17

Critical Questions to
Ask an SEO Company

Many organizations are intimidated or skeptical when searching for an SEO company, because these
companies know so much more or appear to about the intricacies of SEO. But rest assured:
SEO is neither rocket science nor black magic. If you learn the right questions to ask, youll be able to
distinguish SEO companies that only appear to know what theyre doing from ones that actually do.
Read this article to avoid the mistake of hiring an SEO company that tells a good story but doesnt
have the expertise to back it up. The information contained in the answers below is the product
of more than a decade of experience in managing SEO campaigns for a multitude of B2B and B2C
clients. Weve seen firsthand the difficulties our clients encountered because they didnt ask these
questions dont make that same mistake.
1. HOW WILL YOU DEFINE THE SUCCESS OF MY SEO CAMPAIGN?

If the SEO company doesnt get this one right, theres no point asking the next 16 questions!

Clearly Wrong Answer: Well get you more organic traffic and better rankings for keywords.

Traffic and rankings do not always correlate to increased sales leads.

Rankings have become an unreliable metric because Google and Bing customize organic
search results depending on the users geographic location, search history and other factors.

Deceptively Wrong Answer: Well generate more sales leads.

Although increased sales leads is the right metric, many SEO companies grossly inflate their
numbers because they dont validate sales leads and distinguish them from inquiries. If
the SEO company merely counts form submissions and phone calls generated by the SEO
campaign, your leads will include misdials, sales solicitations, job applications, customer
service inquiries, etc.

Because Straight North validates sales leads by reading every form submission and listening
to every phone call, we know that on average, 40% of what are typically reported as leads
are really not sales leads.

Right Answer: Our SEO campaign increases the number of true (validated) sales leads.

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

2. HOW DO YOU DETERMINE IF SEO IS A GOOD FIT FOR MY BUSINESS?

 rong Answer: If the SEO company gives lip service to this question, or hands you a
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proposal without providing any preliminary research, it is more interested in collecting fees
than delivering value.

Right Answer: The SEO company begins with a review of:

The search volume of target keywords in your niche

The competitiveness of target keywords in your niche

Your firms current SEO performance/potential

Your firms budget parameters and expectations

> >> Based on the results of these combined criteria, some prospective clients are better served by

investing in other types of Internet marketing campaigns. SEO cant work if it is not a good fit.

3. WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS FOR CREATING A CUSTOM SEO STRATEGY

FOR MY BUSINESS?

 rong Answer: All SEO companies claim they deliver custom strategies, but in reality, many
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of them are merely selling pre-packaged campaign templates in disguise. One telltale sign is a
proposal that offers service packages at different cost levels.

Right Answer: A custom strategy includes the following elements:

A strategy document that specifies target audience, keywords and website pages to be
optimized along with goals and metrics to measure progress toward those goals.

A documented set of integrated on-site and off-site tasks that support the strategy, including
content themes, topics, copywriting and outreach.

4. HOW DO YOU REPORT THE ACTIVITIES PROVIDED FOR MY

MONTHLY INVESTMENT?

This question is all about transparency. Since you are investing marketing dollars into your
SEO campaign each month, you have the right to know what activities are being completed
each month. You also need to understand how your monthly investment affects the amount
of work completed each month. With this information, you can decide whether or not to
increase your monthly investment to see an increase in actions leading to an increase in
campaign performance.

Many SEO companies provide no reporting on the tasks they complete each month for your
campaign. Some companies report retainer hours rather than activities. Others report a
few highlighted tasks from the previous month, but not all of the tasks. The common theme:
Beware of companies that lack transparency. A lack of transparency creates trust issues,
which then lead to campaign issues. Many companies that hide monthly tasks are likely

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

doing very little to improve your SEO campaign performance. The sad truth behind many SEO
companies that operate without transparency is that these companies are taking your money
and doing as little as possible in return.

Straight North provides full transparency. Each month we report every task that was
completed as part of a clients SEO campaign as well as communicate strategic and tactical
adjustments we plan to make to improve campaign performance.

5. WILL YOU MAKE SEO-RELATED DEVELOPMENT CHANGES TO MY WEBSITE?


Wrong Answer: No. Most SEO companies will not touch your website when it comes to
making development changes. This causes a number of problems:

Your staff has more work to do.

Mistakes are more likely.

Because the SEO company is not fully accountable for your on-site SEO work, it tends not
to get done at all, or in a very limited way, and very slowly.

As a result, your site remains under-optimized, which creates a huge drag on results.

