How to qualify an SEO?

Congrats on realizing that your SEO needs work. Most small businesses are stuck in yearly contracts with well known SEO companies, and have not a clue if their SEO is working or not. They keep paying their monthly fees, year after year, not quite understanding the difference between SEO that generates a positive return on their investment, versus cheap SEO that never follows through on those promises.

Do a quick Google search for “Insert name of SEO company here + complaints” and you will find hundreds, if not thousands of small businesses who reviewed their experiences with SEO experts who did not come through on their promises.

You might be surprised to learn those large, flashy web design and SEO companies are not as high tech or helpful as you had hoped.

How can you vet these SEO experts before signing on the dotted line?

1. VERIFY that the SEO company is actively using SEO to acquire new customers. How to verify that the SEO is qualified? Do a quick search on Neil Patels Uber Suggest Keyword tool will help you sort out the real SEO experts from the wanna be’s.

https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ *UPDATED

This tool has become a little more technical and difficult to find the data needed. I am now reccomending SEM Rush for SEO research tool.

You will need to sign up for a free trial account with this link:

https://www.semrush.com/lp/sem/en/?ref=2017053839&utm_campaign=aio_campaign&utm_source=berush&utm_medium=promo&utm_term=23

2. Pop their website url into the search field.

3. Click on Kewords in their search report.

4. Sort by top 10 keywords.

5. Sort by “SEO”

Now, I ask, how many SEO related keywords do they rank for on the FIRST page of Google?

Surprised? Do they rank for anything remotely related to keywords with search volume or buyer intent?

Any one can rank for the name of their company with the word SEO in it…that doesn’t count!

If you are investing in this SEO company to grow your small business, you better do a little extra research and make sure they can do the job for you!

Your business depends on qualifying your SEO expert or company BEFORE signing a contract with them. It is important to take 20 minutes to at least verify that the company you are spending thousands of dollars with, actually knows how to use SEO to acquire customers!

Enter the website address of the SEO company you are looking to work with. You will see most of the keywords that this company ranks for and their positions. If they rank on page 3, 5, 30, 88? You know they do not understand how to rank their own website on the first page of Google, so why would you trust them to do the same for your company?