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10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant

If your website doesn't show up on the first page of search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo, your potential customers might not even know you exist. Better search engine visibility can be critical to boosting visits to your website, which can lead to increased brand awareness and higher sales and profits.

But what if you lack the time and technical expertise to improve your site's search engine ranking? It might make sense to hire an experienced, reliable search engine optimization (SEO) consultant.

Here are 10 essential questions to ask seo agency when considering prospective SEO consultants:

1. May I have a list of current and past clients? A reputable SEO consultant should be open to sharing a brief list of current and former clients and his or her contact information, says Vanessa Fox, author of Marketing in the Age of Google (Wiley, 2012) and founder of Nine By Blue, a Seattle-based SEO software provider.

These references can help you gauge how effective the candidate is, as well as verify that the person did indeed work on specific SEO campaigns. Clients may not provide specific analytics, Fox says, but they should be able to at least tell you if they saw a positive impact on their search ranking, especially in conversions and in gaining an audience, as a direct result of the consultant's efforts.

2. How will you improve my search engine rankings? Steer clear of SEO consultants who won't freely discuss their methods in detail, cautions Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, a Seattle-based internet marketing software company and co-author of The Art of SEO (O'Reilly, 2012). They should explain the strategies they would use to drive up your website's search engine ranking, as well as estimate how long it could realistically take to achieve the SEO campaign goals you agree on.

Make sure the candidate's proposal includes an initial technical review of your website to weed out any problems that could lower your search engine ranking, including broken links and error pages. Consultants also should provide "on page" optimization, a process to make your website as search engine friendly as possible. It involves improving your website's URL and internal linking structure, along with developing web page titles, headings and tags.

Also, ask consultants if they provide "off page" SEO strategies to raise awareness of your content on other websites, often via blogs, social media platforms and press releases.

3. Do you adhere to search engines' webmaster guidelines? You want a consultant who strictly abides by Google's publicly posted webmaster best practices, which specifically prohibit 12 common SEO tricks, including automatically generating spammy content and adding bogus hidden text and links. If a candidate doesn't follow those guidelines, your website could be relegated to a dismally low search results ranking. Or, worse yet, Google could ban it from search results altogether.

Bing and Yahoo also post webmaster best practices that consultants should confirm they follow.

4. Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo? If the candidate answers yes, Fox warns, "Turn and run in the other direction as fast as you can." Although it's impossible to guarantee a number-one ranking on any search engine, she says, some unethical SEO consultants do make such bogus guarantees.

Consider it a red flag if the candidate claims to have an insider relationship with Google or any other search engine that will get you priority search results rankings. Only Google, Bing and Yahoo can control how high or low websites appear in their search results.

5. Are you experienced at improving local search results? Appearing in the top local search engine results is especially important to small brick-and-mortar businesses trying to attract nearby customers, Rand says. You'll want a consultant who has expertise in local SEO techniques.

If your website is optimized for what's known as "local SEO," it should appear when someone nearby is searching for keywords that are relevant to your business. To achieve that, a consultant should add your business's city and state to your website's title tags and meta descriptions, and get your site listed on Bing, Google and Yahoo's local listings, which are online directories of businesses that cater to a specific geographical area.

6. Will you share with me all changes you make to my site? Search engine optimization will most likely require a number of changes to your existing web page coding. It's important to know exactly what adjustments the consultant plans to make and on how many web pages. If you would like the candidate to get your permission before accessing and altering your website code, be sure to say so.

For example, will consultants add new title tags to your existing HTML code or modify the existing ones? Will they provide additional copywriting content highlighting your products and services to beef up the number of visible, on-page keywords relevant to your potential customers? And do they plan to redesign all or some of your website navigation or add new pages to your site?

7. How do you measure the success of your SEO campaigns? To gauge the success of SEO efforts, you must track exactly how much traffic is being sent to your website and where it is coming from. Consultants should be experienced in using Google Analytics to track improvement in your site's search engine rankings, the number of links from other websites driving traffic to yours, the kinds of keywords searchers use to find your site, and much more.

Be sure to ask how often they plan to share these important analytics with you and how they would use the data to continually improve your search engine rankings and website traffic.

8. How will we communicate and how often? SEO consultants' communication styles and customer service standards vary. You need to find someone whose approach best fits your needs. Ask if the candidate prefers to talk in person or via phone, Skype, texting or email. And find out how often will he or she reach out to you with status updates.

9. What are your fees and payment terms? You need to know how much you'll be charged, of course, and also whether the consultant gets paid hourly, by retainer or by project. Project-based payments are the most common in the SEO consulting industry, and they can vary widely, depending on a project's size and complexity. Most contract projects ranged between $1,000 and $7,500, according to Moz's 2011 pricing survey of more than 600 SEO firms.

The study also found that the most common retainers ranged between $251 to $500 a month on the lower end and $2,501 to $5,000 a month on the higher end, while the most common hourly rates ranged from $76 to $200. Fox said consultants who specifically serve small businesses often charge less per month and hour.

Other important payment-related questions: How often are invoice payments due -- every 30, 60 or 90 days? Is there an interest charge for late payments?

10. What happens when we part ways? When your contract expires or if you terminate it early, you should still maintain ownership of all of the optimized web content you paid the consultant to provide, Fox says.

Accordingly, you'll want to make sure the contract states that when you part ways, consultants will not change or remove any of the content they added, modified or optimized on your behalf. You also should ask consultants whether they charge any fees for early contract termination, and if so, to specify them in the contract.

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21 Questions To Ask A Prospective SEO Agency (End)

11. How do you store passwords? Good Answer:  “You can give us admin access to anything - that way we don’t need your passwords. For any passwords we do store, we use LastPass”

Bad Answer: “I just use them once and let the browser remember”

Working with an SEO company invariably means that you’ll end up sharing some confidential data with them. Asking how they plan to protect that data ensures you have an understanding of how much they care about the details.

The correct answer to the storing passwords question is something like LastPass or another secure online program.

The wrong answer is on a spreadsheet or password protected hard drive, because spreadsheets can get hacked and hard drives can get stolen.

It could cause seriously bad damage to your business’s reputation if your SEO company inadvertently let your confidential data out into the world through lax security procedures.

12. Do you manage PPC (Pay Per Click)? Good Answer:  “Sometimes - getting the balance right between the budget for SEO and PPC can be a difficulty”

Bad Answer: “Yes! Google just bought us all jet-skis… but don’t worry, it won’t cloud our judgement”

Taking money for paid clicks while being paid for activity which improves a clients’ organic search rankings is a tough balance. We’ve never been able to make it sit comfortably, so Noisy Little Monkey avoids the problem altogether and partners with one of the country's most respected PPC agencies. Keeps us all focused!

However, If your new SEO agency does manage PPC, you need to know how they will wean you off spending on Google AdWords as your organic traffic grows.

Let’s say you spend £3,000 a month on AdWords - you’ll see huge results. But because it’s an auction (you bid on the price you’re willing to pay per click) - bidding will inevitably go up and eventually you’ll have to spend more money to get the same amount of website visitors. You might initially get thousands of visitors, but that will dwindle away to nothing unless you start spending even more on PPC.

With SEO it’s the other way round. You might not see many results organically to begin with, but they should continue to rise once they get started.

It’s very tempting to not invest in this foundational period of SEO because the results aren’t as good as PPC to begin with, but if you want that long-term return on investment you’ve got to do it. Get it right and in a year or so, you won’t pay Google as much and for very little money you’ll get loads of  “free” traffic from organic search results.

13. How do you choose the keywords? Good Answer:  “First we think about your potential customer …”

Bad Answer: “Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Keyword Shitter 2”

Primarily the answers you want to hear should include the word ‘people’ and your ‘buyer personas’, rather than them talking solely about keyword planning tools. As good as those tools are (and to be honest, Keyword Shitter 2 is a bit of a loose cannon), they’re only tools.

A good SEO thinks about who your potential customers are and what they’re typing into Google. Then, once they’ve thought about those phrases, a great SEO looks for the “search terms” (keywords strung together which become phrases typed into Google) where your website can beat the competition and get some decent visibility on Google.

A poor SEO using just keyword suggestion tools and little or no imagination will likely recommend building content clusters around search terms that have no real involvement in your user’s buying process.

