List of Must Ask Questions before using a SEO Service

[Green Knight]

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This video will definitely help:

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-choose-seo-company-whiteboard-friday

[bb1]

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Green Knight, post: 259045, member: 110831 wrote:

All bad SEOs are touting increased sales & ROI so I’m not sure if asking those questions help resolve the initial query.

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Interesting, so if an SEO business touts increased sales & ROI , they are bad. I am not sure if the 95% of legit SEO business’s who mention increased sales & ROI, would agree with that statement. A bit of a broad bush.

[Green Knight]

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“Interesting, so if an SEO business touts increased sales & ROI , they are bad.”

Not at all.

“I am not sure if the 95% of legit SEO business’s who mention increased sales & ROI, would agree with that statement. A bit of a broad bush.”

Talking about increased ROI is not a filter to determine good or bad SEOs if bad SEOs are also saying those same things.

[Aidan]

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Not meaning to be awkward but if someone starts talking about authority and backlinks I’d be already on edge as a small business owner. The majority of small businesses on forums like this one probably don’t even need them and just about every ‘arranged’ backlink I see is of dubious value and mostly in breach of Google’s guidelines.

Google’s John Mueller was asked if pages can rank without backlinks last year and his answer was ‘most of them do’! He has also denied the concept of Domain Authority (https://www.searchenginejournal.com/domain-authority/246515/).

We’re still seeing SEO agencies ‘placing’ content on blogs with links to their clients’ sites even after Google has warned us all many times over about guest posting and similar backlink strategies. We still see obviously purchased links and private blog networks too.

I rarely get involved in link building these days as good link building takes so much time it becomes unaffordable for many clients. I prefer to educate clients in how to attract links more naturally for themselves over time and I find most of them ‘get it’ and go on to be quite successful at natural link building, the kind Google actually likes.

[karensaid]

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[USER=2298]@Aidan[/USER] Not awkward at all, spot on really. Most local businesses dependent on niche, don’t need backlinks. When the site has relevant high quality content, bla bla it ranks naturally, attracts natural links. Done this over and over.

I think [USER=34822]@Johny[/USER] nailed it as far as the small business owners perspective on purchasing SEO services.

By experience, they have no understanding of it, are NOT interested in the slightest with SEO jargon, completely does their head. Who could blame them?

Those in the SEO business, need to be way more insightful about that. Change the language, methods, whatever, in a way they CAN understand and feel comfortable with. I used analogies A LOT.

Reassurance needs to develop and that won’t come overnight or in the first consultation. Small business owners most do not have a ton of money to throw on SEO. That is quite a predicament to let go of cash on something you don’t understand.

[USER=105019]@Hassle Free Website[/USER] I think that’s a good starting point of questions! I’m not sure if I can add to that. But I have had the below asked.

Do you have any past examples?

How long will this SEO process take and why?

Do you have any contactable references?

What online outcome for my business using your SEO services, can I expect?

[USER=110831]@Green Knight[/USER] I have never had any small business owner ask me those questions you’ve mentioned. I wish they had of though, but unlikely, through no fault of theirs !

[John Romaine]

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Green Knight, post: 259045, member: 110831 wrote:

All bad SEOs are touting increased sales & ROI

I’m sorry but this is absolute nonsense.

Rubbish SEO’s will confuse business owners with geek speak and make promises of a free kitten in the mail if they sign up today.

Those of us who really know what we’re doing will ask questions to get a good understanding of the business, and specifically focus on how we can increase revenue, ensuring a positive ROI.

[John Romaine]

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Johny, post: 259047, member: 34822 wrote:

I would define a good SEO as someone who can show me how they have done that because ultimately, being number one on google, or getting x number of backlinks, or that I get a monthly report in SEM Rush, means exactly nothing to me.

THIS. This all day.

I’ll give you a real life example below.

I have a client that’s been with me for 2 years. In that time, he’s spent approximately $50,000 on SEO – perhaps more.

For the service that he provides, each lead to him is worth at an average $200. However some leads are worth more $5,000 depending upon the nature of the job.

Last month he received 378 customer enquiries through the website and closed 212 of them.

That equated to (given that some jobs were worth $5,000) well over $100,000 in revenue. This is now typical, each and every month. Not a bad return for $2,000 a month.

