SEO, or search engine optimization is a relatively new business, which means there are a lot of folks jumping into the game when they have no experience, or credentials to really offer a competent service. Add on to this fact that we still have record unemployment and you have a recipe for disaster. An SEO company should not over sell you or bury you with meaningless statistics and facts. They should provide you with data that is impacting your bottom line and frequently check in with you to see that it is working for them.
We have seen client reports that are a foot thick. WE are SEO guys and even we didn’t understand them, so it is unrealistic to think that the client would or even have time to read them. Our reports are at most two pages and show critical metrics like where you have moved in positioning for highly traffic key words and what the impact of search is on your overall website traffic.
Beyond seeing your key words move, there should be tangible items that are tracked on a monthly basis. How many quality links has your firm added in the last month? What is the impact of these links? Have they added any out bound links? What on and off page content have they generated? If you SEO company is not doing at least one of these, time to find a new one!
Benchmarking
Before starting with any new client, it is important to benchmark where they are before they start SEO with you and where they are month to month. If a company is doing their job, their should be not reason for a client to want to change. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of scam artists who have built their business on getting clients for a short time span with the expectation they will go go away. This practice is shameful at best, criminal at worst.