Typically, if your SEO doesn’t talk about buyer personas or potential customers, they’re not going to be very commercially aware.

14. How do you do link building? Good Answer:  “We don’t do link building. Link building is bad.”

Bad Answer: “We’ve got this amazing system that keeps us one step ahead of Google”

The best answer is that your SEO company will work with you to create amazing content and then outreach to relevant people in the sector to get them to read it. If the content is wonderful, it will naturally acquire links because people love to share useful, unique resources.

If your SEO agency tells you that for £500 they can get you 500 links then run for the hills! Spammy link building is a terrible strategy and your website will almost certainly suffer a penalty from Google at some point. You will lose face and possibly your ability to pay the mortgage,

15. How much involvement would you want in the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)? Good Answer:  “If we can, we’d love to be involved - sometimes the results for the client are quicker and better than simply driving more web visitors”

Bad Answer: “We’re all about the traffic, baby.”

Let’s say you’re getting 100 visitors a day to your website right now, and you get one order per day - that’s a 1% conversion rate.

It might cost you £1,000 of SEO to get 200 visitors to your website, but before you spend your budget it might be worth checking if there’s anything you can to do improve the user journey on your website.

Sometimes a task as simple as moving and simplifying a form can double a conversion rate. Which in our example is now a conversion rate of 2%. That’s 2 orders per day.

Which means that for every 100 visitors you now get two orders and it didn’t cost you a penny on SEO.

Before you dive in and spend loads on growing traffic, the best SEOs should suggest ways in which you can improve conversion rates with the traffic you already receive.

16. Assuming there is an ongoing relationship, how often will we meet? Good Answer:  “It would be good to meet once a quarter… speak on the phone weekly”

Bad Answer: “We don’t need to meet - this is the internet!”

Meeting with a geeky SEO bod every week is a bit too much for most of us and your SEO won’t enjoy it too much either.

A quick catch up call every week, a conference call for an hour every month to discuss how things are going, and then a quarterly strategy meeting is about where you want to be.

17. WHAT ABOUT BING?? Good Answer:  “Well, it gets about 20% of search traffic so we don’t ignore it but we primarily make your website work on Google”

Bad Answer: “Bing, Yahoo, Dogpile, Altavista, Hotbot - we do all the SEOs”

In truth, sometimes it’s better to focus on Bing - but it’s quite rare.

18. What is your experience in multi-lingual SEO? Good Answer:  “We have offices in <cities where you also have offices>”

Bad Answer: “Why bother? The international language of trade is English”

When you’re engaging a company to help with multi-lingual SEO you should be looking for an agency with offices in the territories where you wish to target because they’re much more likely to understand the cultural differences, in addition to the linguistic ones. “Mother tongue nationals”, as they’re called in translation circles, also know what idioms work in their native language and which will end up as confusing word mangles.

Also - anyone who believes that because the international language of trade is English they have the right to be so impolite as to not bother to learn the language of their potential customer probably voted UKIP in the last election. As such they are the personification of evil and should be avoided at all costs.

19. What conferences do you attend? Good Answer:  “BrightonSEO and Digital Gaggle and we host a local meet up for marketers”

Bad Answer: “We don’t bother - we never learn anything new”

You want to hear names like Digital Gaggle, BrightonSEO, SearchLove, SMX London and maybe Inbound or MozCon if they fly to the USA occasionally. These kinds of events are about improving knowledge. You want a partner in SEO that won’t be resting on their laurels about something that worked yesterday - they should challenge themselves and their team to discover what might work tomorrow.  

Cartoon character having a book of knowledge pushed into his brain

20. What websites do you use for inspiration? Good Answer:  “Loads! Pretty much daily I check Search Engine Land, weekly I’m looking at the wonderful Noisy Little Monkey blog… I’ll send you a list.”

Bad Answer: “We don’t have time, and anyway - we rarely learn anything new”

Positive answers would be sites like the Noisy Little Monkey blog, HubSpot, Kissmetrics, Moz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, and Bill Slawski’s excellent SEO By The Sea. These kinds of websites give great SEO advice and are forward thinking.

If your SEO is looking at things which are a bit more ‘beginner’, or they start talking about closed groups or forums that they’re in to discuss black-hat SEO techniques that only the cool kids know, you should avoid at all costs..

21. How often do you get it wrong and how do you deal with that? Good Answer:  “Rarely but it’s not something we shy away from - we grasp the nettle and put things right.”

Bad Answer: “Uh, we never get it wrong. Why all these questions? Who even are you?”

This is a good test of their honesty because if they say that they never get it wrong then they’re either angels or they’re lying. Check for wings at this point.

By asking them how they deal with it, you’ll learn a lot about their business culture. If they stammer and say something like “oh, we, uh, gave them 3 months of free stuff” it probably means they didn’t actually deal with it like that.

This answer should be about conversations because SEO isn’t even a science, let alone an an exact one and occasionally things go wrong. Sometimes as SEOs we need to have hard conversations with clients.

Any SEO agency should be able to address that question without getting scared, angry or defensive. If they’re defensive at just the question, imagine what they’d be like when something things don’t go exactly as planned.

How to ask these questions Finally, remember to try keeping these questions to ask seo agency open. How, why, where, what, when, who… questions that can’t be answered with a yes / no answer. It keeps it conversational and you’ll learn a lot more about the SEO companies you’re interviewing.

Partnering with the right agency is so important, not just for you but for the agency themselves. Something like SEO is rarely going to be cheap or fast, so getting on with your agency and having mutual respect for each other’s work is vital to ensure your long term partnership is one that delivers a win/win.

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21 Questions To Ask A Prospective SEO Agency (Part 1)

Thinking about employing an SEO agency? Here’s 21 questions to ask, and the sort of answers to listen out for.

If you choose the right one, your reputation (and career) will take a wonderful turn - choose badly and you’ll be out of a job in 6 months.

SEO is complicated and with all the other stuff you’ve got going on in your marketing day, you don’t have time to learn the minutia of all the elements.

The problem is, this situation leaves you vulnerable to being massively played by one of the many dodgy SEO agencies out there. To give you some armour against the rip-off merchants, below you'll find a list of questions to ask your prospective agency to ensure that they won't fritter away your budget on techniques that might actually damage your rankings. On the topic of the price of SEO, open this blog in a new tab, for later…

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Questions to ask seo agency 1. Can I talk to some of your previous clients? Good Answer: “Why don’t you check out our reviews on Google and in the meantime,  I’ll put you in touch with some happy clients in your sector.”

Bad Answer: “Uh, my clients are busy people - I don’t want to waste their time”

If your prospective SEO agency says “Uh, well, I don’t want to bother my other clients” or any other form of “no” then immediately hang up. A bad agency leaves a trail of disgruntled customers in its wake and they don’t normally want prospective customers to talk to them.

If your new SEO agency says “Yes” they’re probably the right sort of people to be speaking with. They might not give you access right away, but if they ask what you want out of your SEO and then consider which of their clients is best suited for a discussion, you’re off to a cracking start.

2. Can I see some of your SEO case studies? Good Answer: “There are a few on the website, but if you can spare 30 mins I’ll take you through a blow by blow campaign we did for a business just like yours.”

Bad Answer: “Yes - you may not have heard of any of them, but we grew traffic by 10,000% every time!”

Lots of SEOs will say “With this client we had 10,000% growth!” but it’s really easy to get these kinds of figures.

For example -  if the SEO agency is showing you a case study from a very new company who only saw 2 visitors from Organic Search in month one, then the client would only need to see 200 visitors from Organic Search in month two to see 1,000% growth.  And those 200 visitors might have little or nothing to do with SEO!

Case studies of established businesses, with graphs from Google Analytics are good.

Even better - when those SEO case studies outline what the agency did and how it made a difference to the customer’s organic growth.

3. Describe your ideal client Good Answer: “A good client relationship is more like a partnership, your team and ours should pool ideas and resources to get the best results”

Bad Answer: “Anybody quiet. SEO works best when you leave the experts to it and don’t ask dumb questions”

Get the SEO agencies you’re considering to describe their ideal client and see whether your business fits that mould.

