Why you may have an SEO company
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing because people conduct trillions of searches every year. Search is often the primary source of digital traffic for brands and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and ranking higher in search results than your competition can have a material impact on your bottom line. With the importance of SEO and the needed expertise to manage it, this is why businesses may have the need to hire an outside agency to run their SEO.
Why you may want to know if your SEO company is doing the job
Businesses may want to know if their SEO company is doing the job because they want to see a return on investment. Since SEO is a long-term commitment, they want to see if the SEO company is competent and if their money is being used wisely or going to waste.
Examples that your SEO company is NOT working
The following are examples of an SEO company not properly doing its job.
1Refuses to share deliverables
An SEO company that is unable to show deliverables or not competent enough to answer SEO-related questions.
2Rankings and traffic drop
Over time your rankings, traffic, and revenue drop after hiring your SEO company.
3Mentioning guaranteed results
Red flags should signal when an SEO company mentions that it will provide you with guaranteed results.
4Has a blog network
If they have a blog network that builds low-quality links to your website can damage your website’s authority.
5Content is built for search engines
Website content that is built for search engines and not for people will hurt the user experience for your visitors.
6They don’t have a communication plan
If they don’t communicate with you regularly, consult, or make you aware of your website’s SEO efforts then they’re not right for you.
Examples that your SEO company is working
A great SEO company will show you evidence that they’re working on your SEO by providing the following:
1SEO website audit
An SEO audit can show issues that your website may have, and your SEO company can have basic recommendations to fix these site issues.
2Provide analysis on your site’s link profile
A site’s link profile is inbound links pointing to your site, as well as the characteristics of those links.
3Optimized content for your site
Your SEO company should provide evidence of new content created or pages that have been modified on your website.
4Off-page content
There may be guest posts on behalf of your company or incoming links from high quality quality websites.
5Traffic is down but the revenue goes up
Organic traffic may go down but could bring increases in sales due to purging out low-quality leads and bringing in high-quality visitors that are ready to spend money.
6SEO implementations
They should be able to show your records of backlogged SEO work that needs to be implemented and work that has been implemented.
Measuring your SEO results
Tracking your organic results is helpful in figuring out if your SEO tactics are working. There are multiples ways and platforms to measure SEO success, some of them are:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google Analytics can:
- Monitor the organic traffic channel/source
- Track keyword rankings using queries
- Monitor traffic referral sources
- Measure engagement on your website (bounce rate, time spent on site, etc.)
SEMrush
SEMrush is software that helps companies run digital marketing methods, like SEO campaigns. This platform lets you:
- Check on organic traffic
- See keyword rankings
- Monitor website authority
- Analyze backlinks
- and much more
Reports and other internal insights
Measure how your website leads, sales, email sign-ups, or other conversions have changed over time since hiring your SEO company. Lastly, you can analyze reporting done by your SEO agency.
Last thoughts
Hopefully, this article was of use in pointing out if your SEO company is doing the work and your investment is being put to good use. But like any marketing tactic, if you don’t have the SEO expertise or time to conduct an audit on your SEO agency you are more than welcome to use our SEO company auditing service.