is the actual strategy. So for example a lot of SEO agencies just have a one size fits all. Have they actually looked at your website and what are you actually getting for that actual SEO strategy? Because again, not every single website might need technical SEO. For example if you have just recently had your website redesigned and it's all been optimised and stuff, you might not need technical SEO, but you might need more on page SEO and more link building. So actually figuring out what you're going to be getting at the end of every single month. Is it just going to be a glossy report or are they going to be uploading blog articles? Are they going to be building 10 backlinks every single month? Just being able to actually understand what you're getting.

James Dooley: I think you touch on a couple of good points there. So the customization that's needed for that client, because again a new website might need a lot of pillow or foundational backlinks like no follow backlinks, business listings, a press release. If you're going a little bit black hat you might go down the Google stacks or the cloud stacks and stuff like that. So it's trying to understand the strategy like you said and the customization. Because if they are an aged site that doesn't have much technical problems then obviously they might want to be spending more on the backlinks and the off page and trying to get more authority. So yeah the customization is important. The reporting like you said is important, what have they actually done. The amount of SEO agencies that don't, they're just charging money and they're not saying within the reporting at the end of the month what they've done. They should be pretty clear. Okay, we have written 16 articles and we've done 15 backlinks. There you are, that's why it's £5,000 this month. If they came back and were like okay, we fixed one or two 404 errors, you're like that shouldn’t cost £5,000 a month. And then this leads me on to my next question that I would be asking an SEO agency, probably the most important question, is the costs and the prices. How much are you going to charge me and what are you going to do for that, and do I feel that's good value. The difficult part is some could think that the cheapest package is the best package, but obviously that's not the case. You want to make certain you're trying to get best value out of whatever you're spending. If your budget for SEO is only £500 a month or £2,000 a month or £10,000 a month or £20,000 a month, whatever that budget is, you want to be trying to make certain long term you're seeing a return on investment. Like you said, it's difficult to start with because it can take a few months. But as long as you know you're working in the right direction of building good quality content, building topical authority, technically the site is good, and building backlinks and getting referring domains, you know you're going in the right direction.

Kasra Dash: Definitely. Is there anything else that you would ask? I think that's pretty much it with regards to the questions. Maybe looks is slightly different to case studies. Testimonials, seeing if there are any video testimonials of business owners. Just that personal touch. And then I'd probably say the last one is an account manager. Do I have someone who I'm able to contact if I've got any questions? Do I have an account manager that can go back and forth with, just saying why have you built these links, I don't think they're relevant? Or I don't really like this content, can we do it this way? Further down the line it might be like it's not persuasive enough in the tonality. So having an account manager to be able to deal with and have that personal touch I think is also important when you're looking to hire a new SEO agency.

James Dooley: So hope this video has helped you guys when it comes to hiring a new SEO agency. What I would probably be doing is just taking a few notes of all the questions that we've asked, and then if for example the SEO agency isn't willing to actually provide any of the answers, let's say they don't have any case studies, that should be automatically a red flag personally speaking. But if you guys do want maybe a growth strategy call, check the link down below or head over to FatRank.com and fill in the contact form.