Large List Of Questions To Ask Your SEO Company

[bhartzer]

Over the years, I have compiled quite a large list of questions that you should consider asking your potential search engine optimization company. These questions are not necessarily in order of importance, and they may not apply to every search engine optimization project.

What type of search engine optimization techniques do you use to achieve search engine rankings?

What type of risk is involved with your method of search engine optimization?

What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?

Can you show me examples of past work?

What was the client’s ROI of their search engine optimization efforts?

Can you give me references? Can I talk to one or more of your current search engine optimization clients?

What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect from search engine optimization?

How long until I start to see results?

What would you expect from OUR end to aid your work?

What were some of your top search ranking achievements?

What types of internet marketing services do you offer to supplement your SEO (search engine optimization) offerings?

Will my web site point to your web site?

How many number one search engine rankings you have achieved for your clients?

How long have you been providing search engine optimization services?

Are you an individual consultant or are you part of a search engine optimization team?

How long have you and your search engine optimization team been online?

What types of web sites will you not promote?

Do you participate and/or, are you a moderator for any of the SEO – Search Engine Optimization / SEM – Search Engine Marketing Forums? If so, what is your username and can you provide links to your most recent or notable discussions?

Can you describe and/or produce recent successful search engine optimization campaign results?

If so, can I use those clients for references?

Do you have web site design experience?

What is your technical background?

What types of programming environments are you experienced with?

What are your opinions in regards to Best Practices for the SEO – Search Engine Optimization / SEM – Search Engine Marketing industry? How does a company effectively compete online using traditional optimization strategies?

Can you assure us that the search engine optimization strategies and methods that you are utilizing fall under the criteria of Best Practices for the SEO/SEM Industry? Can we assume that this means no penalties for our website?

How many search engine optimization campaigns have you been involved with?

What was your role for those projects?

How many of those search engine optimization projects are still active?

How many of those search engine optimization projects inactive?

If inactive, why?

Do you have experience managing PPC – Pay Per Click, CPC – Cost Per Click, and other bid management campaigns?

What types of programs do you use for PPC bid management?

Are there any guarantees for top search engine positions if we decide not to use a PPC program?

The web sites we are currently linked to have no rank, which means to me that these links are useless.

What linking strategies would you use to increase link popularity for our website?

Is this service part of the proposed price? What types of websites will you target for link exchange?

Our main competitor’s Google PageRank falls between 1 and 3. How would you address improving our PageRank with Google, and other search engines that calculate the number of quality inbound links to our website? Is it possible to rank higher than our competitors?

What changes can we expect you to make to our website to improve our positioning in the search engines?

Will these search engine optimization changes be visible?

Will there be changes in the coding of our website?

What type of reporting (website log analysis) will you provide to us? How often will you provide those reports? Will you provide consultation on how to interpret the reports so that we have a basic understanding of the statistics?

Do you offer ROI analysis? Is this in addition to your contract pricing? Please explain the process of how the ROI will be determined.

Matt Cutts, from Google, recently had this to say about what you should ask your SEO:
Do you buy links that pass PageRank?
What’s the most aggressive tactic you use?
Anything violate G’s guidelines?

[Logan]

As always that's great info Bill, good to see you!

[KeithCash]

Nice list. Has any ever gotten a customer with providing answers to all these questions????

Looks like a lot of time when we should be creating traffic for the customer.

[1weekSEO]

Here is my list of questions never to ask an SEO company:

Originally Posted by bhartzer

What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect from search engine optimization?

- I think this is nonsense, as every website is unique in terms of visits and keywords. It is impossible to predict and answer this question. How long is a peice of string?

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Are there any guarantees for top search engine positions if we decide not to use a PPC program?

- If you know your SEO you know that there are no guarantees for organic traffic. (Organic traffic is top search engine positions not paid for by PPC.)

Ever.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

What types of websites will you target for link exchange?

- None. Link exchange is very bad practice. Any client asking me to do this would get a point blank refusal. Google the phrase "why is link exchange bad for my website"

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Our main competitor’s Google PageRank falls between 1 and 3. How would you address improving our PageRank with Google, and other search engines that calculate the number of quality inbound links to our website? Is it possible to rank higher than our competitors?

- Google pays absolutely no attention to pagerank. Why should you? Who told you this was important to ask?

Originally Posted by bhartzer

What changes can we expect you to make to our website to improve our positioning in the search engines?

- This is answered after work has been completed. This is like asking Coca Cola to reveal their company recipie. If all SEO companies told you what work they intend to do, you could attempt it yourself to try and save cost and potentially mess up, and then get charged more for SEO companies to rectify, and run the risk of never recovering.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Matt Cutts, from Google, recently had this to say about what you should ask your SEO:
Do you buy links that pass PageRank?

- I would really like to see the website where Matt Cutts asked this question, as previously mentioned pagerank is totally ignored by Google, so why would Matt Cutts ask this question? Please reply with a link?

Originally Posted by bhartzer

What’s the most aggressive tactic you use?

- Why use aggressive tactics? I have seen aggressive tactics (bulk link building, buying links, blog comments, link blasting, negative SEO and they are all red alert areas bound to have you sandboxed before you can blink.

Originally Posted by bhartzer

Anything violate G’s guidelines?

- What SEO company actively violates G's guidelines? None. Pointless question.

The only question I think to ask an SEO company is what Google page 1 results does their website rank for (as mentioned in another thread)

[selvam.seo]

Here is a similar thread. http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/fo...ad.php?t=52675

[bhartzer]

1weekSEO, that is exactly why it's important for a company to ask these questions. The better SEOs will answer these as you have--some of the questions are "loaded" and if you answer them a certain way then you're revealing the fact that you're not an honest SEO.

Especially the questions regarding PR and traffic to a site--an SEO firm should answer those in a way that educates the potential customer, like you have done here.

[JessicaJohn]

It is huge and comprehensive list of question that can prove a company's ability. But mostly people don't ask these kinds of question therefore they have to suffer their website's appearance in search engine.

[micheal.burns1]

Awesome Info Bill!! Now after getting your questionable even the dumbest guy on earth would look like a smart one

[1weekSEO]

Originally Posted by bhartzer

1weekSEO, that is exactly why it's important for a company to ask these questions. The better SEOs will answer these as you have--some of the questions are "loaded" and if you answer them a certain way then you're revealing the fact that you're not an honest SEO.

Especially the questions regarding PR and traffic to a site--an SEO firm should answer those in a way that educates the potential customer, like you have done here.

Good response.

However, I feel the OP has written this list for people who know absolutely nothing about SEO in mind, therefore the majority of these questions would be answered in technical terms which potentially could blind a new client with technical jargon, end up in a 60 minute discussion where the SEO has to spend time explaining the answers.

This one whole hour would be at no cost when I could be working for a paid project, and the time spent explaining all of this may not even result in welcoming a new client on board, therefore my time would be wasted and so would the clients'.

On occasions a little knowledge is too much, I prefer to ask questions to my client first, listen to their replies, deduct how I can help and present a proposal unique to their needs. Providing a huge long list of comprehensive technical questions like on this internet is detrimental to a time effective way to conduct business in my opinion.

[donovanjames786]

Nice info bro! Seems like you have done quite good work for this. Thumbs Up!