Some agencies might do their best work with start ups, other SEOs might work best with businesses who have large marketing teams, agencies like Noisy Little Monkey enjoy working as part of a multi-agency team (with PR companies, media buying agencies and branding agencies all in the mix) but there are many SEO practitioners who don’t enjoy playing in a team.

In terms of what they need from you:

Do they need you to pay within a certain timeframe? Do they need weekly calls, monthly meetings or similar? Do they need you to be available at a moment’s notice? Being the ideal client for an SEO company is beneficial because you’ll likely get more bang for your buck. Because you’re easy to do business with, they’re likely to look after you way more than someone who isn’t an ideal client (even when those big spenders are paying more than you)

4. In which industry sectors do you specialise? Good Answer: “We’re strong in <insert your industry sector> and a few others”

Bad Answer: “We’re strong in all sectors because it’s all about the technology we use”

If your SEO is a specialist in your sector, they’ll probably not have to do as much groundwork as an agency who are already knee deep in the jargon inherent in your industry.

For example, suppose your business is in the legal sector. If an SEO agency has experience in the legal sector, that’s a good thing.... While it would be unethical for an SEO to simply duplicate work they’ve done for another solicitor, if they already know about some of the nuances in the legal sector they're more likely to get off to a flying start so your business sees results more quickly.

5. What CMS (Content Management System) does your SEO team prefer to work on? Good Answer: “We’re pretty agnostic about the technology, but we’re particularly used to working with <insert your CMS>”

Bad Answer: “We’ll probably need to rebuild your site. Probably on Drupal.”

If your SEOs love WordPress and your website is on WordPress, great!  That’s the system that powers most of the websites out there. You might want to check they’re not going to install any plugins other than the wonderful Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin. To use any other SEO plugin for WordPress is probably a sign that you’re talking to the wrong SEO.

If your new SEO claims to be an expert on the CMS you use, ask to see some examples.

As marketing automation and personalised content systems become more popular, finding an agency with experience of your marketing automation platform will become increasingly important. Noisy Little Monkey is famous for HubSpot SEO, if you happen to be using that one :)

If your potential new SEO agency starts talking about building you a site from the ground up then that’s probably going to cost you a lot of money. In some cases it is necessary, but you’re going to need more budget.

6. Ask yourself - what are my potential new SEO agencies blogging about? Good Answer: “They blog about SEO and things that might make marketing more effective”

Bad Answer: “They blogged about a sponsored run they did. Two years ago”

An SEO that doesn’t blog is probably secretive and don’t practice what they preach. AVOID.

If they are blogging, is it useful advice rather than telling you how to game the system? This is important because Google creates algorithms that are designed as a proxy for human trust. The algorithms try to work out how humans indicate trust and then how to measure what is most trustworthy, The most trustworthy sites which are most relevant to a search query are those which show highest.

Is your new SEO is  just interested in ‘gaming the system’ and trying to beat the algorithm rather than producing quality, helpful resources? If so, when they employ this methodology for your business you’ll lose out. Google’s algorithms are designed to get rid of the chaff and learn what’s most useful, so by always working to make your website a useful resource you’ll hopefully stay as the wheat.

In short, seek out an SEO agency that blogs with some regularity and provides useful resources - that’s what they’re going to tell you to do, and you’re going to need some help, training, sympathy and encouragement from an SEO who feels your pain.

7. Tell me 3 things I should fix immediately on my website Good Answer:  Starts with - “Hmmm, let me have a look - Aha! First you should think about changing….”

Bad Answer: “I can send you a 5 page audit”

A prospective SEO practitioner should have a look around your website for couple of minutes and then be able to give you some interesting and useful tips about what you could change and the benefits that might bring to your organisation.

It doesn’t matter if you already have an SEO doing work on your site, another SEO should be able to find more stuff to do, and quickly!

Technology rapidly evolves and the way humans interact with it changes too, so Search Engine Optimisation is never finished. There’s always more to do… The best SEO service providers never rest on their laurels and should always be able to spot something that can be improved.

Anyone who relies on templated audits and repeated explanations that everything in SEO is very expensive and very difficult is pulling the wool over your eyes - there are usually lots of smaller things that are easy to change to improve your website’s ability to rank.

8. Can I see your management accounts? Good Answer:  “What? Um, let me get my accounts team to send you something… What exactly is the information you need to see?”

Bad Answer: “No”

This might seem like an odd question, but you need to know how profitable your prospective SEO agency is, and it’s also a test of how well the business is structured

If you’re going in for a long term relationship, choosing a disorganised agency that could end up going out of business next week isn’t ideal…

Sometimes it’s difficult to get eyes on a new agency’s accounts. It shouldn’t be a deal breaker but it is worth checking. Go to Companies House and assuming your SEO company is a limited company or partnership, (which they probably should be) you can download their accounts for the last few years and see what their profit and loss was. Companies House only provides the basics, so it might be worth running the new SEO company’s name through your account department’s credit checking system, if you have one.

9. How much does SEO cost? Best Answer: Check out this helpful article about the average cost of SEO

Good Answer:  “At these early stages, it’s impossible to put an exact figure on it but typically there’s an upfront cost of about £X, and our average retainer is about £X, but let’s talk about what will work for you.”

Bad Answer: “Depends on how many backlinks we need to buy”

There are typically two options offered when you're talking to a reputable SEO agency.

There will often be a fixed sum for some initial project work, and then maybe an ongoing retainer.

The key thing, if they are suggesting ongoing costs, is whether they are writing or producing content on your behalf. It shouldn’t just be ‘doing SEO’, because once SEO is “done” to your website, it's done. What you want is fresh, relevant content that is link-worthy, so any ongoing cost should include content production.

Kermit the Frog typing quickly on a typewriter

10. How many people will be working on my account? Good Answer:  “Depends on the size of the job at hand - do you want to pop in and have a coffee with us so you can put names to faces?”

Bad Answer: “Only me. I outsource all the article syndication”

If the voice on the other end of the phone says “Oh, it’s just me - I’m a freelance SEO”, then that’s cool - assuming you’re paying a fee that fits that model. Perhaps if you’re considering paying thousands per month and there’s only one person in the SEO agency, that’s not such a good sign.

When there is a team of people working on your account, then you’d expect to pay more because, if they’re any good, they’ll throw plenty of resources at your project.

There’s no right or wrong answer to this, it’s more about getting a clear picture of how things are and ensuring that you are comfortable with it.

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12 Questions You Need to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Company

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a constantly evolving practice, as search engines continue to update their algorithms to provide a better user experience. Where SEO could once be effectively done with keyword density equations and cheaply bought backlinks, modern SEO only works as part of a holistic, integrated digital marketing strategy.

Companies that once kept their SEO in-house are finding it more complicated to create measurable SEO success. Creating effective backlinks now requires engaging content, influencer marketing, and at least little bit of PR savvy. Accordingly, a modern keyword strategy needs user intent research, content marketing experience, and a working knowledge of Google’s ranking priorities. It might require more than one or two SEO experts in a marketing team, which is why some brands are choosing to partner with a professional SEO agency.

Hiring an SEO company or agency can be a daunting task. In the best-case scenario, your partner grows organic traffic to your site, improves your search rankings, and helps you generate more leads and sales. In the worst-case scenario, your SEO partner engages in black hat techniques that give the appearance of success, disappears before the penalties kick in, and leaves you with less traffic than ever—and months’ or years’ worth of cleanup.

However, hiring someone to create and execute an SEO plan doesn’t have to be difficult. You don’t need to be an expert to hire one; you just need to know what questions to ask seo agency and what answers to expect. Consider the following 12 questions—and what to look for in the answers—to find a proficient SEO company that follows best practices and drives the results you’re seeking:

1. What is your philosophy of approaching SEO to deliver results? There are three major facets of SEO, and the most effective SEO companies consider all three as components of a comprehensive SEO strategy.

Technical SEO considers code, site structure, site speed, and other metrics that could impact your search traffic. During a technical SEO review, an SEO professional will make sure that search engines can crawl your site and its content, will review 404 errors, and will analyze redirects, among other tasks. User experience (UX) is the optimization of the content of your digital properties. During an on-page SEO review, an SEO expert will analyze user-facing aspects of your site, including content, navigation, and keyword optimization. Off-page SEO means improving your SEO presence by earning links, strengthening the brand online, and improving the popularity of the site and content. To execute off-page SEO campaigns, an SEO agency will look for opportunities to increase your domain and page authority through incoming links to your site from other high-quality properties. Many SEO agencies operate in one of two ways:

They will offer only one facet of SEO (such as link-building). They will do all the research and strategy without being able to effectively implement any of it. Modern SEO requires a holistic strategy and experienced execution. Make sure the SEO agency you are evaluating can do all three (technical, UX, off-page), and that they have a clear strategy for balancing them.

