Ranking high on Google is a game changer for any business and something that the majority of our clients are looking for when they come to us. You may well be looking for the same, and considering hiring an agency or freelancer to help you. This guide will help you to understand what to expect, what to look for, and how to avoid getting burned.
The hard truth is that it’s impossible to say for sure, and you will need to speak to a reputable SEO (people who do SEO are also called ‘SEOs’) to look at your current rankings, competition and optimisation to give you an expectation of what is achievable on what timescale and budget.
At the same time, it might not happen for you. Although we see what results are typical, there are always anomalies. SEO forums are full of good SEOs asking if anyone can figure out why (the hell) their client’s website isn’t ranking. Although SEO will normally pay off over time, the truth is the rankings just don’t always make sense.
For this reason, we rarely make SEO a client’s sole strategy. We’ll focus on activities which will have an organic or conversion benefit as well as simply SEO. That way if you don’t get the SEO benefit we were hoping for, the task has still benefitted you in some other way.
It depends. Most SEOs and agencies work on a monthly retainer, but that can be anything from a hundred a month up to thousands, depending on the type of business or agency.
It might be tempting to go cheap, but think about how much work you’re actually going to get and the quality of it. A potential client whose typical sale was £20k rejected us for someone who charges £40/week. You need to think how much work and at what standard you will get for that sort of price.
That also doesn’t mean expensive is good. Find out what they’re going to do and ask to see some examples. The key thing is that you know what to expect from them. See more about that below.
It depends from one agency to another, but you can expect them to:
Tech and on-page SEO are generally done once and reviewed from time to time. Link building and content creation are ongoing activities.
Of course the first thing you might look for is a track record and show some wins, but for every win they show you you don’t know how underoptimised it was to begin with (we’ve had clients who didn’t know their entire website was hidden from Google – easy to show some wins there) or how many losses they’ve had, where a client’s SEO went down instead of up.
Being able to show good results is promising, but really not the thing you should look at to see if an agency is reputable. Instead think about these:
Discuss the strategies the agency is going to use and how they plan to improve your SEO. If they tell you that their strategy is secret or something similar, don’t use them.
National and local SEO have very different strategies and ranking factors. I’ve seen clients who have worked with SEO agencies who have applied only national strategies to local clinics and thought they’ve done a good job because they’ve ranked them nationally for informational searches like “what do dentists do to numb your mouth” rather than ranking them locally for people looking for a service.
You should expect any SEO agency to provide you with a rankings report showing where you are ranking for key terms. A broader focus agency might also report on conversion rate and overall conversions, and a local agency might also report on Google Business Profile interactions.
You should also expect a breakdown of activities carried out each month so you know where your money has gone. Ideally this will include a breakdown of how much time or cost went into each one, but at the very least you should get a list of tasks completed.
Make sure you believe in the people you’re paying. If you don’t feel like you trust them or get a bad feeling, then walk away.
There’s no right answer so shop around and trust your instincts.
Junk emails in poorly written English is probably not a good place, but cold emails are not necessarily bad. We use cold email among other strategies, as do a lot of other reputable agencies.
There are lots of good SEO people on freelancer sites like Fiver or People Per Hour (there are also a lot of bad ones – do your due diligence).
You can also of course have a look on Google. Don’t think the agency has to rank high in order to be good at SEO, we all put our resources in different places. We rank high in some of our target markets and get clients through SEO, but not so much in others, because we’ve had to choose our battles and not go up against much bigger agencies with much bigger resources to spend on their own rankings.
Everyone should be prepared to have a chat with you and talk about your opportunities and how you might work together, so use that opportunity to talk to a few people and see what you think.
Yes, most likely. Most agencies will ask for a commitment of around 3-6 months.
Typically people say they need this long to make a difference, which is often true, but really it’s because it’s not economical for agencies to go through the whole process of marketing, advertising, getting a client, onboarding, etc. if they aren’t guaranteed a certain amount of work from them.
Just make sure it’s clear up front and read the contract to ensure that commitment is clear on both sides.
Overwhelmingly, YES. SEO is the wild west of digital marketing and is absolutely full of charletans. It’s accepted that the majority of SEOs and SEO agencies are simply scammers. See this quote from the person who wrote SEO for dummies, from this article:
“A lot of companies and individuals out there selling their services as SEO gurus don’t know what they’re doing or don’t really give a damn,” he explained. As a consultant, he’s often had businesses ask him to vet the work of other SEOs. “I would take a look at their site and determine the firm had done next to nothing and had been charging thousands a month for years on end.”
When I ran this 80 percent scam figure by other SEOs, most agreed it sounded accurate, though people were divided about what to ascribe to greed and what was just stupidity.
We’ve seen exactly the same with clients who have paid a lot of money for SEO only to have absolutely nothing done and be fobbed off for months or years. Doing the right things and not seeing results is excusable. Taking someone’s money and doing the wrong things or nothing at all is not.
There are bad people who are simply out to screw you, and there are decent people who simply don’t know what they’re doing or learned SEO in the 90s and think it hasn’t changed.
So… be suspicious, do your own research about SEO strategies so you understand what you’re getting, and don’t be afraid to hold your SEO agency to account.
If you have more questions about SEO, we’ll be happy to help. Feel free to reach out, come and ask a question in Free Webinar Friday, or book a free strategy call.
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