There is such a huge buzz about SEO nowadays that one might get completely overwhelmed with its intricacies. So much emphasis is laid on it in relation to setting up a business or maintaining one. Even though there are other tools that can ensure the success of businesses, somehow the concept of SEO is a midpoint in every business propagation campaign that is unavoidable. SEO is deeply embedded in every aspect of business and all its marketing strategies.
WHY SEO?
What does SEO really do for you as an individual entrepreneur or as a company?
An online presence is most important for every business as it enables you spread your “tentacles” in order to reach a large number of individuals and companies worldwide. This is where SEO comes in. SEO is the finishing touch to a well structured campaign and content. It gives your business and website visibility by pointing potential clients towards you, SEO is the magnet that exerts a force of affinity between a business and potential clients. Even though SEO is very necessary for business, it is neither a magic bullet that automatically turns tables around spontaneously and neither is it a cheap venture.
THE PROBLEM WITH SEO AGENCIES
Hiring an SEO agency is often necessary as it saves time and allows you attend to other pressing business matters. It is also a good idea because you do not have enough experience handling the block of activities involved with SEO management, believe me, it is a planet of its own. As true as all these are, people who have hired SEO firms to run campaigns for their businesses often do not get maximum results, why is that? What usually goes wrong, and how can this be fixed?
SEO involves quality of content, keyword optimization, analytics, density, meta-tags, headers, and a whole lot more. The requirements changes so often that you would have to frequently monitor and optimize. Maintaining good ranking can be quite difficult and this would also depend on the knowledge of the SEO agency working for your company. It is often necessary to make lots of enquiries before hiring an SEO agency this is to be sure of the strategies and capabilities of this company. Here are a few key questions to ask any SEO agency you intend to hire;
- Give us a list of the services you can provide as a strategy to implement SEO?
This is a very crucial question as lots of companies may want to simply paint a general picture of what they can offer but it is necessary to provide specifics for documentation as this is what builds into the terms of reference in a contract. An experienced and transparent company will willingly provide a comprehensive list to this effect.
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What is your schedule or time allocation for campaign and analysis?
Since you are working with a company, payment style might be hourly or daily rate. It would be good to know how much time daily that would be put into specific aspects of the SEO strategy.
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How many optimized content can we expect per month?
Bearing in mind that this is a continuous process and the efficacy of the strategy is dependent on how much content the agency can constantly produce.
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What is the expected number of backlinks per month?
Another aspect of SEO strategy is the use of backlinks. When you have a few links connecting in and out of your web pages it tends to draw reasonable traffic especially if these links are that of renowned companies that also rank high. So it pays to have a good number of backlinks.
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What is the tentative time frame for a reasonable increase in ranking?
The whole point of hiring an SEO agency is to achieve maximum results that would put your business on the map in the most efficient time and in turn increase in sales and income. With this in mind, it wouldn’t be off-line to ask for a tentative time of fruition.
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What past jobs have you done?
This is probably one of the most important questions in the meeting as this will drive the direction of the conversation. You would need to go for a well experienced agency that has had success stories in this field.
