Posted by Aimee Cozza on February 11th, 2020Hiring an SEO company or marketer can be a big step for your business. All you have to do is pay a bit of money, and then you can rake in the benefits of increased business, right? The too long, didn’t read is that it’s not that simple. Any SEO company’s job is incredibly complex, and though we understand the complexities of things like search engines, algorithms, and more so you don’t have to, there are a few things you should know before hiring an SEO company.
#1: Don’t expect things to happen over night
SEO is a long haul game. SEO changes can take months before they start showing noticeable effects. Contrary to popular belief, not everything on the internet happens immediately. Domain name servers, for example, can take up to 24 hours to propagate! The same goes for SEO. Google and other crawlers can take some time to recrawl and index your website in its entirety, discover new content, and deliver it to new potential customers. “Invisible” information like schema can take some time to be discovered and added to appropriate aggregators and other areas.
Postcards for social listing places like Google My Business and Bing can take weeks to show up in the mail. Working with support for a Facebook page that has 10 copies in the wild can take months to resolve. All of these things take time and a consistent hand.
#2: You need to also put in some effort to get something out of it
You can’t just expect to sit back and do nothing while you rake in extra business. Ideally, we’d love for that to happen, but the truth of the matter is that we often need your input to get the most out of your SEO program. That means timely review and approval of content like new page content, blog posts, social media posts, and more. If you don’t help your SEO company approve pages or blog posts, they will never be published, and will never benefit you. A read through of your SEO company’s needs and suggestions will ultimately help your company in the end, so why wait?
#3: We won’t promise you #1
Sorry, but with the way that search algorithms change daily (and we do mean daily), we could not, in good faith of conscience, promise that you will always be #1 on the SERP for certain search terms. Getting to #1 takes a lot of effort (and conversely, a lot of money), a lot of time, and a lot of patience. While we will promise that you’ll get more search traffic than you did prior to hiring us, we can’t guarantee you’ll be #1 — or stay #1. Any SEO company that promises you that you’ll be #1 on the SERP is either employing black hat SEO tactics, or making you false promises.
#4: We can’t fix your product or service
This is a big one. If you’re selling wooden sticks, for example, there may not be a lot of interest in your product. We can’t generate more interest in your core product or service, though we can think of plenty of clever ways to bring in traffic centering around your product or service. Ultimately, if the service or product is bad or does not have a lot of value, you won’t land the sale.
Alternatively, niche markets may also suffer in these instances. While of course we’ll help you rank better than you did prior to when you hired us, if only 5 people are searching for your thing a year, it may be hard to get more customers. Consider how many people want, need, and will use your product or service.
This also means we can’t fix your prices. If you’re charging a lot for your service or product and that scares away customers, it will be up to you to adjust your pricing.
Lastly, if your team members, sales agents, or phone operators are poor — having tons of search traffic flowing in can quickly mean losing sale after sale. Is your phone operator picking up the phone 99% of the time, or only 50% of the time? Are customers going to voicemail? Is your phone operator rude? Do you return calls in a timely fashion? We can’t fix this, but it can definitely impact your bottom line.
#5: We’ll definitely be looking at your website
Some clients are insulted when we start in on their program and want to make changes to their site. The first thing we focus on is the usability and functionality of a website. If your menu is janky, goes to weird places, and seems unintuitive, of course we’ll want to make changes to make it easier for people to find your content. No one likes being trapped inside of a poorly structured website. Driving more traffic to an otherwise broken website means lost revenue. No point in dumping money into ads when people don’t know how to get in touch with you to take advantage of your product.
Don’t take it as a personal insult — your website should work with you and be an extension of a fantastic service you’re providing. We just want to make sure that your website isn’t getting in the way.
Ready to start working on your journey of growth with an SEO company like us? We can help! Contact us today to get started.
