Correctly chosen SEO agency could drive in quality traffic in a matter of three to six months that will evidently lead to increase in sales and revenue. SEO is one of the cheapest sources of organic traffic and that can help you to reduce your advertisement budget and increase website visibility and market share.
Making a mistake about the new SEO firm may cost you time and money, including the money you could have earned if you were in the TOP 10 on time.
These are the five tips every business owner should consider before starting a contract.
1.Be specific about your business goal that stands behind SEO, and make sure your SEO firm can achieve it.
Sometimes you know you need SEO, but you don’t know why. This is not a problem if the future SEO provider can dig into your business and find out the real reason to climb Google TOP 10.
This is important because there are many possible SEO strategies that can be taken for the same website. You don’t need to be an SEO expert to choose the right strategy, but your firm needs to be the expert to determine which strategy suits you!
A simple test to check if they perform the right actions that will get you the results and not just optimize your website and place a few backlinks for the sake of SEO, please consider if they do this before providing you with an offer or starting a contract:
- Do they ask you questions?
- Did they run a simple analysis before making an offer and shown you the potential traffic in your niche?
- Do they inform you about the potential strategy that will be used?
- Do they check your competitors?
- Have they worked in a similar location or with a similar business?
It is important to have at least 1 or 2 discovery calls to establish the right path to achieve the SEO goal. By the end of this phase, you should know a clear SEO strategy and type of keywords you are going to target for TOP 10
It is better to spend a few additional hours before the start of the work than to spend a few months of SEO that are going the wrong direction, and you will need to start over anyway. Don’t you agree?
2. Get a clear estimation about when you see your first results and first TOP 10 results
First, let’s determine what results mean.
First results means to see positive dynamics in the keywords rankings.
For example, the keywords were not in the TOP 100, and now they are ranking there and moving towards the TOP 10. It could have the following look:
In the first column, we can see a keyword. In the second column we see it didn’t have a position, and in the third column we can see it is currently ranking from position 15 to position 19. This is a positive dynamics.
The TOP 10 results may have the following look:
We can see that all keywords do have positions from TOP 6 to TOP 9 which is in Google page 1 and that means these keywords are already driving in organic traffic that can convert into sales.
Yes, SEO is a long term investment.
Yes, SEO does not happen overnight.
But, if you are speaking to the professional, they will know how long it should take to get your traffic generating keywords to the TOP 10, so you can start having quality traffic and leads.
This estimation may depend on the chosen location, level of competition in your type of business, and your ability to invest necessary funds to compete with the current players in the TOP 10.
For me, the reasonable amount of time to enter the TOP 10 would be from three to six months. That’s what I always correctly estimate and that’s what I always deliver.
Local SEO, as a rule, is more rapid than global worldwide promotion. The more strong competition you have on the Google’s page 1 the more budget is needed to take over. (It is natural because your backlinking profile needs to be better than theirs in order to stay in TOP 10)
3. Choose an SEO firm with clear reporting.
Reporting will let you stay in control of your SEO. And that’s what you need to be able to estimate the effectiveness of the campaign.
Must have reports:
- SEO audit report and list of website recommendations in the beginning of an SEO campaign;
- Weekly positions report, so you know how many keywords have moved towards TOP 10 or entered there.
- Weekly Google Analytics reports, so you know how much traffic SEO is generating for you.
Google often changes its algorithm, so an extra report on a Google update and taken actions in connections with this would be handy.
Let’s summarize what information you should have before starting the contract with a new SEO firm.
The checklist to have before starting the contract:
- SEO strategy for your website and type of keywords you are going to target for TOP 10;
- Expected timeframe to reach TOP 10 and for the first results;
- Agreed report schedule and type of the reports delivered to you.
For me and my team, these three points are a standard minimum that is absolutely necessary to deliver the SEO that meets the business goal, generates return on SEO investment within a set timeframe and keeps my client in full control with effective reporting.
Drop me a comment with any extra point that you think is important for your future SEO firm.
I would like to welcome you in my linkedIn so I can estimate the time to enter TOP 10 for your website and provide you with a list of commercial traffic generating keywords for your SEO strategy. Just drop me a message there 🙂