Right Answer: Yes! An SEO company with a Web design/development department can
make any changes to a website that the client is willing to let it handle. This means:

Your staff acquires no additional work.

Work is completed quickly, fully and expertly.

Your site is properly optimized, greatly enhancing the performance of your SEO campaign.

6. DO YOU REPORT SEO RANKINGS?

Right Answer: No!!! SEO began in the mid-1990s, when everyone was focused on getting their
targeted keywords to be ranked number one in all of the search engines. Since then, many things
have changed in the SEO industry, making rankings irrelevant. Heres a brief history:

In 2000, Google became the worlds largest search engine.

In 2007, Google released universal search and blended results. This change marked the
beginning of the end for the standard top 10 organic listings in search engine result pages.

I n 2009, Google forced personalized search on all users. This change caused search engine users
to see results in different positions for the same keyword search based on a specific users search
history, geography, IP address, browser, cookies, time of day, year, bookmarks, device type,
language, etc. On top of this, Googles multiple data centers serve up results in different positions.

I n 2013, Google began encrypting organic search for all users. This change resulted in Google
hiding organic keywords from the public (and website analytics) for all searches done through
its search engine. What value do rankings have when you can no longer see what keywords are
driving traffic to your website?

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

7. DO YOU INCLUDE CALL TRACKING AS PART OF MY SEO CAMPAIGN?


Very Wrong Answer: No. Phone lead data are crucial to evaluating an SEO campaign. At
Straight North, our tracking statistics indicate that phone calls account for over 40% of lead
generation activities. Without this data, your reporting is hopelessly incomplete and dangerously
skewed, making it almost useless for reviewing campaign performance and making strategic
and tactical adjustments.

Right Answer: Yes. Because lead tracking is the single most important component of an
SEO campaign, proficient SEO companies employ top-tier phone-tracking technology at no
charge to the client for every campaign. This is the standard you want.

8. DO YOU REPORT CONVERSIONS GENERATED BY MY SEO CAMPAIGN?


Very Wrong Answer: No. As mentioned earlier, sales leads are THE key metric for an SEO
campaign. Getting more sales leads is WHY you are investing in SEO.
Possibly Right Answer: Yes. Remember that all conversions are not sales leads! You must dig
deeper, or you run the risk of hiring an SEO company that will lead you to an expensive dead end.
The next question explains how big this issue is.

9. WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONVERSION AND A SALES LEAD?


Here is where you become really smart, and peel back the curtain to see how competent an
SEO company truly is.

Many SEO companies use the terms conversions and leads interchangeably. The reality is
that they are two completely different things.

I f an SEO company tells you the two terms are the same thing, this is a major red flag. This reply
demonstrates that the SEO company doesnt understand the vast difference between the two.

Conversion is a soft metric. In addition to true sales leads, conversion data may also include
how many people clicked a link on a page, how many people downloaded a PDF, how many
people watched a video, etc.

For an SEO campaign focused on sales lead generation, you should be hearing leads rather
than conversions.

However, many SEO companies use the word leads but they arent telling you the truth.
When you hear the word leads, you should be confident that means real sales leads, not a
mix of sales leads and non-leads. But, as mentioned in Question 1, over 40% of what most SEO
companies call leads are actually non-leads.

The dirty secret of most SEO companies is that they provide totally inadequate tracking and
reporting for your most important SEO campaign metric: sales leads.

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The big problem is that most SEO companies simply count the number of form submissions
and phone calls without validating any of them. To make matters worse, many companies
cannot tie the form submissions and phone calls back to specific prospects. So in the end, you
are left with only numbers, not facts. Even if you wanted to validate those leads, you (and the
SEO company) wouldnt be able to do so.

So, beware when an SEO company talks about leads. What it really may be saying is that
40% of the leads it is reporting are misdials, sales solicitations, job applications, customer
service inquiries, etc. And, they will take credit for all of these junk inquiries as if they were
true sales leads.

If the number of sales leads from your SEO campaign is overstated, then all of your business
metrics most importantly campaign ROI will be overstated. You cannot effectively
manage a marketing campaign under these circumstances.

10. DOES YOUR COMPANY VALIDATE EVERY FORM SUBMISSION AND PHONE
CALL TO MAKE SURE IT IS A LEGITIMATE SALES LEAD?

 rong Answer: No. If the SEO company doesnt understand what you mean by validate,
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you can be sure that it is reporting leads that include 40% non-leads. To confirm this, ask the
company if it reads the text in every form submission and listens to every phone call recording
to verify that every sales lead it reports is actually a sales lead and not a misdial, sales
solicitation, job application, customer service inquiry, etc. If the answer is, No, we dont do that
disqualify this company from your list of potential SEO companies.

