5 Questions to Ask an SEO Agency Before Hiring

Considering hiring an SEO agency to help you grow your brand? Awesome choice! Before settling with a specific agency, though, be sure to ask the right questions. The answers can tell you if you should shake hands and move forward with a specific agency or head in another direction, and quickly.

5 Questions to Ask an SEO Agency

1. Are they creating content?

The best SEO agency is serious about crafting content that is specifically built around the perfect combination of user intent and SEO strategy. This holds true whether they are drafting an on-site blog or an off-page piece of content. No matter how spectacular a website may be, content still reigns king in the digital world for a few reasons. One, content feeds site visitors what they crave: information about the brand/product/services/industry. Two, well-designed content enriched with strategically placed keywords boosts search engine results page (SERP) rankings.

Good example? Check out How Much Is an Eighth of Weed? on the Silver Therapeutics website. This question gets a TON of hits on Google, and Silver’s blog happens to beat out giants like Weedmaps in SERPs.

2. Will they manage my Google Business listing?

Google My Business (GMB) is an incredible tool when it comes to getting your business in front of prospects when they are searching for a business like yours. Some SEO agencies handle adding your location and services only to your GMB listing, which is a good start but not enough. Managing GMB involves monitoring the listing for anything that could paint the business in a negative light. Check out How to Optimize Your Dispensary Google My Business Page (9 Ways) for more details.

3. Do they have industry experience?

No matter what, find an SEO agency that has experience in your industry or niche. There are a lot of nuances that come along with certain industries, especially cannabis. Wrong moves and simple missteps due to inexperience that Google deems as a violation can get your Google Ads (previously AdWords) account suspended and even your website shutdown without warning. Landing in Google “Jail” is no joke. It’s a huge undertaking to make it out and rarely happens without a huge impact to the business because of lengthy downtime.

4. Are they optimizing for mobile and accessibility?

Google follows a mobile-first indexing process. If the URL is not optimized for mobile, your SERP rankings suffer dearly. Not to mention, the bulk of people searching for businesses online are using a mobile device. Therefore, any good SEO agency works hard to optimize for mobile because it is key for both the user experience and search performance. Just the same, ADA-compliance is important. Even though Google doesn’t rank a site according to ADA-compliance, ADA compliance is critical for user experience and keeps bounce rates down.

5. What kind of promises are they making?

When you shell out funding for SEO help, you will want to know that you are getting what you’ve paid for. Some agencies are better are fulfilling their promises than others. Those that will be reliable can tell you plainly how they handle the fact that Google algorithms are constantly changing what progress looks like, and how they will show you progress at the end of the day. Before hiring an SEO agency, straight-up ask them:

• How does the agency handle changing algorithms?
• What does the agency deem as progress with an SEO strategy?
• What metrics does the agency use to measure the effectiveness once a strategy is implemented?
• What benefits can the agency offer that you can’t achieve on your own?

Ready to talk to a full-service SEO agency? Reach out to us at CannaPlanners where we have no qualms about answering all the questions you can throw our way!

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