Questions You Need to Ask Before Hiring an SEO Consultant / Company

Running a successful business is not like eating a cupcake. It takes strong strategy, a good team with different skill sets, determination, and measurable long-term goals. 

One area that every business should invest in 2022 is Search engine optimization. SEO is the main area in digital marketing which provides organic traffic. If you don't add SEO to your business, then you are missing plenty of growth opportunities in the online market. But don't worry, you are not alone, many businesses are focusing on other areas of the business and lacking in digital marketing. 

Hiring a website SEO consultant is not a difficult task, you don't need to be a technical person/ SEO expert, you just need to know what questions to ask and what answers are expected. 

Whether your business needs SEO foundational work before creating a website, or advanced SEO strategies for the business growth. As an SEO consultant in Berlin, we have some insider advice for hiring the right SEO company. Consider the following questions and the answers while hiring an SEO marketing expert. 

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Can You show your past top clients/case studies of SEO:

This is the most basic and the first question while you are hiring a website SEO Consultant to manage your campaigns. Before hiring an SEO consultant agency you need to make sure they are credible and have some experience in SEO. Most of the top companies will be able to provide case studies they have solved for their past clients and a portfolio of their past clients. This set of information makes the company trustable as well as satisfies you for starting an SEO project.

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What is your SEO strategy/approach to delivering results: 

Every industry & business has different SEO strategies and needs. A generic SEO Strategy can not be implemented in all campaigns. Ask your agency which strategy they will follow to grow in your industry. There are different Scenarios for different websites (Products-based websites, Blogs, Services websites, International & Local sites)

There are three main areas of SEO: 

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On Page SEO: 

It includes the optimization of the content that is present over the page. Creating new content, adding keywords in content, doing internal linking etc. There are many other tasks included in On-Page SEO. The overall aim is to make content more readable for the user and the crawler. During an On-Page analysis, an expert will analyze the quality of content, optimization of keywords in the content, navigation of the website and much more.

To learn more about on-page SEO check our OnPage SEO Guide.

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Technical SEO:

It includes technical issues of the websites, rectifying the broken pages, website slow speed, website structure and many other factors. During a technical audit, an SEO expert resolves all the issues of the website to make it user & search engine friendly and one of the most important factors in solving the crawling and indexing issues of the website

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Off-Page SEO: This means improving your brand popularity by earning quality links that also impact the website authority. To run an off-page SEO campaign an SEO company will find the opportunities to make quality links coming from other high authority websites. 

Every SEO agency has a different pattern of working 

Either they will only provide the service from one area of SEO (Link Building) 

or they will cover all the things (Research, OnPage, Technical SEO, Content Creation, etc.) 

Modern SEO requires work on all aspects of SEO. Make sure your Search engine optimization agency can work on all types of SEO. If you are looking for an SEO consult TechStrive is a leading company offering Search Engine Optimization services in Berlin. 

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How will you optimize for mobile: 

Nowadays everyone has handheld devices and most of the audience explores their business through mobile devices. Even Google takes it into account and last year Google announced a core web vital algorithm that focuses on User experience and visibility of sites on mobile devices so doing mobile optimization is more important than ever. Prefer those companies that have a complete strategy to optimize your website for mobile devices. 

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How do you conduct keyword research?

In the past, keyword research was a very simple task: just add some queries in the tool and choose the keywords according to the number of audiences who search those words. However, now the environment is totally changing. Google is working on an AI model, and knows the meaning behind the words. So modern keyword research requires much more effort to accomplish this task. Now we need to understand our audience's interests and what they are looking for and provide them content according to their search query. 

While hiring an SEO consultant company, make sure that the SEO team is discussing the intent and the different procedures of keyword research on different tools. If they are only talking about the keywords volume and density, then they are following old-school techniques. 

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Which tools do you use?

It is a little bit technical, but you don't need to be aware of the tools you just have to ask which tools they are using to fulfil the specific tasks? SEO marketing experts use a number of tools for different purposes. 

Which tool are you using for keyword research and why is it best?

Which tool are you using for content creation?

Which tool are you using for backlink monitoring? 

Which tools are you using for a technical audit? 

Which tool are you using for reporting?

Your SEO partner should be able to elaborate on the reason for using the tools and their unique impact on SEO. 

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What do you need to work effectively?

Professional SEO companies have a list of requirements and approvals from website owners who present you with their brief documents. They need detailed info about your business KPI, audience, targeting region, unique selling points and some of your top competitors to work smoothly. Moreover, they also need access to some of your accounts like Google Analytics, Google search console and any other analytic tool you use on your site. 

Agencies that want very little information from your end are unlikely to make an effective SEO plan for your business growth. As SEO agencies need to collaborate with different departments of the business to know about the overall strategy of the business. 

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Hire an SEO Consultant Company that Delivers

SEO is a complex and long-term process. Google strives to provide quality results to its users 24/7 which is why it launches small and core updates on different factors on a monthly and yearly basis. Professional SEO companies always stay up to date and adjust their plans continually according to the new updates of Google and they try to focus more on the user rather than doing SEO for the search engine. 

As SEO marketing experts, we guide you about the important question while hiring an SEO agency. If you have any further questions or you need to get help in your SEO projects you can contact us.