This is a question I saw on Reddit by a user called ‘danroyj‘, and it comes up a lot.
My small business is on a Wix website. I’m paying an agency, Higher Visibility, $765 monthly for organic SEO, and I feel like I’m not getting much to no benefit. I get monthly reports that provide minimal insight. How can I tell if I’m getting value in working with them? I’m not SEO savvy.
Firstly, there are a number of questions Dan needs to ask:
- Has he got an SEO strategy?
- What is his top priority keyword?
- Have the websites on page one for this keyword been analysed?
- If so, how many pages do they have indexed?
- How many pages do they have indexed relevant to the keyword?
- How many backlinks do they have?
- How many pages and backlinks does his own website have?
His SEO agency should be working to close the gap on his competitors. This is something tangible that he should be able to see each month and only then can he see if he is getting value for his $765 monthly fee.
For example, if all the websites on page 1 for his target keyword have 50 pages relevant to that keyword, and his website has 20, then his SEO agency should be aiming to create at least 30 additional pages. Relevancy is usually determined by page titles, headings and content on the page and is a huge signal to Google that your website is relevant to the user’s search.
These pages can be anything, from blog posts to landing pages, case studies or news, and the main thing is that they abide by Google’s helpful content guidelines. Creating high quality content like this can take anything from two hours upwards, so if Dan’s SEO agency are doing three of more per month I would say he is getting good value.
On top of content creation, we need to factor in reporting time, communication, regular tech crawls, and fixing any issues as they occur such as broken links or crawl errors. This is without link and authority building. So you can see, when you know this, it’s quite easy to see if you are getting value out of your campaign.
In the old days of SEO, we would say to pay your monthly fee, ask no questions and just look at your ranking positions. If rankings are up and where you want them to be, then your SEO is working. However, it’s much more nuanced than that now. Ranking positions alone are just a small part of the story. To increase rankings now, we need to convince Google your website and brand are high quality and high authority. This means engaging your audience, which means ensuring your website is user friendly and has great content. This all takes time.
The way to judge the value of your SEO now, is to see if the strategy makes sense. Do you have a clear target of content and links to aim for. Is your SEO agency creating high quality content. Do they understand your brand, your business and your audience. Are they analysing user behaviour. Do they have a clear path to increasing traffic. Are they increasing leads or sales.
It depends on the target keywords, but a monthly fee of $765 for an SEO campaign is low. There should be clear expectations laid out by your SEO agency. For example, you need 100 pages of content and 50 unique backlinks for Google to consider putting your website on page 1 for your keyword. We can only create 4 pages per month on your budget. It will take around 6 months of monitoring your competitors to determine how much they are investing in content and SEO, but even if we imagine it is zero, then you can see it is going to take 25 months to create 100 pages on your budget. So, don’t expect to be on page one before this time.
Of course there are usually quick wins, and these should be identified within your initial strategy.
So, what should they do?
My advice to Danroyj from Reddit, is to speak with your SEO agency, find out what their strategy and timeline is to get you an ROI.
Good luck!
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