2. How will you adapt that strategy to our brand/business/industry/niche? SEO is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and your SEO partner should have some ideas as to how your business needs a unique approach that caters to your industry, business model, and goals. SEO for a local business interested in attracting customers from a dozen zip codes requires a very different approach than SEO for a major corporation with a global market.

Experience in your industry is a plus, but it’s not necessarily a requirement. More important is the  SEO agency’s ability to articulate how they will adapt the general approach to cater specifically to your niche. Make sure that the company can highlight specific places where the general approach will vary.

3. What metrics define “success” for you? This is kind of a trick question. While SEO companies may come to the meeting with certain, general goals in mind, their success metrics should really stem from what success means for you. No SEO company can guarantee page-one rankings, and those that make these types of promises are likely using black-hat techniques. These techniques may get you traffic for a short time, but they’ll ultimately land you a penalty—along with significantly reduced traffic and rankings.

Legitimate SEO professionals will build their plans around your goals. If you’re looking for increased traffic, they may prioritize keyword optimization or content creation. If you’re looking for more local traffic, they may recommend optimizing your local business profiles on directory and review sites. An SEO agency’s success metrics should be directly based on your business goals, so look for companies that turn this question around and seek the answer from you.

4. How long will it be until we can expect to see results? Effective SEO takes time, but that shouldn’t prevent an experienced agency from giving you a time frame for results. In general, you should expect to see results from legitimate SEO techniques within six months of getting started.

The possibility of seeing results earlier depends on the health of your site. For instance, correcting technical errors and oversights can net some legitimate SEO gains in a short period of time. However, if your site is already structured well and free from technical issues, you will have to wait longer for measurable change.

If your SEO company promises quick results, ask why. If they point out technical factors that need to be cleaned up, good. If not, be wary—they might be using outdated, spammy techniques that will eventually get your site penalized.

5. How do you approach mobile? Ideally, mobile should be part of the conversation when you discuss the general strategy. Google announced last year that they were in the process of moving to a mobile-first index, making mobile optimization more important than ever. Look for companies that have a process for conducting a mobile audit of your site, and ensure your SEO agency can convincingly articulate why mobile is an important SEO consideration.

6. How should SEO incorporate with our overall marketing strategy? The most successful SEO initiatives are part of an overall marketing plan, so avoid companies that expect to perform their tasks in isolation. SEO goes hand-in-hand with content marketing, and public relations and social media marketing activities can be used for effective link-building. Your SEO partner should be very open to collaborating with your other marketing teams—as well as other teams as needed, such as your web development and sales teams—and should have a basic plan for integrating their efforts with your existing marketing initiatives.

7. How do you conduct keyword research? In the past, keyword research meant plugging a term into a keyword research tool, populating a list of relevant keywords, and developing content with keywords inserted at various places. However, modern keyword research requires much more effort—it’s an exercise in understanding user intent. It seeks to understand what information a user is looking for when searching a keyword phrase and provides content catered to the intent behind the search.

As you’re interviewing prospective SEO companies, make sure that they refer to user intent and speak about the tools and methodologies they use to determine keyword intent. If the entire conversation revolves around number of searches for a keyword and keyword density, it’s likely that they’re operating on outdated practices.

8. How do you approach link-building and influencer marketing? Some SEO companies will promise to get you thousands of links within a few weeks, but the reality is that those links will not be high quality. One high-quality link from a credible, authoritative site is more effective than hundreds of low-quality purchased or machine-created links in blog comments. The conversation should focus on building quality links over a large quantity of links.

Modern link-building is better described as link-earning. It’s executed by providing high-quality content that drives incoming links organically, and building relationships with influencers and editors. Your SEO company should describe their link-building efforts in terms of relationship-building and quality—not quantity and expediency.

9. What tools do you use? Knowing exactly what tools an SEO company uses isn’t necessarily important, but knowing that they can describe why they use those tools is critical. Legitimate SEO professionals will have a number of tools they use to conduct audits and complete tasks, and they will have tested multiple tools to find the best. Ask the following questions:

What tools do you use to conduct keyword research, and why? What do you use to monitor rankings, and why? What crawler do you use, and why? What do you use to monitor backlinks, and why? What do you use to conduct competitor analysis, and why? Your SEO partner should be able to articulate the reason their preferred tools are used and the impact those tools can have when properly utilized—not simply recite a long list of “great tools.”

10. How do you report on progress and what does it look like? Ask to see a sample report created for another client in order to ensure that the SEO company has a valid method for reporting their progress toward your shared goals. At this point, you’ve already discussed your specific goals, so ask how they would customize the progress report to cater to your unique goals and KPIs. Be wary of companies that cannot provide detailed information on how progress will be measured and reported.

How often an SEO agency reports on progress will likely depend on the size of your project. Most brands can expect monthly updates. Bigger companies, or short-term and specific projects, might require more frequent updates on the work being done, but bear in mind that tracking actual progress week-to-week is largely ineffective and can be deceptive.

Search results fluctuate for a variety of reasons: Google testing new algorithm changes, competitors making dramatic changes to their content, etc. SEO is a long-term strategy, and companies that monitor close-term changes often make rash changes that end up hurting their efforts.

11. How do you stay up-to-date on industry changes and Google updates? At a minimum, you’ll want someone who stays up to date with the information posted by Google on its Webmaster Central Blog—Google’s own outlet for news on how to best position a site for their search algorithms. Better, is someone who follows popular industry blogs and participates in SEO forums and conversations. The best SEO professionals will do all of the former as well as conduct their own research. They monitor the properties they manage for potential signs of algorithm changes and investigate possible shifts in SEO best practices.

12. What do you need from us to be effective? Legitimate SEO companies should respond with a long list of questions and needs. To conduct their work effectively, they’ll need detailed information about your audience, industry, goals, and KPIs. They’ll need to know what other digital marketing platforms you’re using that will affect your content, if any, such as marketing automation. They’ll also need access to your Google Analytics. Effective SEO requires a partnership between multiple teams and company leaders, so agencies that need very little from you are unlikely to build an SEO plan that will help you achieve long-term success.

Hire an SEO Company that Delivers SEO is a complex field. Ever since Google introduced their machine learning program, RankBrain, the search engine has been continuously updating and improving—24/7/365. Effective SEO companies stay up to date on key changes and adjust their plans and practices accordingly. Additionally, the ultimate goal of a search engine is to provide quality results to searchers, so effective SEOs should be more concerned with quality for users than with ranking factors and quantity of links.

By asking these questions and evaluating the answers to determine the practices and policies an SEO company employs, you’ll be able to weed out black-hat SEOs and find an agency that delivers long-term success.

Are you in charge of your company’s SEO strategy? What other questions would you ask an SEO company?

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You need a little Christmas in your marketing plan now (Yes! Already!)

Preparing for the new holiday normal Planning for the holidays in 2019 was pretty straight forward with predictable patterns to follow when setting the ecommerce marketing calendar 2020. But this year is different, and we don’t know if what we consider business as usual will return in time for the holiday.

There is a possibility that bricks-and-mortar stores will be forced to close due to lockdowns in the face of a resurgence of coronavirus. There is also the possibility that customers who have shifted to online ordering this spring will not want to return to the crowds in stores even if they have the option.

In the absence of store visits, shoppers will look online for their holiday inspiration. That’s where eCommerce sellers have an opportunity to offer visually-rich content on their sites, blogs,  social media, and newsletters.  This is relevant for a number of verticals identified by consumer searches, including fashion, beauty, and general retail.

Clictadigital allows you to reach out to them with trigger-based automation to deliver one-to-one level personalized holiday messaging. The powerful combination of  Clictadigital’s advanced segmentation and built-in variable data codes ensures each of your recipients is treated as an individual. They are addressed by name and shown what is of interest to them rather than getting a generic message that doesn’t reflect what they’re about.