Some keynotes …

– I track and measure every enquiry that he receives. Every email and phone call. Everything.
– The results above were measured via organic search traffic only
– This particular client stopped using Adwords because hes now getting enough work purely from SEO (saving him $20,000 a month)
– When we first started working together, this particular client was getting 20 enquiries per month.

If you’re on the phone with a prospect and you’re talking about backlinks, domain authority and all of that other crap then you’ve already lost.

Have the conversation that matters.

Sales, leads and revenue.

[Hassle Free Website]

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John Romaine, post: 259095, member: 39536 wrote:

make promises of a free kitten in the mail if they sign up today.

Maybe that needs to be one of the questions to ask.

Will you throw in a free kitten with the SEO?

[John Romaine]

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Hassle Free Website, post: 259102, member: 105019 wrote:

Will you throw in a free kitten with the SEO?

I tried this approach but stuffing them through the mail slots was an issue.

[JohnW]

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Some good suggestions above.

However, I suggest any job interview needs to start with the applicant’s: Experience, Expertise, Education

This is critical in the SEO world where the service has no universal definition, any company or person can claim to offer it, performance is difficult to assess and the industry has a huge turnover of participants.

Useful Online SEO Lie Detector Tools:

• SEO staff Linkedin profiles
• The Wayback Machine

1. People’s Linkedin profiles
Don’t be fooled into accepting a business Linkedin profile. Get the SEO staff member’s name and their city location, then Google it yourself.

If they don’t have a Linkedin profile, find another SEO service.

You will likely be surprised at how few SEO people can/do display much about their SEO skills on their Linkedin page.

If the SEO person is located outside Australia and your target audience resides here, find an SEO who lives here. An off-shore resident SEO is unlikely to have experience with the level of search competition in Google Au and this for many will be the single most important SEO factor.

Mark this date; Oct 2011. This is when Google started to hide its search query data. If an SEO has little or no experience prior to this, their knowledge of how people search is possibly compromised.

2. The Wayback Machine
Wayback tries to record a copy of all web pages published since 2000. It is not complete but if Wayback has no record of a site this is not a good sign.

Searching old page versions of a prospective SEO’s site may tell you:

• How long the site has existed.
• Records of old clients and case studies. Are they still valid?
• How the SEO services have changed.
• Possibly staff changes

It seems that many SEO service sites that appear to be Australian based have been published in the last few years. These “lie detector” tools should help you expose them.

[Green Knight]

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John Romaine, post: 259095, member: 39536 wrote:

I’m sorry but this is absolute nonsense.

Rubbish SEO’s will confuse business owners with geek speak and make promises of a free kitten in the mail if they sign up today.

Again, I’ll refer back to the original post which was asking for some advice on questions to ask SEO companies which may help weed out the good ones from the bad.

I’m of the opinion that even the most terrible SEO people / agencies know to include positive ROI as part of their pitch, so asking them about it won’t help too much.

It appears as though you’ve turned a post about “which questions to ask” into a pitch for your business though…

[Johny]

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I’m of the opinion that even the most terrible SEO people / agencies know to include positive ROI as part of their pitch, so asking them about it won’t help too much.

I think you are missing the message here, certainly from the comments I have made.

I agree with you by that way, anyone can cite ROI in a sales pitch. Quite often that is done with smoke and mirrors. Let me give an example based on what I do.

People who sell promotional products have all sorts of statistics that highlight the benefit of using them. Examples –

v % of people keep the product for longer than 6 months
w % of people like a product that is useful
x number of people remember the company that gave them the product
y+z products provide more impressions that TV or radio ads and therefore provide better ROI
and it goes on and on and on and on…………

Sound familiar???

What they never say is:

I sold $x worth of promotional products to my customer. As a result of the promotional campaign they achieved additional sales of $y resulting in an ROI of z. (ROI is a monetary figure, nothing else)

They never say it because they don’t have a clue what real benefit came from it and that’s the smoke and mirrors.

Strangely though, when I am selling to them, they all need me to be able to quantify how much I can save them. And if I can’t do that, they are happy to do it themselves.

It is no different from many other forms of marketing, especially in the digital space. An example-

Designers tell you they are better than cheaper ones from overseas. Ask them to show how they improve your bottom line better than the others and they can’t.

So, my point isn’t about citing a positive ROI, it is about being able to demonstrate that you can accomplish it.

The questions you mentioned earlier are entirely from the perspective of someone who does SEO, not a dullard like me who knows nothing about it and cares even less.

