How To Hire An SEO Company: Directly From Google

What is an SEO?

SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Do you need an SEO expert?

An SEO expert is someone trained to improve your visibility on search engines. By following this guide, you’ll learn enough to be well on your way to an optimized site. In addition to that, you may want to consider hiring an SEO professional that can help you audit your pages.

Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time. Make sure to research the potential advantages of hiring an SEO, as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies

Before beginning your search for an SEO, it’s a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend going through the entirety of this guide and specifically these resources:

• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• How To Hire An SEO:

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

Choosing an SEO

If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you’re considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.

1. Be committed to implementing the recommended changes. Making the changes recommended by an SEO takes time and effort; if you aren’t going to take the time to make these changes, it’s not worthwhile hiring a professional.
2. Interview your potential SEO. Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:
   • Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
   • Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
   • Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
   • What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
   • What’s your experience in my industry?
   • What’s your experience in my country/city?
   • What’s your experience developing international sites?
   • What are your most important SEO techniques?
   • How long have you been in business?
   • How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?
   • See if the SEO is interested in you and your business. If they’re not interested, find someone who is. Your SEO should ask questions such as:
     • What makes your business or service unique and valuable to customers?
     • Who are your customers?
     • How does your business make money, and how can search results help?
     • What other advertising channels are you using?
     • Who are your competitors?
3. Check your SEO’s business references. Ask past clients if they felt that this SEO provided useful service, was easy to work with, and produced positive results.
4. Ask for a technical and SEO search audit for your site to learn what they think needs to be done, why, and what the expected outcome should be. You’ll probably have to pay for this. You will probably have to give them read-only access to your site on Search Console. (At this stage, don’t grant them write access.) Your prospective SEO should be able to give you realistic estimates of improvement, and an estimate of the work involved. If they guarantee you that their changes will give you first place in search results, find someone else.

What is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is when a search professional reviews your website for specific SEO best practices and identifies opportunities to improve the website’s organic search rankings. A search audit will take into consideration “on-page” and “off-page” variables that will impact a website’s search visibility. A thorough technical analysis is needed to understand how your website is being indexed by the search engines and what is needed to improve search performance.

Conducting an extensive SEO Audit is the first step in understanding the areas of improvement for your website. Our SEO analysis look at both on-page and off-page components of SEO. From your link footprint to your title tags, every variable is assessed which will shed light on why your website is ranking the way it is.

A Complex Manual Process

Anyone can look online and use “Free SEO Report” software to get a bird’s eye view of their website’s pain points. But this is where most companies fail to realize that just because there is text in the title tag field (as an example), doesn’t mean that the keywords are search descriptive or even relevant to that page. Another common mistake is when a company tests their mobile page speed and receive a score of 50 /100. Sometimes compressing images can get their score up in the 70s. Other times, a deeper understanding of 3rd party APIs and how that impacts the page speed is needed. A website needs to be analyzed by a skilled search professional that their sole purpose is search engine optimization.

SEO Competitive Analysis

When assessing the SEO viability of a website, we must also understand the competitive landscape of your industry. Whether your intended audience has a local reach or even a global reach, understanding the competitive landscape will help us determine the overall strategy that is needed to compete organically.

What is Delivered in the SEO Audit?

At the end of our analysis, our SEO team will deliver a technical document in excel outlining the issues with the website that need to be mitigated. This document can be quite extensive so we usually engage our client’s technical team to review the findings with them (Yes, we will outline every broken link). We will also deliver a high level “executive-facing” document translating the technical terminology into human-speak. It is important for all levels within an organization to understand what the audit uncovered and the impact to organic search. These two documents will not only outline the issues but also give recommendations on what needs to be implemented to improve search performance.

5. Decide if you want to hire.