With time on your side, you can plan ahead and gather the customer data points that will enable you to make holiday sales to both your established customers but to new customers who came on board during the lockdown. The way to do that is by reaching out to them on their terms, not just thanking them for becoming a customer but with personalized communication that shows an awareness of their preferences and taste.

Consumers felt they need a little Christmas now Of course, Christmas is always on December 25, but in terms of being on the mind of both sellers and customers, it started in the spring. That’s the finding of Pinterest’s report,  Earlier Than Ever Holiday 2020 .

Pinterest admits that its audience is a bit earlier to the holiday party than most people, meaning they start their holiday activity in September. But in 2020 they started that as early as April. Pinterest assumes it’s  because they were stuck at home, dealing with a scary situation,   and “craving the comfort of the holidays.”

The glimpses of Christmases yet to be that consumers are indulging in now can be a gold mine for businesses that can capitalize on the indications of interests to prepare for the holiday season.

Planning ahead for a successful holiday season Marketers can plan ahead using insight based on data. You already have some first-party data your business has on your customers’ purchase history and can augment that by using data about general trends to launch your holiday marketing campaigns.

For example, 40% of the people Pinterest surveyed indicated they would need to curtail spending this year. Such customers could be responsive to special early promotions that come ahead of standard holiday sales starting in November.

One advantage of early holiday promotions is that it allows sellers to pace themselves and not be overwhelmed by everyone placing their orders in late November. Another is that these orders identify what people are interested in. Registering that interest early on allows sellers to ascertain they will have enough on hand when the real holiday crunch arrives.

This is particularly important in anticipation of more online shopping this holiday season with more consumers relying on eCommerce to deliver their holiday needs on time. Businesses have to make sure that they will not be disappointed in that.

“Be the brand they discover first this season and you’ll be their first choice when it’s time to shop,” Pinterest advises

By gearing up for holiday sales now, online sellers can get to know their new customers better to be able to segment them appropriately, build up their connection to them, serve as their source of holiday inspiration, and assure them that their orders will be safely delivered on time. When it comes to successful holiday sales, it’s all about the planning that underlies effective communication with your customers.

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How to Audit Your Website for Improved SEO and Conversions

What Is a Website Audit? A website audit is an examination of page performance prior to large-scale search engine optimization (SEO) or a website redesign. Auditing your website can determine whether or not it's optimized to achieve your traffic goals, and if not, how you can improve it to increase performance.

When was the last time you gave your website a checkup?

How strong is your website? Grade it using HubSpot's free Website Grader. If you've never before audited your website, it's been a while since you have, or you're planning a website redesign in the near future, use this post as your go-to website audit checklist to make sure your website is primed for maximum SEO and conversion results.

Keep in mind that in most cases, you'll probably want to pair up with someone with a technical brain for this, whether that be someone in your in-house IT department or an outsourced party.

The Benefits of a Free Website Audit Before we dive into the things you should be keeping an eye out for as you're auditing your website, let's review some of the benefits of doing one. Here are some of the top benefits from a marketing perspective:

Website Performance Optimization Website audits usually evaluate a site not only for its content, but also for its technical performance.

As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website's technical framework and infrastructure, assess how friendly your website is to search engines, and determine how easy it is for users to navigate and intuitively find content on your website.

Search Engine Optimization By conducting a website audit, you'll be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g. keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.

It will also allow you to re-focus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second. This will safeguard you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won't be applying misguided practices just to show up in the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Conversion Rate Optimization Thirdly, website audits enable you re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion. As a result, you'll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads so you can add relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages so you can optimize them to boost conversions.

As you can see, assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.

The 4 Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website Let's talk about how to pursue each of the three benefits above, and what you should specifically be checking for in this four-part website audit.

But first, enter your website into HubSpot's Website Grader -- this will give you a general overview of your website's strengths so you can gauge your focus on each of the assessments that follow in this article.

Homepage of HubSpot's Website Grader, giving site owners a website audit of their domain's strength

How'd you do? Got an idea of which website audit benefits you need the most? Here we go.

1. Website Performance Assessment In the first part of your website audit, you should be focusing on how users navigate your website -- from your homepage, to blog posts, to landing pages, and any related content in between.

Make a list of the pages on your website and ask yourself the following questions to evaluate them for optimization opportunities:

Is Your Website Optimized for Maximum Usability? The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more opportunities you'll have to generate leads and, ultimately, customers. But only if your website performs well.

As I'm sure you can imagine, just having a website does not guarantee results. As part of determining the overall efficiency of your website, your audit should check to make sure your site is designed with your visitors in mind. The design and overall navigability of your website should correspond with what a person would come to the site to seek out, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, etc. This will largely depend on your individual business.

The main goal here is to make it easy for people to get to the information they're looking for. As a result, you'll likely see conversion rates improve on their own.

To audit your website for usability, consider the following:

Are all the main value propositions of our business easily accessible via our main navigations/menu items? Do we have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout? Make sure pages aren't too cluttered; littered with ads, CTAs, or links; or void of internal links altogether. Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout processes intuitive? Are there a ton of distractions along the way that could be creating friction for your site visitors? You might also consider doing some user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you're effectively surfacing the content they're looking for, and that they find it easy to navigate to the parts of your website they're interested in.

How Is Your Website's Overall Speed? Are there excessive page sizes and/or long page load and server response times? Does your site go down frequently? Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up, all of which can drastically improve your site speed.

Ultimately, fast-loading and optimized pages will lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions. To quickly check a web page's load time, download MozBar, a toolbar by Moz that you can attach to your browser for simple page analysis every time you visit a website.

2. SEO Assessment Optimizing the performance of your website is crucial to holding onto visitors, but the above question isn't the only one you should be asking. You should also audit the content you're publishing to ensure it's actually solving your visitors' problems.

Is Your Website Content High Quality? As you evaluate your content for quality, think about it from your target audience's perspective. Did this information leave me satisfied? Did it answer all of my questions? Does it give me all the resources relevant to this topic? Do I know what to do next?

Keep in mind quality content should appeal to the interests, needs, and problems of your buyer personas; be interesting and well-written, provide valuable, thorough and detailed information about a particular topic; and leave the reader with next steps (such as calls-to-action, links to resources, etc.).

If you're still not sure if your content is high quality, evaluate it with this checklist:" How to Tell if Your Marketing Content Is Actually Valuable."

Is Your Website Search Engine Optimized? Make sure all your web pages are following on-page SEO best practices. To audit your content for on-page SEO, conduct a keyword analysis in which you do the following:

Consult your analytics to review keyword performance. Which keywords are giving you the biggest gains in traffic and leads? Assess how well you're factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much relevant content are you adding to your website to target those keywords? Review basic on-page SEO elements like URLs, page titles, meta description, and copy. Make sure keywords are included where relevant. To help you conduct an on-page SEO audit of your content, read the "Step-by-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO," which also includes a free downloadable on-page SEO template to keep you on track.

3. Conversion Rate Assessment While high-quality, search engine optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it's what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts. Unless of course, you don't care about conversions (ha!).

Is Your Website Optimized for Lead Generation and Conversions? This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages play a major role in the performance of your website. Not only do they offer you opportunities to capture visitors' information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and your brand.

To audit your website for maximum conversion potential, ask yourself the following questions:

How many marketing offers do I have in my content arsenal to gate behind landing pages? Do I have a variety of marketing offers that appeal to all my different buyer personas? Do I have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with? How optimized are those landing pages? Do I have conversion opportunities for visitors in varying stages of the funnel? Am I using calls-to-action effectively? Am I missing opportunities to include calls-to-action on various pages of my website? To learn more about CTA selection, check out our post, " How to Select the Right CTA for Every Page on Your Website."

4. Technical Assessment Once you've addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it's time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency -- just be sure to do your homework first.

Keep in mind that there may be some carry-over from the three assessments above -- website performance, SEO, and conversion rate. The technical evaluation, however, addresses all three to maximize the user experience (UX).

Here's what you should be looking for in the technical assessment stage of your website audit ...

Is Your Website Design Responsive? Does your website have a responsive design? Meaning, is it a mobile-friendly website? The usage of smartphones to access the internet is only growing. As of 2017, mobile devices account for half of all web page views worldwide. As a result, websites must be compatible with that growing demand.

