FAQs
- What questions should customers think through before talking to professionals about their project?
We've heard it before – “we can get SEO cheaper.” And it’s correct. SEO services can be found for a smaller price tag, but do you know what you’re getting for that price? We know we’re not the cheapest, but we also know what we’re worth. More importantly, we’ve been around long enough to know why other SEO firms charge less and what that means to their clients… Great SEO isn't just about on-page attributes like meta data and image tags. It's about aligning the right messages with the right search queries...and building trust and authority online. But that's only half of the battle. Getting traffic is the first step in SEO, but converting that traffic into leads and sales is an entirely different game plan. When speaking with professionals about your social media and SEO programs ask them the following questions: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Is SEO complicated? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Budget SEO firms love it when their clients believe SEO is extremely complicated. However, we believe that our know-how, combined with our client’s industry knowledge, make a powerful duo. We regard our clients as partners and work with them to make sure they understand what we are doing and why we are doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) How long have you been doing SEO? Do you work with small businesses or big corporations? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't be fooled by an agency’s client base; knowing how to rank “the little guys” is more relevant than big brands. It takes a lot more talent to go up against the big companies with their already-established brand recognition and get outcomes that help businesses grow, regardless of their size. Oh and we have 20 years of experience in SEO which is roughly double the experience of most of our competitors! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Who will be working on my account? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Low-cost SEO firms use junior-level teams (or, worse, offshore outsourcing) to do the majority of the work. On the other hand, most of our employees have more than a decade of SEO experience, which means you get the best right from the start. Our staff doesn’t learn how to do SEO while working on a project. Plus, our staff consists of native USA English writers and speakers, which translates to great copy and fast, clear communication. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) How do you determine what keywords and SEO activities to work on first? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Budget SEO firms focus on the easy-to-do, low-hanging fruit of SEO. We focus on the bigger picture – how your brand is perceived in the digital world. According to a recent study, 83% of consumers say online reviews influence their perceptions about companies and 80% report that negative online comments changed their purchasing decision. We don't believe in hiding data from consumers, but there are ethical ways to convert poor reviews into marketing opportunities as well as make poor reviews harder to find. By controlling your brand’s perception online, we help keep your brand trustworthy so you earn customers without having to undercut your competition or your prices. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) What measures will you use to define the success of the SEO program and how will that data translate into actionable information? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- #1 rankings, for example, are one measure that is still used by SEO firms to quantify “success.” However, anyone can “rank” obscure keywords that no one searches for, but if those rankings aren’t driving quality traffic to the website, it defeats the purpose of SEO. Rankings also don’t give us actionable data to adjust the campaign for better traffic and conversions. We use measures such as domain strength, trust, mentions/shares, and SEO visibility to help us translate our activities into real-world prospect and customer interactions with your brand. This means that you learn how to better target your audience, identify where they are in the buying cycle, cut lead acquisition costs, shorten sales cycles, and increase revenue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Can you rank my website in 3 days or less? If yes, aren't those tactics risky and questionable? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Both black hat and gray hat SEO methods violate or skirt search engine guidelines by using tactics that trick the search engines. Unethical tactics like submitting a site to a multitude of low-quality directories, keyword stuffing (overloading keywords onto a webpage), cloaking (showing one page to the search engines and another to humans), and page swapping (changing the webpage entirely after it has been ranked by search engines) put your site at risk. They can damage your brand reputation, make your site vulnerable to search engine penalties, and could even get your site banned altogether from the search engines. We never, ever use questionable or risky tactics for short-term results! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Link building seems to be all the rage for SEO, but what about my link profile and trust score? Aren't those almost more important than building links? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- With Google cracking down on the quality of backlinks, failing to know who is linking to a site puts the client at risk of being hit with a penalty – either algorithmic or manual. We’ll look for troublesome links, clean them up, and replace them with quality links so your visibility isn’t impacted. We’ll also ensure that your link reputation is rock-solid, drives referral traffic, and improves SEO visibility. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8) Who owns what's created during our time working with you? (e.g. social media contacts, landing pages, social media profiles, email lists, etc.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Low-price SEO firms often “own” what they create – including your contacts. Many of the budget SEO firms require clients to move their sites to the SEO firm's server and/or build out pages that are never reviewed for quality and human readability. This means that if the SEO company goes away (or a contract dispute erupts), so does all of the work. We believe that everything we do is owned by the client - every word of written content, contacts, followers/fans and subscribers – and hosted on a server of the client’s choice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9) Does being “certified by Google” or a “Google Partner” matter to SEO? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The short answer to both is no. If an agency is “certified,” that means that they have completed Google training for Adwords and/or Google Analytics. If they state that they are a “Google Partner,” they are a partner for paid Google advertising only. There is no such thing as a Google SEO partner, nor is there a Google SEO certification program. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10) How do you handle accountability for the program? Who tracks and monitors the ROI of the SEO program? How do I know that I'll get what I'm paying for? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discount SEO firms often lack accounta