Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, is an intrinsic part of digital media sharing and working on digital platforms. It is impossible to imagine a digital campaign today that is not centered around this particular aspect. This means that if you are working in the digital space, you will undoubtedly need an SEO specialist or agency working with or for you for the entire duration of your digital presence.

CEO of High Rankings, Jill Whalen, says, “Anyone can set-up an ‘SEO agency’ overnight and call themselves an SEO expert. But that doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. There are hundreds of little things that go into the bigger picture of doing SEO and it takes many years of experiencing what works and what doesn’t to truly do a good job.”

Therefore, choosing the right agency or specialist becomes one of the most crucial decisions you will make in this regard. While there are innumerable agents, agencies, and specialists in the market, it is vital for you to find the right fit for you apart from the person or persons being specialists in this field. What are some of the questions that you can ask to make this judgment better? Let us look at the top six questions to ask before hiring SEO specialist that could help you make the decision.

How do you approach SEO?

This is one of the key questions to ask for SEO.

• Most experts or agencies imagine SEO to be one faceted understanding. While it is true that in particular, SEO can be seen to be under one umbrella, it certainly has more than one aspect to it.
• At the very base, three distinct aspects make it up; these are the 
  • Technical aspects (site structure)
  • The offline and online optimization (link building and HTML tags)
  • The user experience.

 According to Taylor Pratt, vice president of product marketing for Raven Internet Marketing Tools– “You don’t want a one-dimensional SEO. You need someone who will approach their strategy from all three angles to maximise success.”

• It is important to note that none of these are overlooked, and when a campaign is designed or planned, all three aspects are given equal weightage in finalizing.
• If any of these aspects are overlooked, understand that the campaign will suffer long term repercussions, even if it seems to be running smoothly in the short run.
• Making a comprehensive strategy combining all three is the only feasible approach to SEO, which is what we follow.

What is the unique selling proposition (USP) that you have to offer in the SEO market?

Clients are quite happy with SEO companies, which enable them to get more traffic and more business. Also, 61 % of company owners state that increasing brand recognition is essential to them.

We at KVR WEBTECH follow a reSEOurceful approach to this aspect of digital presence. Our creativity becomes our USP. You may be wondering how creativity can play a role in something that is inherently technical, but lack of creativity is what makes others mundane and indistinguishable. Creativity can be expressed in many ways. 

• Here creativity means finding unique solutions to what clients look for, something that not everybody is doing.
• We are always looking for a way to find things nobody else is even looking for.
• We provide to our clients that which is not found anywhere else, making us the best choice. 
• We bring to the technical table a creative set of ideas.

This makes not only us but our clients also distinguishable in the digital space.

How will this help me in my industry and field?

SEO is not limited to any one industry or field. It is open for all, for that matter, it is necessary for all today. When it comes to your industry and your field, we will ensure that we find the best SEO centered campaign or make one for you specially.

• Finding the right nuances to make your SEO successful is the name of the game that we excel in.
• Finding the right metrics is at the core of it all. It is like the foundation of a building that, if not placed right, will lead to an untimely collapse. Ensuring this never happens for you is our promise.
• Knowledge of what to measure, how to do it, and how to use it is what we gather specifically for your work, and you will see the results of it once deployed.

What is required from us in this if we choose you? (H2)

• It is not possible for an agency or specialist to be successful without the right inputs. That is like making an excellent final recipe without the right ingredients at one’s disposal.
• Understand that the person or persons do not make the decisions unless asked with respect to many aspects of your campaign. Sharing this knowledge with them becomes of prime importance, therefore.
• From your tone and tenor to your target audience. From the length of your campaign to its claimed depth, everything is an input that is required from you.
• Only after you have shared as much as you feel is necessary and as much as they feel are needed, can the right agency find the right solution for you.

According to Rand Fishkin, CEO & co-founder of SEOMoz, ” Today’s SEO needs to understand all of marketing at a deep level, the psychology of the human race, the specific culture to whom they’re marketing, the social media landscape, web analytics, web design and development, viral marketing, content, product, business models and more. When we disconnect SEO from these other critical practices, we make short-term decisions that can ultimately hurt more than they help.”

How do you stay updated?

44% of small company owners part ways with their SEO agency primarily due to discontentment with the business’s performance. 34 % mention client experience/receptiveness as the main factor they left behind. Just a 21 % drop when a competitor approaches the same agency.

No specialist or agency can lose focus on the importance of constant research and information gathering. You can stay updated on the world of SEO by-

• Following the right channels.
• Reading the right blogs.
• Being up to date with technological news.

All specialists and agencies are aware of this and make time for it. “Finding an SEO who can recite the IP addresses for all of Google’s crawlers is great, but one who’s deeply curious and constantly investigating how that crawler works is even better. I’ve often met SEOs whose knowledge was fantastic, but at some point in their career, it ceased to grow. I’d rather have a fresh mind that’s hungry and growing than a grizzled vet whose thirst for new knowledge died in 2006.” Says Fishkin

Is it different for different devices?

In a broad sense, there is no distinction for desktop, laptop, smartphone, or smart device SEO. If you have it done for your website or platform presence once, it will not require changes for other devices. What does need to change, given the variety of tools used to access the web today, is that your websites need to be friendly and adaptive to all device sizes and systems.

 The only reason you may need a separate SEO configuration is if you look to attract from search engines beyond Google as the inherent system, there would be different. The same plan would not work in all likelihood. 

With the help of the above questions to ask when hiring a SEO company, you should be able to narrow down and find the best option for you to work with. The digital space is a vast expanse, and while it may not be impossible to make your place there without this, choosing wisely will certainly help you make the right decisions and make your own space and identity much more easily and early. Ask the right questions to find the right partner for SEO.

About the author

Kunal Seth is the co-founder of KVR Web Tech. He has more than 11 years of experience in client handling and has been behind the success of various major brands worldwide.