Right Answer: Of course. A competent SEO company defines the success of your campaign
by a continual increase in the number of validated sales leads, and has the resources to listen
to every campaign-generated phone call and read every campaign-generated form submission.
Anything less leaves it and you operating in the dark.

11. HOW DO YOU REPORT VALIDATED SALES LEADS?

 ith sales leads being the number one metric for an SEO campaign, you need a way to view
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these leads through an online dashboard.

Advantages:

View results at any time, rather than waiting for a month-end report.

By reviewing sales leads quickly, you can take further action on them while they are still hot.
This could make the difference between landing a new customer and letting it slip through
your fingers.

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

12. WHAT SEO METRICS DO YOU REPORT EACH MONTH?

Wrong Answers:

Rankings. Companies that report rankings are way behind the times; this is no longer a metric
that professional SEO companies should be using.

Leads (that are not validated). See Questions 9 and 10 for a full discussion of this.

Total Website Traffic. Believe it or not, some SEO companies report total website traffic
instead of organic traffic. Make sure you see organic traffic in the report.

Yahoo. If an SEO company mentions Yahoo, it is behind the times. Only two major search
engines count today: Google and Bing. Yahoo search is really Bing results.

Number of Phone Calls from SEO, without the data behind those calls. If you see the number
of phone calls but no data behind those calls, how can you trust that those phone calls really
took place? Or more importantly, were the calls actual sales leads? The truth is that you
cannot possibly know for sure without being able to review this critical data to verify the
accuracy of your reports.

N
 umber of Form Submissions from SEO, without the data behind those form submissions.
If you see a number of form submissions, but no data behind them, how can you trust
that those form submissions really took place, or more importantly, were really sales
leads? The truth is that you cant. You need to see this form data to know your reports
are accurate.

Right Answers

Summary. Each month your account manager provides custom details from his or her analysis
of your campaigns SEO metrics.

Validated Leads. You want to see a benchmark month for validated leads, and then a yearover-year comparison for the current reporting month. These numbers show the campaign
growth from the first month to the current reporting month together with a year-over-year
view of the current calendar month.

Organic Traffic. You want to see a benchmark month for organic search traffic and then a
year-over-year comparison for the current reporting month. These numbers demonstrate the
campaign growth from the first month to current reporting month together with a year-overyear view of the current calendar month. Monthly numbers on direct and referral traffic should
also be available, as SEO efforts increase those numbers as well.

Actions. Your SEO company must be transparent in the tasks it completes each month. While
your main focus is validated sales leads and organic search traffic, understanding how your
money is being spent and what tasks are working toward your goal of increased validated sales
leads are important.

Phone Calls. Every detail of every phone call should include a way to listen to the call recording
and the ability to download all data into an Excel spreadsheet. This data is the proof behind
a simple count of how many calls came in. You need to know how many phone calls were sales

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

leads vs. non-leads. Otherwise, you should assume 40% of the phone calls are not sales leads.
Phone call data to look for:
- Date and time of the phone call
- Recording of the phone call (in an .mp3 or .wav file format)
- Marketing source
- Segmentation of validated sales leads vs. non-leads
- Keyword (if search engine other than Google)
- Call duration
- Caller name
- Caller location (city, state)
- Referral URL
- Website entry URL
- Pre-conversion URL
- Conversion URL
- IP address
- Browser type

Form Submissions. Every detail of every form submission should be provided, as well as the
ability to download all data into an Excel spreadsheet. This data is the proof behind a simple
count of how many form submissions came in. You need to know how many form submissions
were sales leads vs. non-leads. Otherwise, you should assume 40% of the forms are not sales
leads. Form data to look for:

- Date and time of the form submission

- Text of every form field
- Marketing source
- Segmentation of validated sales leads vs. non-leads
- Keyword (if search engine other than Google)
- Referral URL
- Website entry URL
- Pre-conversion URL
- Conversion URL
- IP address
- Browser type

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13. MAY I SEE A SAMPLE MONTHLY SEO REPORT?

After the SEO company has explained its reporting method, ask to see a sample report for
confirmation, and make sure you understand it. If the company is hesitant to provide a sample,
this is an obvious red flag. If the company doesnt want to email a sample report, ask to walk
through it together via an online meeting.

