SEO promotion is a set of activities aimed at improving a website’s position in search engine results. But how can an ice cream or metal structures manufacturer tell if their SEO contractor is doing quality work?
What KPI indicators should be in the technical report, how does promotion affect sales, and how much time is needed for SEO optimization — we answer these questions in our article.
Where to Order SEO Promotion?
You can create your own SEO department to promote your business online, collaborate with an SEO agency, or hire freelancers. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses.
SEO Agency Services
Choosing an SEO agency can be difficult. Most providers lack clear positioning and offer services in the same price range as competitors. Their approaches to work vary.
Your task is not only to select a suitable agency but also to understand why it is better than others. When choosing a contractor, pay attention to their successful case studies, specialists’ expertise, and client reviews.
Agency prices are usually higher than freelancer services. Many clients see this as a drawback, but this is not always true. Higher prices are justified by quality results, which is not always the case with freelancers. In the long run, it is often more cost-effective.
Often, working with an agency means less direct communication with the executor, so strategy adjustments and corrections may take longer. Agencies also tend to avoid small tasks, preferring to provide services as a package.
Working with Freelancers
Freelancers are usually cheaper. You can communicate directly with the specialist and quickly solve minor tasks. Most freelancer collaborations are informal, often without official contracts.
The main downside of working with freelancers is the risk of missed deadlines and unreliable work ethics. Not all freelancers are good managers, so communication can sometimes be challenging.
In-House SEO Specialists
Setting up an in-house SEO team makes sense only if you own a large company or have several big websites. Besides SEO specialists, you will need a copywriter, developer, and project manager to oversee workflows.
Agency services will be cheaper and you will get results faster.
How to Understand You Made the Right Choice?
Choosing the right contractor can be critical to your online business success. Here’s how to evaluate your SEO specialist:
- Research experience and reputation. Review portfolios, read reviews, and contact previous clients. Specialists with long-term experience and positive feedback are usually more reliable.
- Understand your niche and business model. Your SEO specialist should grasp your market to create strategies tailored to your needs.
- Maintain open and effective communication. A good contractor explains methods and strategies, answers questions, and regularly provides progress reports.
- Evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs). SEO doesn’t always bring quick results, but a good contractor will track organic traffic growth, keyword rankings, conversions, and ROI to measure effectiveness.
- Follow best practices and ethical standards. Avoid contractors who use black-hat methods that can harm your site long-term.
- Use analytics tools. A competent SEO specialist actively uses Google Analytics and other tools to assess site performance and campaign effectiveness.
- Adapt to SEO changes. The SEO world constantly evolves; your contractor should be ready to adjust to new trends and algorithm updates.
- Don’t choose solely based on price. Consider the balance between cost and quality. Discuss timelines and ensure they are realistic.
- Beware of guarantees. Be cautious of contractors promising guaranteed results in the short term. SEO depends on many factors, and guaranteed rankings or traffic are unrealistic. A good SEO specialist is interested in long-term cooperation and building sustainable success strategies.
SEO Promotion Analysis Checklist for Your Website
As a client, you don’t need to understand every SEO detail. Let specialists handle the work. Your job is to understand the purpose of the activities and analyze the metrics in technical reports to ensure transparency and that you are not being misled.
Sales Analysis
The technical report describes details of the completed work, KPI indicators (Key Performance Indicators — metrics of achieved results), traffic, and site rankings for specific keywords.
Tracking the dynamics of orders on the site is also part of the SEO specialist’s job. For this, special Google Analytics counters are installed and goals are set. The technical report should describe how customers achieve these goals, such as the number of registrations or completed order forms.
New Content on the Site
If a site is regularly updated (adding categories and products), search engines crawl it more often. This positively affects the site’s rankings.
It is recommended to add at least 5 new pages per month. If you do not add new products, you can write and publish blog content. Quality content positively impacts SEO and increases customer loyalty.
The first task of an SEO specialist is to study the client’s business niche and the current state of their site. A good contractor will first conduct a detailed audit and identify all technical issues to be fixed during the work.
If you communicate with the client only once a month for payment and technical report analysis, it is a bad sign—especially at the beginning of cooperation.
Traffic Quality
Clients have different goals: some care about search rankings, others about sales growth, and others about targeted traffic metrics.
Some dishonest SEO contractors inflate traffic to show positive results. Analyze traffic sources and spikes, as well as how long users spend on the site.
If the time spent on the site drops significantly and traffic sources include suspicious links (unless these are purchased high-behavior links), the traffic is likely inflated.
Search Query Optimization
If your goal is to increase sales, the contractor should use transactional search queries with words like “buy,” “sell,” “order,” etc.
Conversions from low-frequency and ultra-low-frequency keywords are often higher than from high-frequency ones, so this strategy usually brings better results.
Budget Expenses
Besides SEO services, you allocate money for technical work: programmers fixing technical issues, content writing, and link buying.
It is important to develop an optimal promotion strategy for the client’s project, considering the niche and competitive environment, to achieve maximum results with minimal costs. All future expenses should be agreed upon in advance.
SEO Promotion Results
Even the most competent contractor will not show results in the first month. This depends not on the quality of work but on the search engine’s indexing speed and many other factors.
If after 3-4 months traffic, leads, and rankings do not grow, it is worth checking the contractor’s work and possibly looking for a new one. You can order an SEO audit of your site from an independent agency to identify errors and shortcomings of the current contractor.
Technical Report Content
Even complex issues can be explained simply if the contractor is interested. Adequate specialists avoid overwhelming clients with bulky reports full of charts and tables. Infographics are useful, but it is more important to explain the work results in plain language.
Five pages of a clear report are better than twenty pages of confusing graphs, diagrams, tables, and unfamiliar terms.
Challenges in Evaluating SEO Effectiveness
In some niches, competition in search results can be very high. Competing with major players may require significant effort and resources.
Search engines like Google regularly update their algorithms. Some updates may affect your site’s rankings. Understanding why and how these changes occur can be difficult.
Technical aspects of SEO effectiveness may be hard to understand, especially for non-professionals. You can request a site audit from a third party to verify your contractor’s performance.
Instead of Conclusions
The optimal choice is to cooperate with an SEO company. Your relationship will be formalized by a contract, and deadlines will be clearly fixed.
Use our recommendations to analyze technical report data and assess the effectiveness of SEO promotion.
