Marty Weintraub wrote an interesting article in SearchDay that I wanted to comment on here on my blog.

The reason I wanted to discuss this is that many companies expect all seo people to be like other vendors. A lot of seo companies cater to this by providing pretty charts and graphs and testimonials of nominal value and even suspect sources.

A lot of really good seo experts do not have the time to show you a lot of graphs and charts. They don’t really have time to do “case studies” and record them for you to look at. And if an seo company is providing all of those things, how much of what they charge you goes into that instead of actual seo work.

We get so much business, much of it repeat business because of the results we get for people, that we sometimes cannot provide you with a pretty chart. We do update you on things like link popularity, search engine saturation, search engine ranklings for your keywords and phrases, and on conversions.

Conversions. Sales. That is where our focus is. We don’t cost our clients money. We make them money.

Here are the questions Marty Weintraub says you should ask an seo company before hiring them;

Dear [Prospective SEM Vendor],

Thank you for entering into a dialog with us as we vet potential SEM vendors for [Name of Company]. In order to keep the process as streamlined as possible, please take a few minutes to respond to this questionnaire. Our goal is to make sure we are a right fit for each other before getting too far along in the process, and to make sure we do not waste your time.

The answers can be as detailed or short as you deem appropriate. We look forward to the process of getting to know your company better. We’re happy to read articles on-topic originating from your agency, if you provide the URL in any question’s answer. Thank you in advance for your efforts.

A very nice way to phrase the letter, even noting that the seo person’s time is valuable as well as your own.

Pay Per Click

Is anyone in your firm AdWords Qualified or a Yahoo Ambassador?

Taking the time to become adwords qualified means they do care about their business, but passing the test is not exactly rocket science. You can even use google’s help files to answer the questions. So the value of this question might be that you want to see if they took the time to do it, but it does not mean they really know more than anyone else. It does prove they at least read the help files though.

Does your agency have a designated Google or Yahoo representative?

You mean that someone who knows how to do seo or ppc for google does not also know how to do it for yahoo? This is like saying I need to hire someone that knows how to do metatags and someone else to write alt tags.

What is your agency’s billing model for PPC: percentage of spend, percentage of revenue, monthly fee, hybrid?

Do you have a monthly PPC minimum spend or fee?

What method does your firm use to manage PPC: by hand, by automation (what tool), hybrid?

Do you use our credit card, your agency’s or another method? How will you invoice us?

What reports do you typically send clients, and at what interval?

What PPC channels are you experienced with (Google, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.)?

How does your agency measure PPC conversion and ROI?

Is it in your vocabulary to do multivariate landing page or ad message testing?

Those are all great questions to ask a ppc company before hiring them.

How much PPC spend-cash do you handle annually?

None of your business. I would not answer that way, but in reality this is not a question that is likely to get you a straight answer or an honest one. You may not get a straight answer because of the reason I gave and how will you check to see if the company you are thinking of hiring really does as much business as they tell you they do?

Please submit 2 short PPC case studies highlighting success.

Please submit 1 short PPC case study highlighting failure.

I would show a clients the results we get for clients that have approved their information being shared. Otherwise I have no time to do case studies. My case studies are done as I provide services for clients. Every job is unique. I can show you 100 case studies that were successful but none of them would have anything to do with the performance we get for you.

Those case studies sound more like something a company that uses the same plan for everyone would provide for you. If they have a one-size-fits-all approach to ppc, you aren’t likely to become a case study they will show future potential clients unless it’s under the failure category.

Please submit 2 PPC client-references.

I’d ask for more than 2.

Organic Optimization

What link-building tactics and methods will be employed?

Does your agency have a content creation practice, or will you guide us in building out our content?

Since content is the real SEO, any seo company should be providing the content or be outsourcing it to a reliable content provider. We create our own content for our clients and provide content to several seo companies because they know they can count on us for good, original, optimized content that helps convert sales.

How do you measure organic prominence in light of Personalized Search?

What keyword research tools do you use?

How does your agency measure organic conversion and ROI?

What methods will be used to mine competitive intelligence about our competitors?

What is the billing model for organic-related services? (retainer, hourly, flat monthly fee, etc.)

Those are all good questions.

Do you test organic landing page performance with PPC?

And that one is an excellent question. Any seo company should be testing landing pages with ppc and then tweaking them for performance.

