Is your SEO consultant accountable for their work? Can they prove it?

I've already offered some advice on choosing a reputable SEO agency and how to learn enough about SEO in order to understand what SEO agencies are telling you. The last part of the puzzle is making sure that the SEO company you hire not only delivers on their promises but that the results they're promising are going to benefit your business.

You need to know find out three things to ensure your SEO agency will improve your business:

1. Ask prospective SEO consultants what they will deliver. If an SEO company does not talk about improving traffic and conversions then all they're going to do is get you ranking for a bunch of useless keywords with no competition that won't deliver you potential customers.


2. Ask for examples of recent successes. Any good SEO firm should be able to show you not just rankings they have achieved for their clients, they should be able to provide statistics about how much they have increased the traffic for a specific site and how much they have increased conversions. Ask if you can contact the site owner for a reference. In fact, ask for several references and make sure at least one is a recent client. Many SEO companies who had success five years ago still use tactics that would today get you thrown out of Google. If they’re telling you to phone the guys they helped five years ago, you’re not going to get a good idea of how they’re doing now.


3. Ask what reports they provide. A good SEO company should offer to tell you on a regular basis more than just how your main keywords are doing. They should also monitor traffic, conversions and bounce rates on your site.

A good SEO agency will offer you both on-page and off-page optimisation. They will build the authority of your site, increase the keyword relevance of your pages and ensure that your website will guide your visitors into becoming customers. If they're not offering to do that and they can't show you how they've done it for other companies, then you need to find a different SEO agency.