Hiring a Local SEO Agency can help take your local business to the next level.
Have you decided that it is time to stop doing your SEO 100% in-house? Is it time to start looking for a local SEO agency to help you meet your goals?
It is a decision most businesses have to make at one point or another, especially when things start picking up for a brand.
For many, the solution is to hire a local SEO agency to help not only pick up your extra work but use their knowledge to help take you to the next level, as well.
It is crucial that you ask the right questions and you know what answers to expect when thinking of hiring an SEO agency.
You want to make sure that there is a good fit with the company you are working with, and the questions below should help you answer that.
Key Questions to Ask When Hiring a Local SEO Agency
1. Have You Worked with Businesses in Our Industry
It is really helpful to identify from the very beginning whether or not the local SEO agency has worked with another business that is similar to yours.
This may give them an edge on knowing how to go about certain optimizations on behalf of your company.
SEO can be very different depending on industry and company size, so the more direct experience an agency can have, the better.
What You’re Looking to Hear:
Ideally, you want to hear “yes” and see some examples of companies they have worked with to support their claim. However, do not dismiss the company right away if the answer is “no.”
It is possible that they have worked with similar brands and are equally positioned to help your company be successful.
2. Can You Guarantee Local SEO Results?
A lot of SEO Companies try to claim that they can guarantee results or somehow have a "proven" relationship with the search engines.
The most common guarantee sounds something like "Guaranteed a page one ranking for any keyword within the first 6 months."
What You're Looking To Hear:
The answer to this is "no," there is absolutely no way to guarantee SEO results or have some sort of secret expertise that other companies (or even in-house specialist) do not.
Now, if they're so confident they can meet a goal that truly mattters to your business, and are honest, realistic, and are legal in the work, you may want to consider taking them up on it.
3) What Aspects of SEO Should We Consider Outsourcing?
Even local SEO is multi-dimensional, and if you decide to go with an agency you do not necessarily have to outsource every part of your SEO work.
The company you are interviewing should be able to give you a solid idea of at least three aspects of local SEO they can help you improve.
They should be able to give you some recommendations on specific aspects that you could get started on with them. For example, you want them to acknowledge that they do their own link building, local listings management, and content creation.
4) What Metrics are the Most Valuable to Analyze/ Which Metrics are a Top Priority?
This is a good question to examine what their best practice is when looking at your metrics from the very beginning.
Effective SEO account management should be focused on increasing 1) leads and 2) sales, which is why you are outsourcing. As such, these two metrics should be an agency's top priority.
Rankings on some say 20 Keywords of Clients choice or number of local citations successfully built over, of course are important but SEO is about more than increasing rankings, decreasing bounce rates, or improving your traffic levels.
Effective SEO puts the business itself as a priority, and leads/sales are essential to improving SEO for the business as a whole. This is another reason a local SEO strategy is so important for many companies.
5) What Are a Few of Your Best Clients or Examples of Case Studies?
An SEO agency's portfolio is extremely important and they should be able to provide you with a few examples of their best client success stories.
6) What Kind of Reports or Monitoring Updates Will We Be Receiving?
Communication isn't always easy in SEO, but it has to be happening if you're going to work with a third-party company.
In short, a report should be able to answer the following questions:
What was done, and why?
What have the impacts of previous changes been?
What kinds of returns have been generated?
What obstacles still stand in the way?
What must be done to overcome them?
What are the next steps?
Measuring and reporting on conversions from online to in-store visits is incredibly important, so spend time on this question and really dig into the tools they use.
7) What Can Our Team Continue to Work on In-House?
They should reaffirm that their company will be handling the majority of the workload, but that there are always areas you can keep SEO in mind.
For eg., if any of the team is still handling content development in one way, shape or form (such as repurposing content or writing new blog posts) then it is important to be connected to the agency about what to do for that content specifically.
Ideally, they'll augment your effort and the actions each of you takes will help support a more successful Local SEO program as a whole.
8) How Do You Select Top Keywords for Our Brand?
When they talk about choosing your keywords, you want them to speak to the fact that relevance, searcher intent, traffic volumes, and competition level are all important aspects to consider in keyword selection.
Does their response signal to you that the agency truly understand your business goals? That's what you want to hear.
9) Expected timeframe for results and improvements?
This is going to vary widely depending on how established your company is and what kinds of improvements need to made.
You want to hear honesty. Anything less than 6 months should raise an eyebrow.
Unless you are already a top-ranking source for your industry and you are hiring an SEO agency for maintenance, they should be able to explain that it takes time and that improvements are certainly not an overnight situation.
10) How is your Company Positioned in the Current Climate of Change in the Local SEO World?
SEO is constantly evolving and if you aren't staying ahead, you're falling behind.
Core, fundamental, aspects of SEO haven't changed much but there are a lot of highly specific tactics that have had to be updated in order to keep up with the updates.
Local markets are competitive, dynamic spaces and you need to know that your local SEO agency has the knowledge and drive to keep moving you forward.
You want to be sure that they are a company that will be able to position themselves successfully no matter what changes occur over the next couple of years.
11) Can You Solve Complex GMB, Yelp, Apple Maps and other Listing Issues?
You want to know that they're experienced in managing local listings and citations for a business of your size and type.
Managing a Google My Business listing can be time-consuming on its own.
You want to continue to feature new product launches, blog posts, etc. on your Google My Business page, but you also have troubleshooting to deal with such as incorrect information, hours, and reviews.
However, what many forget is that when it comes to local listings, GMB isn’t the end-all-be-all.
This is where you want to hear that they have worked in your industry before.
For example, a listing on Yelp might be incredibly important to a restaurant, whereas a listing on Thumbtack might be incredibly important to a General Contractor.
Google your business name and or your competitor's business name, see what local sites are ranking, and then be sure to ask about those sites when hiring a local SEO Agency.
12) Is Review Monitoring and Response a Part of the Package, and What Does that Look Like?
For a local business, reviews are everything!
According to BrightLocal, 82% of Consumers read reviews for local Businesses. This could be the last step before you that conversion.
You want to hear that they are monitoring for new reviews on GMB, FB, and any niche networks.
Rather than give away your niche networks right away, see if they can mention them on their own.
Secondly, make sure you understand how they escalate negative reviews for your intervention.
Usually, when it comes to negative reviews, you as the business owner will want to respond with guidance from the local agency rather than having the local agency respond for you. Let the agency tell you this.
Conclusion
The best and most successful agency relationships are collaborative and cooperative, providing a true partner you can rely on in every sense of the word.
The above questions should help you get to the bottom of whether or not the local SEO agency you are interviewing is a good fit with your business.
As an SEO Agency in Alwar, India we too believe that the expertise in the following Keyword Research, Competitor Analysis, Broken Links Management, Image Optimization for Search, Mobile Optimization, Backlink Analysis, stand vital but an effective SEO account management should be focused on increasing leads and sales, which is why we outsource. As such, these two metrics should be every agency's top priority.