Anytime you have to hire an outside agency to manage a core part of your business, you run the risk of making a bad hire. Finding a skilled SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provider is no different. 

 

Consider these six things to hire the right SEO provider for your business:

 

1. SEO providers are an investment in your business. Hiring someone to perfect your SEO strategy should be a part of your marketing plan. This person should care about your business and understand your objectives.

2. Top 10 slots rule. When done right, an SEO provider can help get your site to rank on the first page of any search engine’s results. That makes your business one of the top ten recommended when someone searches. 

3. ‘Big’ keywords aren’t all they are cracked up to be. It’s harder to compete in the ‘big’ keyword search arena, but there are tons of smaller keywords that can be valuable to your business. A true professional will be able to recommend and monitor keyword selection to help you grow.

4. SEO is a competition. You want to have better SEO metrics than your competition, so you rank higher than them when a potential customer searches your business industry. Having a skilled professional will help you find the right mix to stand out above your competition.

5. There are two types of SEO. If you don’t have both good on-page and off-page SEO, you lose out to the competition. On-page SEO deals with the keywords and searchability of your website upon a search engine crawl. Off-page SEO relates to your links, social sharing metrics, and citations from elsewhere online that add credibility to your site from outside sources. Work with someone who can help develop both.

6. SEO ranking may not correlate directly to leads or sales. When working with an SEO provider, they will do their best to get traffic to your site based on the keywords used in a search and on your site, but this does not replace having a good website, sales funnel, marketing strategy, and sales plan. Make sure all components of your new customer onboarding are at the top of your game so you can get the high conversion rates you want from the SEO work you have done.

 

When interviewing an SEO provider, worry if they ask for your three keywords and the web address you want to rank. This information gets plugged into software to churn out potential keywords and current ranking. They are taking your money for software to do cheap work. If an SEO provider comes to you with a list of quality keywords for your website, as well as ideas for creating quality backlinks and citations, you are talking to someone who knows their stuff. That provider is more likely to do the hard work to help you build your SEO platform since they began the work before earning your business. 

 

Remember, finding a qualified SEO professional will be an asset to your business, so budget for it and take the process seriously.