SEO companies or agencies work in different ways. Finding the right SEO for your organization requires more than just looking at their proposals. A cultural fit and understanding priorities are a good start. In addition, being clear on how the SEO operates, their methods, and communication are important.
SEO Recommendations and Implementation
When engaging an SEO company, understand how they communicate recommendations. There are different ways to manage an SEO program. How it is done depends on what your company needs. The challenge is aligning your needs with the way the SEO Company operates.
Independent SEO Activity
Some SEOs will operate autonomously, making changes as needed. This can help with the speed of implementation. It also reduces the burden on company marketing teams. To work in this environment, several areas of trust must be established.
Technical understanding of your website. Different CRMs and hosting environments have specific requirements. You must be confident those implementing changes have a full understanding of the web site.
Your business. When implementing changes, Your SEO must ensure they align with your brand and can write authoritatively and properly about your products and industry. Trusting the agency to implement changes can only happen when this happens.
Recommendations and approved SEO changes
On the other end of the spectrum is a pre-approval process. In this process, the agency provides you with a “current state” and “prosed state.” This can be for content, technical change, or the user experience. There are several advantages to this process.
The first obvious advantage is ensuring the changes fully align with your brand and correct product information. There are times when what is good for SEO implementation may need to be adjusted to keep in step with the brand or product information.
The second advantage is having a way to audit changes. Occasionally, things may need to be reversed, or other organization members will have questions. A proper recommendation process will provide parties with documentation of changes and why those changes were made.
When SEO Engagements Start
When the SEO engagement starts, there will be a series of communication and quite a bit of activity. This establishes confidence in the agency and implementation. After the initial activity, the level of communication will decrease.
Creating a regular communication schedule and updates will help ensure your SEO agency can keep on track. It will also help ensure you can have confidence in your agency’s work.
Requesting monthly reports is one way to keep track of what the SEO agency is doing. Having a regular call in addition to the reporting can also be helpful. As your agency gains your trust, you can allow them greater latitude. A good SEO relationship ultimately develops into a partnership that allows the agency to operate more independently and frees up your time to manage other aspects of your responsibilities.