SEO Companies – How to Find One That Will Make You Money, Not Just Take Your Money
You know how marketing on the internet has become so complicated lately? Trying to keep up with the latest fad, Facebook, Twitter, Article Marketing….
So you’ve finally realised that you can’t possibly keep on top of all this stuff and actually implement it. At least not at the same time as running your business, you’ve already got a million and one things to do right?
So how do you decide what makes a good SEO company? Here’s 9 useful questions to ask them to make sure they are on the ball and not using ineffective techniques that don’t give you any return on investment or that take you so long to see any results that it stops your business from growing.
Your main objective when questioning an internet marketing consultant is to assess their knowledge and ability to learn and grow. This will tell you that they are keeping up with changes as it’s a moving target. You also want to reveal their ability to pull the wool over your eyes too.
Here are a list of questions I recommend you ask to find the SEO experts.
- What SEO tools do you use every week?
You should know how well-versed they are in the specific market. An SEO’s toolset says so much about them, like the way a carpenter’s toolbox does. They ought to be using the SEO extensions for Firefox.
For SEO keyword research they should mention at least one of the following: Google Keyword Tool, WordTracker, and Keyword Discovery.
For other general uses: SEO Elite, Internet Business Promoter, OptiLink/ OptiSpider.
2. What strategies have you carried out to attain at least a Page Rank 5 (PR) for a current client and what is the domain?
Run a backlink check on the site they name, using Yahoo site explorer. Are there any shady links? Paid links? Link Farms? If it looks satisfying, ask them to put your name as the author (temporarily) in the meta author tag, or put your name somewhere on the home page to confirm they have control over the site.
If they begin to cook up excuses why they can’t or say, “Oh, we just completed the project last week so we don’t have the FTP info anymore” this tells you they’re lying and you can move on to the next prospect.
3. What’s the difference between PageRank and ToolBar PageRank?
I love this question. If you get “Aren’t they the same?” Stop the interview at once. What they should say is, “PageRank is calculated on a daily basis, however, Google only updates the PageRank data for public view about four times a year”.
4. How do you assess whether an SEO campaign is working?
Hopefully the answer here is “conversions” and not “traffic” or worse, “ranking”. The SEO must know their job is to drive BUYERS to the site, not just TRAFFIC. Anyone can drive traffic, but it is the specialist SEO who clearly understands the difference. That’s the SEO company you want to hire or you will end up with a lot of traffic and no customers and that’s just pointless.
5. Why does Google rank Wikipedia highly for so many topics?
Great question which should produce interesting answers but one of them better be Wikipedia’s strong authority.
6. Of all the famous SEOs, to whom do you pay attention to and whom are you not likely to pay attention to?
When they tell you, do a search on the names and see if you like what those specific SEOs stand for. If you can’t find any information on the SEOs that the person mentions, that means who they admire does not understand how to do SEO either.
7. What industry sites, blogs, and forums do you read on a regular basis ?
They better list less than a dozen or it is a warning that they spend too much time reading and not enough time working. Again, you want to check out where they spend their time and see if those are places which are worthwhile, SEO Moz, SEO book and Stompernet are recommended.
8. Tell me your biggest failure in an SEO project?
Good question – watch them squirm in their seat. If they say they have never failed, they are lying or this is their first ever project. Either way, you don’t want to hire them. I fail. I failed last week. It happens. You learn and you get better. Those who cannot admit failure are an unrealized outsourcing nightmare. Avoid it before it begins.
9. In what areas of SEO are you weakest?
Make sure they actually confess to a weakness. Those who say “I’m too organized” or “I have too much attention to detail” are warning signs. Everyone has weaknesses.
Finally, don’t forget to do a Google search on this candidate’s name (If you cannot find them, that’s a warning sign. And if you can’t find them ask why not.)
There you have it. That should give you enough information to really ascertain their worth, while not burdening them and yourself with too many unproductive questions.
