Questions to Ask an SEO
A potential client called our web development company, and after nearly an hour on the phone with the developer, he felt confident that we were being up front and honest with him. He was interested in developing a website for a national company. He was already on board with an SEO, but had doubts as to his qualifications.
The question was posed: "What kinds of questions should I ask my SEO guy to be sure he knows what he's doing? The developer asked for some time to come up with a list of questions, and we worked together on it this morning. Below is an excerpt of the result - questions to ask your SEO to be sure they know what they're doing.
#1 - How will you choose which keywords to optimize on each page? Will you guess or do research? If research, what programs do you use? Will you be able to tell me the number of searches per month those keywords are being used?
This is important! MANY SEO's optimize a page for words like "pensacola florida pool retail sellers". This is a bad idea because there are zero searches each month for that phrase. So even if your SEO got you a number one placement in the search engines for that phrase - No One Searches for it!
#2 What is your inbound and outbound linking strategy? Link exchanges are a thing of the past. Too many "bad neighborhoods" have eliminated the benefit to link exchanging and link farms. What strategy does your SEO have for building links naturally? Also, avoid "run of site" links. These are links that are placed in the footer or another inconspicuous place on every page of a website. The search engines have gotten "smarter" when it comes to links. If it doesn't look natural, it won't help you - and could even hinder your efforts.
#3 Will you provide me with monthly reports on your progress? All reputable internet marketing professionals should provide you with monthly reports on keyword placement in the SERPs as well as overall site metrics such as number of visitors, average pages viewed per visit, average time on site, and highest sources of traffic. While no one can promise you a number one rank (after all, the search engines control that, not SEOs) a professional SEO should want to show you the progress he's making.
While there are many questions you should ask a potential internet marketer, these are three that will give you a good understanding of their practices. Keep in mind that you should always steer clear of someone that tells you to "hide" keywords on a page (white text on a white background). This is known as blackhat SEO, or spamdexing and while it may give you a temporary boost - search engines are smarter than they used to be. The last thing you want is for your domain to get black listed and not show up at all.
A reputable SEO will follow Google's best practices and should be certified. With a little information and some time, you'll be able to screen potential SEO's and get the most value for your money. And yes - SEO is expensive if it's done correctly. With something like this, you get what you pay for.
Happy SEOing!
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