By by Sumant Jha
SEO remains one of the long term marketing strategies that work best for companies that want to improve their online visibility. The tricky thing is finding an SEO firm you hire or an SEO agency to hire.
How can you make that decision? Recently we were talking about the subject with a friendly agency in Valencia and we directed to this entry of Search Engine Journal with the 20 questions that should be done to any SEO or SEO agency that wants to hire.
These are the 20 questions that to a greater or lesser extent should be done to any SEO or SEO agency that you are going to hire.
Question 1: What do you know about the latest updates to Google’s algorithms?
An SEO and an SEO agency should know all the updates that Google is doing; Not just Panda and Penguin, but also all the other updates that are continually being produced.
Question 2: How would you identify the reason for a penalty?
Many SEOs and agencies do not know how to properly identify a penalty. It is very important to know the reason for a penalty. If cause identification fails, corrective actions can be counterproductive.
Question 3: What is your technical experience?
SEO is an art and all those who think it is merely technical are wrong. Nevertheless it is very important to work with a company with technical knowledge. SEO does not have to do all this work, but it has to have enough knowledge to be able to ask a developed one and verify that it is correctly implemented.
Question 4: How much experience do content creators have?
The main objective of SEO is to become an authority on a certain topic. This cannot be achieved without a team of writers and content producers. High quality content is critical in any long term SEO strategy. Any SEO company has to be able to create high quality content on an ongoing basis.
Question 5: Do you use Social Media optimization? How do you optimize?
SEOs should not ignore social networks. There is a direct influence on positions and is an important tool of relationship building.
Question 6: What is your strategy for creating links / link building?
This is a perfect question to break the ice. In any SEO that cannot answer this question in a way understandable by everyone is not reliable. Avoid any SEO that:
Send the web to a list of directories that no one other than SEO knows about.
Send articles to article directories
Post blog posts that do not send traffic
Use any automated form of link building
Purchase links
Question 7: What are your relationship building skills?
No SEO strategy is complete without establishing relationships. It is almost impossible to get relevant links without personal relationships.
Question 8: How do they fit the needs of different clients?
This is an important question. The main value of performing SEO is to become an authority on a topic. An SEO or SEO agency knows how to do SEO but has no knowledge of the niche market. How can you help turn a customer into an authority in your niche?
There are many answers to this question, but all have to involve the customer. It has to be very clear the strategy to follow to turn a client into an expert in their field.
Question 9: What knowledge do you have of Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is hard work, but neither is it an exact science. While engaging content and customer creation specialists, it is possible to reach a broad audience and attract attention online.
Question 10: Do you share your SEO strategies with the SEO community?
One part of creating visibility on the Internet is to offer the maximum possible value to the target audience. The audience of an SEO is the SEO community and any agency or SEO should share in a transparent way their strategies and knowledge. Any strategy that cannot be transparently shared will not last long.