SEO Consultant - How to Shortlist the Best

How to shortlist an SEO Consultant for my online business

If you're scouting for a SEO consultant or company to perform ethical and effective SEO Search Engine Optimization for your online business, then you have to make sure that you evaluate them correctly. Do not be afraid to ask questions. If you make any mistakes in your selection, that would have a direct impact on your business - to the extent of getting blacklisted. 

Here are some of the questions we believe you should ask before hiring a SEO consultant or business:

About the SEO Consultant / Company

·         How long have you been in business?

·         How many clients do you have?

·         What is the experience of the team that work on the projects. How is the team structured?

Evaluate their work

·         What kind of results can we expect to see? What is the time-frame? How do you measure your success?

·         Could you please provide your success stories?

·         Have you worked with a client in a similar niche as mine?

·         Have you worked on local SEO?

·         How frequently would you provide reports to us?

·         Can you provide references or testimonial?

·         What is the realistic traffic expectation?

·         How will you measure ROI ?

Check Methodology

·         Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?

·         How do you decide on the keywords and phrases to target?

·         What are the online marketing services you work on?

·         Do you have marketing experience or just keyword manipulation and back-link building?

·         What according to you is the key factor in SEO?

·         How do you get backlinks?

·         Would you share what changes you plan to implement on my site on a high level?

·         How would you carry out competitor analysis?

·         Do you work on social marketing?

·         How many pages would you optimize?

·         Do you carry out both on-page and off-page optimization?

Asking a set of above questions would help you gauge what they have done for the past clients and if they are capable of ranking your online business or not.  When you evaluate you should also look at their sites. If they know their job well, they should rank well on all SEPRs. Stay away from companies that use ANY kind of black hat methods and who guarantee you ranking in a short time. Doing that would only get you ranked for a few months and then later get impacted by a google animal. 

Remember - SEO is a long-term investment. Do not look for short term gains.