8 tips to help pick the best organic SEO services provider

You’ve been searching for information and doing research on organic SEO and you’ve finally decided it’s best to leave it to a professional team. That can be a great decision which pays off incredibly well for your company or organization’s website, marketing, and bottom line. And believe it or not – outsourcing highly specialized strategy and implementation such as organic SEO can be the best decision for your working budget also. Best of all – it makes you look like a pro who can handle anything to your boss and your team.

The one question which remains is…who? Who’s going to get you those results? Who will bring you and your website up that lofty rankings hill to the sweet, first-page spots on the other side?

Like search engine optimization, this can be a challenge also. Finding the right organic SEO services provider can be just as challenging as deciding to go that route in the first place. Well, we’re going to help. We’ve developed a list of objective, common-sense questions and indicators to ask and research about the organic SEO services talent you’ve narrowed down. However, I’m going to skip the normal questions that everyone knows and has heard of, for example:

• “Show me Google results from your successful projects”
  
• “Can you provide references”
  
• “How long have you been in business”

Instead, I’m providing a simple set of questions to ask your prospective keyword wranglers that might provide some additional, deeper insight into the character and capabilities of the company.

Questions to ask your organic SEO services provider or prospects.

1. Ask how the company will determine which keywords are right for your strategy. Are they interested in you? In your company, your product or service and your audience. If so, they should be willing to spend the time to produce a customized, specific and thorough keyword strategy for your company based on your project’s unique set of needs. You don’t want a team which develops quick, one-size-fits-all strategy they can mass-sell. And worse, if the provider promises quick, over-night, first-page results, run away. SEO is constantly changing and takes time and effort to develop a successful strategy with visible results that remain. 
2. Ask if the team only writes new content, or if they also re-write and reshape existing content. A successful SEO strategy oftentimes means leveraging content that you and your company has already produced. Make sure your SEO talent can work with what you’ve already developed as this can save time and mean a much larger, quicker impact. For a little more on reusing content, here’s a youtube video from a Hubspot pro.
3. Ask who does their writing, do they have a solid grasp on the culture, language, and personality of your target audience.
4. Ask if they can provide a sample report. You want to make sure they provide insight, direction, and recommendations based on what they see in your data. Any agency can install Google Analytics to monitor your website, any agency can also select some dates and print out a report to talk about that data. It takes a knowledgeable, skilled and experienced SEO provider to look at your data and develop a strong list of recommendations for moving forward after each report.
5. Ask how they determine success internally in respect to their SEO clients. This one gets a little basic, but it’s still nice to know.
6. Read their blogs and posts, are they frequent, do they write well, do they know their stuff?
7. Is your market local? If it is, you’ll want to know if the company is local. National companies can promise good results, but generally don’t perform as well on local SEO and local search as your own local organic SEO services pros do. Do they know your audience, your market? Local agencies will know this and produce better results. 
8. A second positive factor in going with a local agency can be the service element. Remember, you tend to have more power as a client when you can drive or walk to your agency’s office and demand answers or face-to-face meetings. If your agency is 6 states away (or worse, overseas) your service probably won’t be as good. We’ve got even more great tips on hiring local SEO help in this post.

Remember, SEO, and specifically organic SEO, is very often the most important element of any campaign which lives or partially lives online. It can be THE difference between success and failure. Our goal is to inspire you and provide knowledge and resources to ensure you get it right before you start.

We’re also happy to talk further, we understand a quick blog post can’t possibly cover all the questions you might have on your specific project. You can click the call button below to sign up for a free SEO call and consultation. No strings attached, we just like to help (and talk SEO).