The difficulty with engaging search engine optimisation agencies is clarity that they are doing something for their money.
Often SEO is seen as a dark art that ‘you have to know’ and claimed results are the result of the suppliers skill and knowledge.Fortunately this is true in many cases however, booms attract cowboys and these agencies are purely running administrative services and are often undeserving of the fees they receive. There are simple benchmarks to find this out.
If you already have in house web analytics you are half way there. Combined with freely available reports you can identify who is riding the market and who is not.
1. Back links
A reasonable part of the monthly fee for SEO services will be on link building. This involves strategies to get other websites to link to you. Trouble is how do you know they are being successful?
In google and in yahoo if you run a search on how many links are recognised by that search . If the SEO agency is doing a good job they are increasing the number of links to your site. This is an easy thing to monitor and is an indisputable benchmark for the performance of that fee.
2. Share of search (THE keyword)
Sometimes an increase in traffic is touted as a big win for the SEO. But sometimes it is simply supply and demand. Google Insight can help you out in scaling the volumes you receive for a keyword against the total number of searches. Be mindful it is scaled so it isn’t 100% accurate; but it definitely helps you verify performance claims.
Always pick the top 1-3 keywords searched for your category. If the SEO agency has done its job they will have told you what these are. If you want to know yourself go here and play.
Next plug the keyword(s) into Google Insight and find out the relative performance. Always do the longest time frame available. If the searches you are getting for these keywords are the same or decreasing while insight shows an increase then questions need to be ask. If your search increase is faster than insight give your agency a pat on the back.If it is riding along the same as insight, again, ask questions on the value they are adding. You want added value.
(On both the keyword tool and insight make sure you have the right region)
3. Reach (engines, keywords and phrases)
You are paying to increase your rankings across a broad range of keywords. This is the major claim of SEO agencies to use them rather than doing it in-house and if they are good, it’s true. So if your SEO agency is successful your analytics should show an increase in the number of phrases and number of keywords that make up these phrases. It should also increase the number of search engines you show up on.
4. Volume
Are you getting more search related traffic? If not make sure that can be justified against a drop in demand.
5. Importance
Install Google toolbar and turn on PageRank. An SEO agency should help you become more important to Google. If they can’t make you more important, maybe you don’t need them.
6. Your contract
Once you know your benchmarks, write these into the contract or have an out clause if the most important are not met.
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