5 Direct Questions Your SEO Expert Should Answer

A flashy website is not a performing website. For most business owners, venturing into online marketing means having a beautiful website. However, old hands in the business will tell you website design is just one of the components you need to succeed online. To beat the competition, you must rank highly on search engine result pages (SERPs).

If your website is not appearing on the first page of result pages, your target audience will never know you exist. While millions of websites are being built daily, Google says most of them don’t make any revenue. If you are intending to break into the online market, you need to optimize your website for search engines. This is where a search engine optimization SEO) expert comes in handy.

There are many people calling themselves SEO experts and choosing the best can be a daunting task. You need to appreciate the importance of working with the right person to boost your ranking on SERPs. To guide you choose the right expert, here are some questions you need to ask:

1.  How Do Improve a Site’s Ranking?

The greatest mistake you can ever make in SEO is failing to ascertain the techniques that your Chicago SEO expert will use. While some techniques are technical, it is important to understand what strategy the expert will be deploying. With the latest Google Penguin real-time update, any spammy links are detected faster and your pages will be devalued. A good SEO specialist will first carry out a web audit to identify the weak areas and then work to improve them. The timeline should also be agreed upon though you have to be realistic because SEO takes time.

2.   Do You Have any References?

While an SEO firm might claim to be the best in the industry, it is important to appreciate there are many SEO scams around. Check whether the expert has worked on other websites preferably in your niche. You can check the performance of these references on SERPs and even contact the admin to assess the quality of service they enjoyed from your SEO. Ask about how long it took to boost ranking on SERPs when working with that specific SEO firm.

3.  Do You Offer Any Guarantees?

If an SEO consultant guarantees you overnight boost in ranking, run and don’t turn back. Most scams come with deals that seem too good to be true and they always turn out to be detrimental to your ranking. While black hat techniques will instantly spike your ranking, you will eventually get caught for not adhering to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Always choose an SEO consultant who offers a realistic timeline based on what needs to be done on your site.

4.  What’s Your Communication Model?

It is important to appreciate that your SEO strategist will have access to your website and can make any changes they deem fit to boost your ranking. However, you should always approve such changes, hence the need for constant communication. You need to be aware of all adjustments going on behind the scenes and this means an open channel of communication should be maintained. Any content that is being published or any adjustments to the site’s code must be agreed upon by both parties.

5. How do you Track SEO Progress?

It is important to agree on a monitoring tool, which will be used to assess the performance of your site on SERPs. Google Analytics is the most popular tool in the market though there are many other SEO tools that you can utilize. You need to know how much traffic is coming and more importantly, where it is originating. This information helps you to evaluate the quality of the SEO services you are getting. More so, you keep track of the budget and all changes to your website.

While the issue of payment is important, this should to be the guiding factor. You should understand that some SEOs claim they offer free services, but eventually you end paying more than normal rates.  When interviewing your SEO specialist, ensure you agree on the payment structure to avoid future problems. Most of all, it is crucial that you make sure the SEO has an excellent customer support team.