For more on mobile compatibility, check out our "Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering Mobile Marketing."

Is Your Website Error Message Free? Are response code errors popping up all over your website where there shouldn't be any? Calling out 302-, 404-, and 500-level response codes can be useful to tell users that something's wrong.

However, having this happen is also an indication that someone isn't cleaning up broken links and, as a result, leading users to dead ends. Find those error messages and clean up your broken links. Tools like Google's Webmaster Tools or Xenu's Link Sleuth can be very helpful for this.

Are Your Website URLs Optimized? Does your site have URLs of excessive length due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain session IDs and/or include tons of dynamic parameters? In some cases, these URLs are difficult for search engines to index and result in lower clickthrough rates from search results.

Learn more about SEO-friendly URL syntax practices in this helpful post from Search Engine Land.

Does Your Website Have Too Much Flash or JavaScript? Identify areas of your navigation that are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines have challenges reading and accessing these, which could prevent your site from getting indexed.

Furthermore, these elements present problems from a usability perspective. Visitors are often looking for a very specific piece of information when visiting your site; if they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation, you're going to have a pretty frustrated visitor on your hands.

Is Your Site Structure Optimized for Search Engines? We already talked about site structure as it relates to accessing content and usability for users, but it's also important to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not internally linked to from other pages on your site, those pages are less likely to be indexed.

Learn more about effective site structure for SEO in this Moz article.

Are You Defining How Your Web Pages Are Crawled and Indexed by Search Engines? This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots files and tags, to sitemaps. These measures are a way for you to guide search engines toward your website's most useful content.

Robots Files or Tags The robots meta tag lets you utilize a granular, page-specific approach to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a given page.

The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that allows you to specify how you would like your site to be crawled. Before crawling a website, search engine crawlers will generally request the robots.txt file from a server. Within the robots.txt file, you can include sections for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions ("directives") that let them know which parts should or should not be crawled.

Public and XML Sitemaps Your website should also have public and XML Sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review the pages of your site, like the index of a book.

The XML Sitemap is for search engines to review pages that get added to your site, all in one place. The usual location of a sitemap.xml file is www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml. The XML Sitemap is something every website should have; it offers an opportunity to tell Google and the other search engines what pages on your site you want to be crawled and indexed.

While search engines don't guarantee they will abide by your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has proven time and time again that XML Sitemaps help provide insurance that your pages are found, and found faster -- especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.

Are You Defining Canonicalization of Content? The canonicalization of your website content is the final major technical consideration to make. To gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results, and to minimize issues related to duplicate content, it's recommended that you pick a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page.

You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. One such way is to set the Canonical Tag (rel="canonical") in an HTTP header of a page. Be sure to have someone check that the Canonical Tag is properly implemented across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn't point to the homepage.

It's important to establish an audit framework early on. Ask yourself questions ideally centered around gauging "How am I doing?" These questions may also include things like, "How does this compare to others, especially my competitors?"

Website audits aren't easy, especially if you're not totally tech-savvy. For additional resources, check out this article by Distilled, which highlights a list of tools to use as you conduct your technical audit; as well as this complete site audit checklist by SEER.

I also recommend passing the Google Webmaster's Guide along to anyone implementing this kind of work.

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How much should an SEO audit cost?

What is an SEO Audit?

SEO AUDIT

An SEO audit is the process of analyzing how well your web presence relates to best practices - it is the first step to creating an implementation plan that will have measurable results.

The purpose of the audit is to identify as many foundational issues affecting organic search performance as possible. The SEO audit will reveal:

Technical SEO issues

Website structure issues

On-page SEO issues

Potential off-site problems

User experience issues

Content gaps and opportunities

Competitive marketplace insights

An audit is a standard procedure that should occur on a regular basis – It is essentially a “health check” for your website.

What an SEO Audit Should Be:

First and foremost, an audit should be comprehensive. It should cover both structural and content components affecting your SEO visibility. It should provide a “big picture” view of what is happening in your current state. Any missing pieces could result in unnecessary or improper recommendations.

Your audit should be easy to understand. As a business owner, you should be able to connect the dots as to how SEO issues are affecting your online priorities, goals, or revenue. Any and all recommendations should clearly ladder up to your over-arching business objectives.

Finally, your SEO audit recommendations should be actionable. There should be a clear path to completion; prioritized with projected impact and effort associated with each recommendation. The output of any SEO audit should accurately convey an easy to follow roadmap.

What an SEO Audit Should Not Be:

An SEO audit should not be rushed. It simply takes time to uncover root causes of the issues affecting your online health. Depending on the size of your site, a proper audit can take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to complete. Due diligence is required when making major changes to any website, and an SEO specialist must conduct a thorough investigation to make accurate, impactful recommendations.

An SEO audit should not be “one size fits all”. While some technical elements are required for all websites, a situational analysis should be performed at the outset of an SEO audit to hone in on areas of focus for that site.

SEO Audit Document

What Is Analyzed in an SEO Audit:

While SEO audits may vary slightly, each one should analyze basic technical SEO “table stakes” such as sitemaps, server errors, and metadata. At a high level, an audit should cover off on accessibility, indexation, and optimization.

In an SEO audit at Three Deep, our experts analyze over 193 different SEO elements across the following categories:

Technical Audit

Indexation analysis

Status Codes

Redirects

Page Speed

URL Structure

Robots.txt

XML Sitemap

Canonical Tags

Duplication

Crawlability

Legacy Domain Issues

Off-page Analysis

Mobile SEO analysis

International SEO analysis

On-Page Audit

Site Content Structure

Keyword Research

Page Copy Theme Analysis

Keyword Use

Meta Data Analysis (Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Heading Tags)

Schema

User Experience

Images & Video

Internal Linking & HTML Sitemap

Server Log Audit

Crawl Budget Analysis

User Agent Analysis

The information captured during the auditing process allows our team to make accurate, impactful recommendations for your specific website and situation.

What to Expect During and After an SEO Audit:

As previously mentioned, an SEO audit can take anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks. During this time an SEO specialist is analyzing and uncovering SEO opportunities on your website. However, bi-weekly or weekly check-ins keep you and your team in the loop as to the progress.

In any given website audit, there are a few low-hanging opportunities discovered. When these types of insights are unearthed, our team will pass them along right away. This provides an opportunity to recover visibility while the remainder of the audit is carried out.

After the audit has been completed, your team will be invited to a presentation in which your SEO specialist will talk through the findings and recommendations. The Three Deep SEO team will walk you and your team though the roadmap to completion so you know what to expect and when. In addition, you will receive a comprehensive analysis of your site’s health. All of these are customized to you and your specific situation.

Why It’s Important to Audit Your Website on a Regular Basis:

Your website is the “hub” of your online brand – so, it’s important to have regular checkups to ensure everything is in order. It’s also important to note that your website is a living digital property, it’s typically not stagnant for long periods of time. In any given year, content is added and/or removed from your site. It is for this reason that audits should occur on a regular basis. We recommend that websites be audited at a minimum of once per year. That allows your teams to fix critical issues as they arise.

There are other parts of SEO which you should pay attention to after your audit to make sure you stay competitive. After all, the technical foundation isn't the end of the road for SEO success. It's important to pay attention to your competition's SEO activity, keep an eye on the newest search engine best practices, and maintain local SEO best practices if your business depends on customers visiting a physical address. All of these are elements of a successful SEO strategy and should be corollary to your audit and ongoing SEO maintenance.

Contact: Free seo audit

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Why Free SEO Audits & Tools Can Actually Cost You More On The Long Run (Part 2)

The Difference Between Paid & Free SEO Audits

A good SEO won’t do website audits for free. They might take a look at your site to make a general impression, but they won’t spend time digging in too deep. Instead, they will make an offer for a detailed audit.

Why?

Audits are at the core of any search engine optimization strategy. They contour where you’re at right now and they dictate where you’re going to.

Let’s go back to the doctor analogy. A doctor has to find out what’s wrong with you right now but also tells you what you have to do to fix your problems. Getting mistreated will usually end up in lost time, more pain and empty wallets.

The problem with free SEO audits is that many people offer them in hope of hooking a client. They ‘discover’ basic issues that most websites have and then use them to enhance the fear factor in order to sell their services.

