www.sureoak.com/hire-seo

Can you trust your SEO company?

Ruth Burr Reedy helps you navigate the flash and promises of SEO companies when trying to hire a SEO service agency for your business. Ruth brings 12 years of digital marketing to the table, including two years at Moz leading Inbound Marketing and now works with UpBuild. On this week’s episode, she explains what you need to know internally before you even start looking, why SEO guarantees are not as good as they seem, and the top three places to start looking for an SEO company.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU LOOK

You hear that SEO is important. Everyone should do SEO. Right?

So, you’re looking to hire an SEO agency.

The very first step is not an external one. The first step is to ask yourself:

Why?

Many companies feel they need an SEO agency because of the buzz around it. Yes, SEO is an essential digital marketing tool, but you need to know what you want to get out of it.

Ruth offers three questions to ask yourself before you look for an SEO company:
What are you trying to do?
How are you going to know if it’s working?
What’s your budget?

You may want to increase revenue, drive traffic, or promote an event. “The better the idea you have of what you really want out of the engagement, the more successful the entire engagement will be,” explains Ruth.

When it comes to the timeline, remember that SEO is a long game. It may take months to see results. In Ruth’s experience, the first three months are agency research, auditing, and coming up with recommendations. Then, a launch date is set for when the company implements the recommendations. Once live, it may be a couple months before you start seeing SEO results.

Results may come sooner, but not always. “There’s a reason why a lot of agencies will not do an engagement for less than 6 months.” It’s difficult for SEO companies to demonstrate value on a shorter timeline than half a year.