If you hire an SEO agency today, where will you be one year from now? Will you be sitting high atop the Google rankings? Or will you be shaking your head, wondering where your money went?
Like any other major B2B purchase, finding a reliable SEO Agency in Toronto can be hard-as-hell, as everyone seems to be saying the same things. Everyone out there claims to be results-focused, client-focused, and ROE-focused.
How do you know who to trust? How do you know who provides the real goods and who is just peddling fake promises? Simple: You need to know what attributes are the most important, and you need to know how to spot the red flags.
So if you’re making up a scorecard for when you’re interviewing potential SEO agencies, here is what you need to grade them on.
Their Transparency
This one is absolutely massive, which is why we’re ranking it first. Secrets are bad, and they almost always lead to unpleasant surprises.
You need to have open and transparent communication with your SEO company at all times, and that needs to start the very first time you meet them face-to-face in person, or over a Zoom call.
They need to be completely open about the following things.
Their Tactics and Your Analytics
I’ve spoken to friends that own their own businesses. When I ask them what their SEO agency is doing for them, all too often, the answer is “I have no idea.” Then I shudder. This can’t happen in this day and age. Even if it’s just a very high-level view, you need to know what your SEO agency is doing for you.
Some agencies will be secretive about their tactics in the name of protecting their secret sauce. In the world of SEO, there is no room for secret sauce. Secrets are a red flag.
They need to be completely transparent about the specific actions they intend to carry out every month. They need to tell you things like, “We are going to do in depth keyword research to find intent-driven keywords for you. We are going to write you X number of blogs and earn you X number of links each month.” That way, you can hold them accountable.
Your keyword rankings are going to fluctuate up and down, that’s the nature of the internet. So simply showing you a Google Analytics report about how your keywords are performing will only tell you part of the story.
Your SEO team needs to be clear about what they intend to do for you, and they need to be accountable every month in their reporting.
Their Pricing
We’re in the business of building long-term relationships with our clients. And nothing will ruin a relationship faster than unexpected charges on an invoice. We believe in transparent SEO pricing right from the very start.
This also has a lot to do with the accountability in actions that we mentioned in the previous section. It’s incredibly important to us that you know what you’re going to see on an invoice and what you’re getting for your SEO dollar, month after month.