In the end, the truth is that fixing minor issues doesn’t pay off the bills. Rankings & sales do.

Most free SEO audits out there lack essential things such as direction, goals and target audience. Without understanding that, the chances of your website increasing in rankings are dim.

Even with paid SEO Tools, you’ll still need someone who knows how to analyze the data and recommend specific actions.

But since so many people have started using these free tools and searching for them, it was inevitable that the market would satisfy the demand. A high number of free SEO tools started to wonder around the internet.

The truth is that 99.9% of the free audit offers you will get for your site are probably done using free, one click SEO audit tools. You put in the URL of a website, you click a button and it analyzes your website.

I have nothing against these tools. But if someone gives you for free something that you can get for free anyway… then I have a little problem.

These tools might be useful for a small, freshly created website with very small budget. It’s good for example to know that you need a good server or that you shouldn’t upload big image files. But the owner will usually be more than happy to do the research himself in order to save money. However, I highly believe we should all do what we’re best at, so if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re better off hiring an expert!

Free SEO audit tools can come in handy. However, on the long run, if you want to do something serious with your business and website, they are often misleading.

Here’s why, specifically:

Let’s say you want to do an SEO audit and you search for ‘free audit tools’. You decide to test multiple ones, because they’re free. Most of them, if not all, will eventually give a result similar to this one:

Free SEO Audit results How Most Free Website Analysis Tools Work

The score usually analyses one page instead of taking a look at the entire site. If you get 30% score, you’ll see 100% as your goal. However, remember that 100% scores don’t pay the bills (at least not for you, but they can pay it for the ones offering you that free audit).

It’s usually the same with all free tools. You might know for example that PageSpeed Insights is often used to determine the technical status of your site. However, the tool often focuses on things that aren’t the most effective for SEO.

For example, caching external sources is not possible, yet the tool still drops your score if you have external resources that are uncached, even from Google itself (such as Analytics Tags). Another popular thing is to use modern file types for images, although many browsers and platforms don’t fully support them yet.

So an SEO might hook you in with a free audit, then tell you your score is 30% and that you need SEO services. It fixes most of the things (which by the way, your niece or nephew can do) by installing some plugins on your site and then shows you a new 90% score, green lights everywhere. That’s one hour of work and it should be paid accordingly!

Having scores to determine a website’s ‘health status’ isn’t all that bad. In fact, we have one of our own:

Technical SEO Audit Tool

However, in the left side you can see how the tool has separate sections for things such as Indexability, Content, Architecture and Performance. There you’ll find detailed explanations on what exactly you should prioritize and how you can fix the issues.

Most free tools out there do the big mistake of simply counting the number of backlinks and rate your link profile after that.

For example, if your site has 0 backlinks, your offsite score might be 0. But if it has 1000 links, it will say that you have good activity and that your link profile is awesome.

That’s very misleading!

What’s actually important is how qualitative those links are. Are they coming from relevant domains? Are they spammy? That’s when a tool like the Unnatural Link Detection tool comes in handy!

unnatural links tool

But analyzing links takes time and resources. You have to crawl the web and use servers and tons of processing power to come up with the results and not have to wait for months to get them. That’s why, unfortunately, you won’t get it for free (only a trial, which you can try).

And even with this tool, you’ll still have to analyze the results and figure out what the issue actually is. What led to this situation? How can it be avoided? Should you disavow the links or focus instead on building more quality ones?. These are all answers no tool can give you directly and accurately.

If someone’s going to give you a free recipe for your site to grow #1, I’d bet they won’t do it for free.

In the future, it’s possible that AI tools and very advanced software will be able to give you the perfect solution to getting to #1. It’s possible that it will choose the right competitors, analyze and compare the rankings, come up with the best keywords and content ideas, fix all technical issues in a blink of an eye and then even give you a massage.

However, I highly doubt you’ll find that for free and, by then, Google will probably be even more advanced and complex.

Why You Should NOT Settle For a Free SEO Audit

Free SEO audits are like Romanian mechanics. They all say something about your car for free, but none of what they say is actually the problem and they end up replacing unnecessary things over and over again. Paid SEO audits are like German mechanics. They won’t say anything until you pay them fairly, but once you’ve paid they tell you the exact problem and fix it.

Here’s why you shouldn’t choose to waste your time with free SEO audits:

You can probably do it yourself in less than 1 hour It distracts you from what’s actually important (better rankings) It wastes you time (you’ll probably end up with 10 free SEO audits) You risk actually harming your site (i.e. removing important * useful JS for 100% score on the tool) It can cost you more on the long run

If you’re settling for the wrong goals, you will waste time hoping for rankings. Meanwhile, you’ll lose all the traffic and sales you could get if properly auditing your site. You will focus on things that are not actually important. You will obsess over getting 100% which means nothing for your site. I could show you plenty of sites that rank high and get traffic and sales but have low scores on free SEO tools.

Most of the time, loading times is what’s important. You can have big images and plenty of JS, as long as your site loads in under 1-3 seconds, you’re probably good go. For example, what would a photographer say if you ask him to compress the images on his site?

Paid SEO Audits & Tools might cost you less on the long run!

There’s something you can do to protect yourself from these free offers. You will easily differentiate people that actually know what they’re doing from people that just want to make a quick buck.

Here’s what you have to do:

Before asking any SEO consultant for an opinion, fix the basic stuff yourself. Even if you do it yourself, is not free. You’ll spend the time, so it’s not actually free.

However, this way you can fix some of the most basic things. For example, image compression. If you get a very low score on tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GT Metrix or high loading times on tools like PingDom Site Speed Test, chances are high that you’re using big images on your site.

gt metrix performance tool

The fix is as simple as installing an image compression plugin or downloading all your images from your server, compressing them using tools like Tiny PNG and then uploading them back (keep the same file names and also backup your site before you make any changes).

All other problems there are usually fixable with some plugins. Cache issues? Add a cache plugin. Minify issues? Add a code minification plugin. You’ll never get 100% score and you shouldn’t focus on that. For example, sometimes you really need to use external resources, such as JS codes for e-mail marketing or advertising. If they aren’t cached, you’ll still get a lower score, when in fact, your site doesn’t have that issue.

This way you can protect yourself from SEOs that are just trying to lure you in with the Free Audit bone and actually pick a good SEO.

If those SEO tools mentioned above hit scores of 90% plus, chances are you will demoralize them. If your score is 26%, they will be able to say “You need to fix this and that and that and this is how much it hurts your website and blahblah”.

However, if someone offers you a detailed, 40 pages manually written PDF file on which they’ve spent tens of hours of research, then you should probably take the offer. Although I highly doubt that it’s going to be for free.

If you’re an SEO consultant, stop doing free audits! Learn to do a serious SEO audit that will actually help your clients.

Small business owners which don’t have resources will usually take the deal if the audit is professionally made. They need search engine optimization services anyway and you need to audit the site anyway before you know what you should do. As for bigger companies, they usually have their own team for execution so the audit will actually be the only thing they really need.

If you want something to assist you in auditing a website, you can try the CognitiveSEO Package. It contains all the required tools for a good audit, from Keyword Research to Technical Audit, Link Audit and Rank Tracking tools. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to schedule reports directly to your clients’ e-mail to notify them about the progress.

One of our team members will assist you in analyzing your website to determine exactly which steps will actually help you improve your rankings.

Conclusion

SEO Audits are an essential part of your SEO & Marketing Strategy. You should always audit your website from time to time to make sure things are good and going to the right direction.

Free website analysis & SEO audit tools can help you make a quick overview on the website, but they won’t actually help you define your strategy.

What’s your experience with free SEO tools? Do you use them? How much do they help to positively impact the rankings of your clients’ websites in the Google search results? What do you include in your SEO audits? Do you give them for free? Let us know in the comments section!

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Why Free SEO Audits & Tools Can Actually Cost You More On The Long Run

If you’re active on social media groups or forums, you’ve probably seen plenty of free SEO audit offers. Ask an opinion about your site and the comment sections will quickly fill up with offers.

Hey, but it’s FREE, right? I mean, isn’t that great?

However… if we’ve learned something over the past years of digital marketing and SEO is that nothing good comes for free. Even if you do end up spending less money, you spend time instead and always risk doing a bad job.