14. HOW MANY FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES DOES YOUR COMPANY HAVE IN THE U.S.?

SEO campaigns require a number of people with a variety of talents. Companies that rely on
outside contractors (often overseas) have less control over their campaigns, and no bench
depth to maintain continuity.

SEO companies that rely on contractors or have a very small staff generally provide a jack-ofall-trades, master-of-none level of service. This results in mediocre execution and results.

Ask detailed questions to ascertain the who, where and how of the SEO companys
organization. An ideal staff looks like this:

- All staff is full-time, directly employed.

- All staff works on-site at the companys office(s).
- All staff is based within the U.S.

15. HOW MANY TEAM MEMBERS ARE FULL-TIME, EXPERIENCED

ACCOUNT MANAGERS?
An account manager coordinates all aspects of an SEO campaign. He or she is indispensable because:

Without full-time account managers, communication suffers and scheduling issues are common.

Account managers, untrained in SEO, add little value and become a third wheel that impedes
all aspects of the campaign.

16. WHAT IS THE JOB ROLE OF EACH PERSON WHO WORKS ON MY CAMPAIGN?

 he staffing structure below provides the breadth and redundancy necessary to ensure
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successful delivery of an SEO campaign.

Content Marketing Specialists. Crucially important, these staff members build relationships
with people who manage websites related to your business. These relationships facilitate the
creation of links for your SEO campaign through off-site content, online public relations, etc.

Copywriters. Professional copywriting is another extremely critical job role for an SEO
company. These specialized copywriters create original content that:

- Increases traffic to your website

- Earns backlinks to your website
- Makes other websites eager to publish more of your content
- Makes your website look and sound professional
- Creates a reason for people and search engines to return to your website

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

Editors. Editors move content quality to the highest professional level by reviewing it for
grammar, punctuation, style, voice, clarity and accuracy.

SEO Specialists. These staff members handle the nuts and bolts of the campaign, from
keyword research to implementing proper tracking technologies to making changes to
your website.

Web Designers. The Web designer plays a critical role in an SEO campaign by handling all
design-related changes to a website to improve on-site SEO, as well as by creating graphics
for new Web pages, blog posts, press releases and infographics.

Front-end Web Developers. Many on-site SEO changes to your website cannot be
implemented using your websites CMS. The front-end developer takes on the critical job
of making all website changes that deal with the visual look/feel of your website along with
some browser-side functionality. They specialize in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

Back-end Web Developers. The back-end developer handles all the complex and
specialized Web development tasks that make the website function properly. These tasks
are normally related to data handling through online forms when server-side programming
is required. They are normally experts in the PHP programming language and SQL
database programming.

S
 ystems Administrator. While the back-end developers handle the website portion of
things, a systems administrator handles the server-side software. Many on-site SEO issues
need to be resolved at the Web hosting server level, as opposed to the website itself. He or
she is normally an expert in the Linux operating system, Apache Web server software and a
multitude of other technologies.

17. HOW DO YOU MANAGE MULTIPLE, CONCURRENT SEO CAMPAIGNS?

 eparate the bad SEO companies from the good ones by listening to them explain their approach
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to project management. Their approach should include:

A documented process. Most SEO companies follow a handful of basic steps, but lack
procedural steps to track and manage how these campaign components are actually created
and implemented. A sophisticated methodology documents all steps required to complete
each campaign component.

A managed process. Having a process is a good thing but making sure people follow
the process is even more important! Without systematic execution, steps are mishandled
or missed entirely. Effective account managers make sure the process is working, which
is why they need tremendous communication skills as well as solid project
management skills.

An enterprise workflow and task management platform. To effectively manage tasks and
resources across multiple campaigns requires a sophisticated software platform. Most SEO
companies rely on off-the-shelf collaboration software tools, which are inadequate.

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17 Critical Questions to Ask an SEO Company

With these 17 questions in hand, along with a comprehensive reference check, you
will find yourself on equal footing with the SEO companies you are vetting. You will also
obtain the information and insight you need to select a partner that can implement an
SEO campaign capable of transforming your business. Many great companies are out
there dont settle for less than the best.
If youd like to hear our answers to these 17 questions, and anything else on your mind
regarding SEO, please contact us today. Straight North specializes in lead generation
and e-commerce revenue generation; in fact, thats just about all we do. If you want an
SEO campaign that generates more leads and revenue, our team gets the job done better
than anyone and were eager to prove it. Thank you in advance for considering us!

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