Understanding what your SEO agency is actually doing is key

3 Feb 2015 Dominic Comments Off on Understanding what your SEO agency is actually doing is key

For any small retail business, budget is invariably tight and every penny of your spend should be accounted for however in the murky world of SEO, do you actually know what you are getting for your money?

Time and again I have come across small businesses who have invested considerable budget every month on this wondrous and much misunderstood thing called SEO only for no-one in the business to actually know what they are getting for their money!

Investing money in SEO needs to be a process of continual review – what was good SEO practice last year may not be the best this year. My own thoughts on this subject is clear throughout this site – build a brand and something people want – simple!

The days of spammy link building are (and should be!) long gone however we still have an environment (step up Mark from “The Apprentice) where Google position 1 is still being promised. Any small businesses should be wary of any company that promises this kind of nonsense.

Lets say an average spend is £3k per month – £36k pa. If you are low on resource but you feel there is reach in your brand then why not consider employing one or two people to expand your social media presence and focus on simply expanding your brand reach – be that with bloggers, affiliates or suitable partners?

Let me give you an example of why should be wary of this thing called “SEO” and spending without understanding what you are getting into – this is a real example of some work I undertook upon reviewing a companies SEO contract.

Company X

Cost

£3000 pm retainer

£36,000 pa

What do we get?

Strategy document was unclear – PPT only with no details in contract

Details Keyword analysis, Onsite Optimisation, Content Development and Onsite Optimisation

Actual delivery is link Building – subbed out to Philippines but with 50 links per month

Impact since beginning of relationship

Diffficult to say at mo – traffic volumes and organic traffic remains constant therefore have to question what impact they are having. Over 6 months they have definitely improved our rankings on key terms however they need more guidance on the terms to focus on. Has this improvement led to huge sales increases?

Reports

Not very thorough and much of info is from GA which we can get anyway – money for old rope! Just feedback what has happened rather than providing recommendations moving forward etc

Communication

Infrequent and sense of lethargy their end. I do not feel we are working that effectively with them and currently working on this but queries remain unresolved etc

Personal Thoughts

At present we are getting increased keyword presence but cannot accurately model out increased demand – problematic for most SEO companies but does not seem to be an apetite from X to model this out

Recommendation

We are paying £3000 per month for what is effectively a service based solely on link building. We need to further investigate the actual increment

End Result

This company were paying £3k pm for a service which was ultimately harmful to them – paying for spammy links for their products from websites totally unrelated to their offering – end result being no sales and poor conversion (like paying to get links to your ladies footwear site from Japanese gig guide sites!)

Summary

This is just one example of how you really need to understand exactly what you are getting when working with an SEO company. Increasing your site traffic and sales from natural search will be one of the most cost effective channels you have however it must be understood first.

Categories: SEO

Tags: SEO