What you should know before hiring an SEO partner. At IDM.digital we understand that first and foremost our understanding needs to be focussed on your business. Only then can we properly develop an SEO strategy that will make commercial sense. If you watch the video below it will guide you on what you need to know before hiring an SEO company. We believe in the principles discussed in this guide.
Maile Ohye works with Google search and here is her professional advice on what to look for when hiring a highly competent SEO provider. This advice will help you hire a useful SEO and prevent hiring a bad SEO, one who you might pay a lot of money without positive results or even worse one who implements shady practices on your website that result in a reduction in search rankings.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Some SEO seems like black magic. Having worked with Google search for over a decade what I’ve learned is that first it’s not black magic and second if you want long term success there aren’t any quick magical tricks that an SEO will provide so that your site ranks number one.
It’s important to note that an SEO potential is only as high as the quality of your business or website so successful SEO helps your website put your best foot forward so that it ranks appropriately in the spot where an unbiased potential customer would expect your site to be seen.
A successful SEO also looks to improve the entire searcher experience from search results to clicking on your website and potentially converting.
A good SEO will recommend best practices for a search friendly site from basic things like descriptive page titles for a blog or small business to more complex things like language markup for a multilingual global site.
Good SEO will ensure that you re serving your online customers a good experience especially those coming from a search engine and that your site is helpful whether they re using a desktop computer or mobile phone.
In most cases the SEO will need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.
My strongest advice when working with an SEO is to request if they corroborate their recommendation with a documented statement from Google either in a Help Centre article, video or Google a response in a forum that supports both the SEO description of the issue that needs to be improved to help with ranking and to the approach they prescribed to accomplishing the tasks.
One basic rule is that in a majority of cases doing what’s good for SEO is also doing what’s good for your online customers. Things like having a mobile friendly website, good navigation and building a great brand.
Additionally if you re a more established brand with complicated legacy systems then good search friendly best practices likely involved paying off some of your site’s technical debt such as updating your infrastructure so that your website is agile and able to implement features faster in the long term.
When you’re looking to hire an SEO here’s a general two-step process prior to making a decision:
1. Conduct a two way interview with your potential SEO check that they seem generally interested in you and your business. At this stage they can tell you about other work they have done as well giving you an idea of their experience and expertise
2. You’ll probably have to pay for a technical and search audit – this will enable the SEO to give you an honest and realistic appraisal of where your site is now and the work that will need to be done to achieve your stated goals
Here’s an important piece of advice when hiring an SEO provider:
Do NOT hire an SEO who hasn’t first taken a technical view of your website. There is, simply, no way they can offer you a realistic or honest proposal of what may or may not be achievable for your site until they have taken a good look under the ‘hood’ of your website.
Some SEOs have a very complicated and in-depth technical audit process that, in many cases, can take several days to perform. Be prepared and willing to pay for this service. It’s a good sign that your potential SEO provider knows what they’re doing and isn’t simply just trying to accumulate random clients with a one-size-fits-all approach to SEO.
A good SEO doesn’t focus only on search engine ranking but also, how they can help your business via the Worldwide Web.
So they should ask questions like what makes your business content and or service unique and therefore valuable to customers.
They want to know this information to make sure it’s highlighted on your website for your current and potential new audience.
What does your common customer look like and how do they currently find your website?
How does your business make money and how can search help?
What other channels are you using offline advertising social networks and who are your competitors what do they do well online?
If the SEO doesn’t seem interested in learning about your business from a holistic standpoint, look elsewhere.