Why_Free_SEO_Audits_Are_Damaging

What Exactly Is an SEO Audit? What Should an SEO Audit Contain Competitor research Keyword Research Indexation Technical SEO & OnPage SEO Audit Links Audit Content Audit General Overview Prioritization The Difference Between Paid & Free SEO Audits Why You Should NOT Settle For a Free SEO Audit

In this article, I’ll tell you why it’s a good idea to rely on a high-quality tool or hire an expert when it comes to SEO audits, even if it costs you some money.

What Exactly Is an SEO Audit?

Like in finances, an audit is an inspection. In this case, it’s an inspection of your website. And no, in today’s terms we’re not only talking about SEO. The truth is that when you say SEO you say everything, because almost everything impacts SEO these days, from traditional technical SEO implementations and keywords to conversion rates, design and UX.

So what’s the purpose of this inspection? Well, you can view the audit as a doctor. The term comes from latin ‘auditus’ and it means ‘hearing’. So the ‘doctor’ ‘listens’ to your website to determine what’s wrong with it.

We will take a more detailed look at what a good audit needs but first, let’s define what a good SEO audit should contain.

What Should an SEO Audit Contain

Before we detail why free website audits won’t serve you any good, we first have to take a look at what a good SEO audit should contain. This isn’t necessarily a guide on how to do an SEO audit, but rather an outline of what it should contain and why it’s important that it contains those things.

what is an seo audit

A well defined SEO audit will contain the following:

Competitor research: You can’t really analyze something if you don’t compare it to anything. In SEO, everything is relative. Sure, you have a set of objective standards such as loading speed, user friendly URLs and not having malware on your site, but in the end, rankings are what matter.

You want to know where your site is positioned compared to other websites in your industry that are your direct competitors. You can’t compare your site to all websites, so you must choose wisely based on some criteria, such as which keywords they are targeting and how you are ranking on those keywords compared to how they are ranking.

Which takes us to our next point…

Keyword Research: You need to know your main keywords and which keywords you currently rank for. While the latter can be easily identified with a rank tracking tool, the former is usually up to a person to decide. How’s a tool going to decide what your business is selling? Of course, the tools can help you out with this a lot if they are good ones. If not, they can sink you more into the problem.

The audit should also contain detailed keyword research, split into multiple, important categories of the website. Ideally, this should include future keyword opportunities and highlight the top-performing keywords, which have a high search volume and are also highly relevant for the website/business.

While good keyword research tools are available, the prioritization process is very subjective and will always differ from situation to situation and website to website.

Indexation: An audit should analyze how well search engines index the website. Useful information can be extracted from the Google Search Console, but often it’s not enough to get an entire picture. If the search console doesn’t pick it up, Google itself doesn’t pick it up.

Is the site using noindex tags where it shouldn’t? Is there an underlying issue that prevents the site from indexing? This is interconnected mostly with the next part I’m going to talk about, which is the technical and on-page SEO audit.

Technical SEO & OnPage SEO Audit: This is the most time-consuming part of the website analysis. Free SEO tools will only show you some basic aspects, such as wrong http to https redirect. Also, most SEO tools are actually analyzing only one page a time, so actually analyzing the whole site would take an eternity, not to mention that you would somehow have to centralize the data.

A technical audit should analyze a bunch of things, from title tags and meta descriptions to the presence of duplicate content, broken links and other important ranking factors search engines take into consideration.

OnPage / Technical Audit Issues A list of SEO issues that the CognitiveSEO Tool Analyses

More importantly, it should also analyze the structure of a website, looking at the internal linking and how that outlines which pages are the most important in the website. Depending on the type of website, the audit should contain different sections. For example, if a website is multilingual/international, the audit should analyze if the hreflang is implemented correctly.

It’s interesting how free audit tools work, because they analyze single pages instead of the entire site (which requires plenty of resources and time) but on the other hand they look at the entire site link profile instead of focusing just on that page.

Links Audit: Although people have been focusing less on link building and while it’s true that backlinks have become less important and harder to obtain over time, the truth is that they are still very important.

list of factors important for link audits A list of factors the CognitiveSEO Tool uses when analyzing the link profile

At most, free tools can tell you an estimate of how many links a website has. However, they will never tell the complete story! You’ll need a lot of resources to gather all the information. It’s not just a number’s game.

Where are those links coming from? Quality sites? Relevant sites? Are they natural? Do they look spammy?

Content Audit: Now that you have determined the targeted keywords you should rank for and have ideally prioritized the most important technical issues that must be fixed, it’s time to take a look at the content.

There are some technical aspects such as duplicated content, which tools such as ours can help you figure out:

SEO Audit duplicate content

However, someone should also map the keywords to existing pieces of content for proper update within the title tags, headings and content and also think of new content ideas that could interest the audience, depending on which keywords people search more for in each market, which is something no technical SEO tool can do.

However, it doesn’t stop here. How should the content be written? Who will read it? These are questions that an SEO Audit should analyse.

General Overview: A tool can’t find everything. How does everything interconnect with social media marketing and offline marketing? Are there any mistakes the business does that might affect the overall performance of the website and business, even though they’re not directly connected to SEO? What about other things that tools can’t really analyse, like web design, or how to improve conversions?

Here’s an example: if your competitors have hundreds of positive reviews on local SEO listings such as Google MyBusiness (Maps) then you should encourage the owner to also get reviews. It could be as simple as asking the customers in the store to leave a review if they’ve had a good experience.

Prioritization: This is probably the most essential part. A complete audit (even the free ones) contain a lot of data. If it doesn’t tell you what to do first, you risk spending a lot of time on things that don’t really matter. There are SEO issues that are very hard to fix and take a long time, but they might not be critical. Wasting time there can cost you greatly.

For example, many will be quick to recommend blogging and link building. It’s true, content and links are very important. However, if the site has implemented hreflang or canonical tags wrongly, then fixing that should be a priority since it could end up in a bigger mess if more content is added.

Most importantly, a good SEO audit should contain SPECIFIC EXAMPLES and ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS. Without them, it’s just theory.

Again, think of the doctor analogy. What if your doctor said “I think you might have a broken arm” or “You might want to try this medicine”? Seems kind of sketchy, doesn’t it? You’d probably not trust them much.

I’m sure you’d prefer they showed you an X-ray of your broken leg, showing exactly where the bone is broken and then tell you to put plaster right away, assisting you and showing you exactly how to deal with it in the future, as well as giving you some tips on how to prevent this whole situation from happening again.

As I’ve previously said, everything is subjective and will differ from site to site. Sure, you can have a general pattern or checklist you can follow, but you can’t analyze all sites the same way. Some target international languages, some don’t, they all run on different platforms, some are eCommerce others are informational, there are just too many factors to take into account for a general one button tool to figure out.

Now I’m going to ask you: Do you think anyone is willing to do all of the things mentioned above FOR FREE?

While for small sites that have just been created and have very small budget this might work, for bigger sites it has 0 use. If you have the flu, anyone can say drink some tea and stay in bed. 

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A 16-Step SEO Audit Process To Boost Your Google Rankings

Follow this 16-step SEO audit process to nail your site’s SEO and boost your search traffic. Most SEO audits have two things in common:

they’re too technical; they take DAYS (or even WEEKS) to complete! This one is different.

It takes hours, not weeks, and you won’t need a degree in computer science to follow along.

SIDENOTE. If your site is HUGE—I’m talking hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages—it may take longer than a few hours. For most small to medium-sized sites, however, this should be doable in hours rather than days. Here’s a breakdown of the SEO audit process we’ll be following:

Steps 1–4: check for BIG issues (that may be holding your site back) Steps 5–9: uncover easy-to-fix on-site problems; Steps 10–12: analyze organic search traffic (and find low-hanging opportunities); Steps 13–14: backlink analysis (VERY important!); Steps 15–16: content audit AND “content gap” analysis. As you can see, the aim here isn’t to show you how to do a “technical” SEO audit (which you can do with almost any SEO site audit tool).

The aim is to provide a comprehensive approach to auditing your website from an SEO perspective. This means auditing your rankings, backlink profile, existing content… anything that could be hindering your search performance.

Contact: Free seo audit