[JohnW]

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Green Knight, post: 259024, member: 110831 wrote:

Q4. What software do you use to send the monthly report?

Good answers can include:
Moz, Search Console, SEM Rush, ahrefs
Hi Green Knight,
I’m interested to know what useful monthly reports are provided for your Australian small business clients by SEO tools like: Moz, SEM Rush or ahrefs?

[JohnW]

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JohnW, post: 259217, member: 6375 wrote:

Hi Green Knight,
I’m interested to know what useful monthly reports are provided for your Australian small business clients by SEO tools like: Moz, SEM Rush or ahrefs?
Sorry we have had no reply from Green Knight. He may have some insights I’ve overlooked.

I’m afraid I can’t see much value for Aust. small businesses in SEO tools like Moz, SEM Rush or Ahrefs, at least in so far as their domain authority, page authority, domain trust, etc. metrics are concerned.

From what I read it also seems their ranking reports are inaccurate as they cannot report query deserves freshness factors, show the impact of RankBrain nor mimic the location of Australian located searchers beyond a CBD location.

That was the SEO mumbo-jumbo. Now for what should be the Google clear speech…

These would be the two Google references that refute or negate the tool vendor’s domain and page authority, etc. metric claims.

Oct 2016: Google: We Don’t Have “Overall Domain Authority” In Our Rankings

Sep 2017: “Google: We Ignore Tons Of Links But Which Links Is Almost Impossible To Figure Out”

“...it is “close to impossible for you to check which links are actually deemed critical.” So why bother trying to figure out which links are important and which links are not if there is no way for you to do so?”

“Gary then added that Google “ignores tons of links” and that even if you collect data from Google Search Console and third-party tools “that you won’t know which ones are absolutely critical.”‘

I don’t think folk need to understand any SEO mumbo-jumbo for these two Google statements to be completely clear.

It seems to me that vast numbers of folk misunderstand and misuse these tools. To get a feel for the volume of them, you only have to Google a search query like, “how do I increase my domain authority”.

I’d personally recommend business owners avoid SEO services that want to talk about metrics like link building services from high DA websites or measurements based on these types of tools.

[TimStokes]

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I like the discussion, having first starting learning about SEO in 2003.
I paid SEO service providers initially with mixed results. Then I did what I recommend every business owner do, learn what SEO is.

Like you [USER=105019]@Hassle Free Website[/USER] I’ve heard of dozens and dozens of clients who have paid for SEO services and been ripped off severely.

I decided to do something about it, and put together a training course on my 15 years of testing SEO principles to see what works and what doesn’t – before I launched the training course.

The No.1 reason why business owners get ripped off is ignorance and that is extremely hard to prevent, just by asking a bunch of questions. Sorry, but that’s my experience.

Dodgy SEO service providers, of which I believe are the majority have lots of sneaky ways of selling their services, starting with “Its changing all the time, so you can’t do it yourself” – poppycock! You can, very successfully.

Before putting a training course together, I took screen shots of where my own web pages ranked for certain phrases, then applied principles (such as changing TITLES, getting my business listed in free directories) and then took screen shots afterwards of rank to prove the principles worked.

I’ve saved business owners many thousands of dollars by giving them a basic education on digital marketing, including SEO. I feel that’s the best thing to do and recommend to business owners. I focus a LOT on factual evidence of SEO and educate people on free to use tools that generate facts for website owners to see and make their own decisions, with or without an SEO service provider.

My digital training course [Mod Edit To Remove Overly Promotional Links] is hundreds of dollars (its low because I want to empower business owners). Compare that to the $1,000/month for lock-in 12 month contracts of SEO.

Other things I recommend, for anyone who is interested to learn about SEO, is to look for people with integrity in the SEO industry, to learn from. It doesn’t take months or weeks to get a basic education, just hours, perhaps 20 or so with some practical application/experience.

Matt Diggity I highly regard, as do hundreds of people in his Facebook groups seen in all the comments. He has a fantastic book on ‘On-page SEO‘ that everyone who owns a website should read.

Neither of these I have paid for services from, but I receive their emails and apply their proven strategies and can verify they all work.

Grab the pdf of “Backlinks” from Brian Deane’s backlinko.com site if you want to know more, or want to help your clients as I love to do.

Its a tough world without a lot of integrity when it comes to marketing these days, so education is the real solution as ignorance is the danger.

Happy to answer questions or reply to comments.

[Author]

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