logo
If you’re in the market for an SEO firm, then you’ve already taken a step in the right direction. When done right, SEO can bring you valuable traffic, leads, and/or sales for years to come. Sounds great, right? There’s just one problem: not all SEO companies adhere to ethical practices.
In fact, some companies don’t do much in the way of real work at all. If your site is already doing well, it then becomes a game of optics: some firms just make it look like they’ve done great things for you, when it reality, they’ve done nothing at all.
So, with so many SEO companies to choose from, how do you pick someone you can actually trust? By educating yourself and asking the right questions.
Remember: Nobody Can Guarantee SEO Success
If anyone “guarantees” you SEO success, then that should be an immediate red flag. While there are certainly best practices, no single “formula” works for every website; on the contrary, SEO, like all forms of marketing, is an experimental and creative discipline.
Yes, there have been many instances of sites shooting to the top of the search engine results page (SERPS) within the first 3 months of regular SEO, but it’s not something that anyone can truly guarantee.
When interviewing SEO companies, try testing their competency by asking if they can guarantee position 1 results. Truly ethical companies will explain that this isn’t something that anyone, save for maybe Google, can promise. If they retort with an actionable plan backed by a quality hypothesis, then you should certainly hear them out.
Pick a Company That Does a Manual SEO Audit
When you sign up for a “free SEO audit” online, and receive a report sent back to your email within minutes, it means that your site was simply run through an SEO auditing tool.
To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with these tools. In fact, they are great for identifying technical issues, like broken links, sluggish page speeds, and redirect loops. If not kept in check, these things can negatively impact your rankings; however, you shouldn’t be scared into signing a long-term contract because of it.
If you’ve got a huge site with thousands of pages, then a deep technical audit may uncover the need for quite a few manhours from both SEOs and developers; however, when you’re looking for an SEO company, don’t let some robotic report sway you too quickly.
What is a Manual SEO Audit?
A manual SEO audit, on the other hand, is a deep analysis of your competition, your target keywords, your internal link structure, and most importantly, your content. When conducting a manual audit, SEOs will first define what keywords you need to rank for in order to get what you want from your website.
For example, If you’re a personal injury lawyer in Stamford CT, then your target keyword could be “personal injury lawyer ct.” Ideally, the manual audit should identify a few target keywords.
Once keywords and conversion goals are identified, the SEO will look for optimization opportunities. This could mean
- Deleting unnecessary content
- Consolidating duplicate or extremely similar content
- Redesigning page layouts
- Making changes to meta tags or body copy
- Making changes to the site architecture
- Uncovering buried pages or internal linking opportunities
- New content ideas
- Link Building opportunities
A true manual audit should have a clear SEO goal. Whether that goal is based on keyword rankings (let’s add rich heading tags on the homepage to move “personal injury lawyer ct” up higher in the SERPS”) , traffic (let’s use this blog content to drive more people into your site”) , or conversion (let’s redesign this landing page so that more people will actually call”), the manual audit should outline the recommended steps needed to reach it.
Pick a Company With a Conversion-First Mindset
While some people do simply want traffic, most people hire SEO companies as a means to an end: they want more phone calls, emails, and/or foot traffic. When interviewing SEO companies, ask them what conversion data they track. In 2020, any SEO company who is not tracking phone call clicks from mobile devices or emails from contact forms is not keeping pace with modern practices. After all, without conversion tracking, how can they be sure that they’ve gotten you any success at all?
Check References
Naturally, most companies will give you the names of clients that they have strong relationships with. By all means, contact them, but also ask the prospective SEO company what their goals were for that client, and what kind of progress they actually made. If possible, ask to see their original SEO audit.
Choose Keyword Performance: We Are Transparent, Ethical, & Trustworthy
We at Keyword Performance LLC love SEO. While we cannot exactly promise you success, we can say that we’ve certainly helped many companies succeed. If you’re interested in an in-depth, manual SEO audit, then contact us today.
