Put Your SEO Consultant On The Spot

Selecting an SEO consultant in Auckland isn’t as easy as doing a simple online search. SEO is an ever-changing and complex field, and it’s one of the most important components of your digital marketing. To push your business towards the top of search pages you must engage the services of someone who is on top of every fluctuation. A few simple questions will weed out the experts from the pretenders.

A good one to start with relates to that all-important search process: How will you improve our search engine rankings?

It’s an obvious question but the answer will allow your prospective consultant to summarise their strategy in general terms. If you receive a brief response and a shallow outline that doesn’t reflect the complexity of SEO, then that person probably won’t know how to cover all the bases that are required to grow the quality and quantity of your website traffic. At this stage, the strategy will be a broad one: more specific details relating to your particular SEO requirements will only be worked out once you’ve taken them on. If they say they have all the answers at this point, then it’s likely a one-size-fits-all approach and that sort of cookie-cutter marketing has no place in modern SEO.

Another way to check they’re on top of a complex field is to ask if they follow Google best practices? To provide better results for searchers, Google provides some 500 algorithm updates every year.  These guidelines can be seen as unbreakable rules, and your site can be severely penalised if these rules are not followed. Any SEO consultant worth their salt needs to be aware of best practice and how it affects you.

Ask what types of SEO work they do? Listen carefully for the three specific responses: technical SEO, on-page SEO and off-page SEO. These components are like three links in a chain, and if one link is missing, the chain is weakened as a result. A good digital marketing agency will offer all three.

Any business relationship is built on honest communication so the following question will test that very early on: Do you guarantee our site will rank first for a major search term?

If they answer YES! without hesitation, it might be time to end the interview. No one can make such a guarantee this far out; they don’t know the exact Google algorithm, and how it might change. Penalties come into the equation too. Anyone who gives you such a quickfire response is just trying to seal the deal in a hurry. On the other hand, someone who gives no guarantees but outlines ways in which your search traffic will continue to grow is worth listening to.

That age-old question should be in there too: How much will this cost?

Great SEO doesn’t come cheap and anyone who says they can do it for next to nothing isn’t worth sticking with. SEO requires time and effort AND expertise, but it is an investment that will give you excellent returns when you choose the right people to manage it for you.

When you’re looking for an SEO consultant don’t be afraid to ask plenty of questions. Any reputable digital marketing agency won’t be afraid to answer them. They have nothing to hide, and plenty to show you which will prove they’re up to this complex and challenging role.