Is your SEO agency helping your business grow or helping theirs?

There are many self proclaimed SEO guru company’s, consultants and agencies out there.  So how do you cut through the crap and figure out if your agency is working on your interests or just their monthly check?

I’m not claiming to be the best at digital marketing.  I am constantly learning and improving my craft to be the best I can be.

Having said that, I have been running into a tremendous amount of businesses that already have an “SEO Guy” when I meet with them.  Fair enough.

Already have an “SEO Guy”? Investigate here to see if your website SEO Guy is helping your business or not.

We all need Search Engine Optimization and I’m glad you took the first step to doing something about it.  Its essential to most of our businesses in acquiring new customers.

Do you wonder if its working?  Do you know how to see if your “SEO Guy” is doing a good job?

I need to also say, SEO is a long term solution.  Rising in ranks rarely happens over night, it usually takes a few months.  If your SEO Guy just started a few weeks ago, give them another month or so to get moving.  Its a lot of up front work for the first few weeks.  Then it picks up steam in month three to six, if properly set up.

Here is my 3 step test for your current SEO agency

Most websites I come across only rank for their own business brand name.  Not their service offerings for which customers are searching.

This blog post covers just the very basics of SEO and not all the facets involved to competitively rank your website.  If you are paying an “SEO Guy” and do not pass this test, time to shop for another “SEO Guy” fast.

Search Your Business Type & Location

This is the most basic test, so hang in there.  Go to google.com and search for your business type and location.  For example if you are focused on SEO for a dental practice in West Chester PA, search “dentist in west chester pa”.  If you are a dentist in West Chester PA, you would hope to be on the first page.  Right?  If you are on the first page, great, move to test 2!  If not, make a note and move to test 2.

Search Your Service Offerings & Location

If you are the dentist from the last test, now search something specific and in your location or near a neighboring location.  For example, “best dental implant specialists near west chester pa.”  Are you on the first page?  Try it for a few different service offerings.

Search Your Website Page Titles

This is the best bullshit test available and it will be clear if you are getting great work or throwing money down the toilet.  There is a trick to limit a google search to only your website and see all its indexed pages.

Go to Google.com again.  This time in the search bar type site:yourdomain.com
Make sure you replace the yourdomain with your actual website address. For example in the screenshot below we search site:www.gentledentalwestchester.com

Now do it for your website address.

Here are the results.  This first screen shot is an example of good SEO work.  Notice the BLUE page titles text for Gentle Dental (ok one is purple because i clicked on it).  Almost all of the page titles have the words Dentist or Dental and West Chester in the blue title text.

Also notice there are 196 pages for this one dental office website.  Seems like a lot?  Its not, if you have a quality blog and want to rank in slot #2 for dentists near west chester pa

Here are examples of either no SEO work or a lazy/unskilled SEO work on the site.

Notice the page titles only have their business brand name and the page name/service.  With this set up they are on page #5 of the search for “dentists west chester “.  The dead giveaway of poor SEO is the word “HOME” in the home page title.  This means the website designer or marketing person just left the defaults and did’t bother to add the location or service type.

Conclusion

SEO is one of many tactics to meet your business goals.  If you sell products online or require sales leads, a diverse marketing plan with SEO, PPC, Social Media and Email Marketing is what you need.  All tactics should focus on your goals.  Your agency or internal team should be accountable to achieve the goals.

If you are retaining someone for SEO services, make sure they are covering the basics.  Beyond the basics, they should present monthly reports on how they are helping your business grow in revenue.  Otherwise why are you paying them?

Send me a link to your website and I’ll let you know if your “SEO Guy” is doing great work or just collecting your money.

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