What steps do you take to insulate clients from becoming too dependent on Google?

Doing proper organic seo means you target all of the search engines, not just google. Google may not even have the best conversion rate for a particular client’s products or services. Never put all your eggs in one basket is an old phrase because it has value.

Please submit 2 short organic case studies highlighting success.
Please submit 1 short organic optimization case study highlighting failure.

Anybody who writes an article about how to choose an seo company will always tell you to look for things that they provide to make themselves seem like the better choice. So, again with the case studies. I suppose the writer does them so he is telling you everyone should.

Please submit 2 organic optimization client-references.

Again, more than 2 would be better. And I have questions to add to this list that most seo companies do not want you to ask.

Can your company show me websites they own that sell something besides web services that make a profit? If they have never sold products and services other than what they are trying to sell you, or if they have never built websites that make money from affiliates if that is what they are to build for you, how can they know how best to sell your products?

How much actual offline and online sales experience does the person who will be doing my SEO have? Can you provide proof? If they do not have a lot of sales experience to go with their technical seo skills it won’t matter whether or not they get you a good search engine ranking. Being able to sell is more important than being able to get you a top listing in google.

Being able to do both is optimal. I personally have 33 years of sales experience, 12 of those years online. I have driven tons of traffic to affiliate programs and converted sales. I have websites that sell products and services other than seo that make a good profit. My very first business online was in 1995, buying, selling, and appraising domain names and sold more than 600 of my own domain names for a profit and sold more than that for my clients.

Use someone that has experience making money online. Many people have started an seo business based on the fact that the seo business is profitable. And it is the only business they were ever in on the web. No matter how many ebooks they read and how many matt cutts blog posts they read, nothing replaces actual experience.

Social Media

What social media channels are you currently active in for clients? (StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, etc.)

Give examples of how those channels might be used to bolster the overall SEM effort.

Both good questions.

What reputation monitoring tools will be used?
What is the frequency and substance of your reputation reporting?

Those two questions should be in their own category unless the writer believes that all reputation management is done through social media. Reputation management is a whole different animal and there are a lot of tools used for it, social media being only one of them.

What is your experience with open source blogging software like WordPress

What are your typical non-blogging uses of blog-style software?

Both good questions. Marty undestands the value of blogging and wordpress to seo so I definitely respect the fact that he is up-to-date on tools that you need to do proper seo and reputation management.

I would add to the questions about blogging if your seo company intends to use blogging as an seo tool.

Does your company provide hosting that is optimized for blogs? Can you make sure my blog is on a seperate C Class IP Address if it is to be an offsite blog?

Does your company handle the installation of wordpress for me? Even if I have a windows server?

Does your company handle all of the admin area setup such as proper permalink structure, the right plugins for my specific needs, and inserting a comprehensive ping list?

Does your company install the wordpress template and have a seo expert with knowledge about php go over the code in my wordpress template to make sure it is optimized and has no unnecessary or bloated code in it?

Does your company provide the daily original and optimized content my blog will need in order to be successful?

We do all of the above. Blogging for seo purposes is a lot more than just putting up a wordpress blog and doing a little social bookmarking. Read more about Business Blogging

Please submit 2 short social media case studies highlighting success.
Please submit 1 short social media case study highlighting failure.

Again with the case studies. Show me some verifiable client websites that rank well in more than just one search engine for their main key phrases.

General Vendor Qualifications

How many full-time employees are in the agency? What are their roles?

What if they have a virtual team that does piecework? What if they have all part-timers and all of them are excellent at what they do. This question seems pointless and doesn’t necessarily qualify or disqualify anyone as a good seo company. I could branch off another company tomorrow and hire 20 full-time employees. It wouldn’t prove I can make you money. It would raise the prices I have to charge you though.

What SEM conferences did you attend in the past year, and which do you plan to attend this year? (SES, PubCon, SMX, etc.)

And I really love this question. My answer: 0 and I don’t plan to attend any this year or next year either. Going to conferences doesn’t make anyone an seo guru. Watching videos and reading ebooks doesn’t qualify anyone to play around with a company’s income by managing their seo.

It does mean that the seo gurus who attend the conferences can all tell us who they lunched with at the latest seo conference in their blogs though. It means they can name-drop better than the rest of us.

I’m not saying attending one of these conferences is wrong. But let’s call it what it is. A trade show. Attending or even buying a booth at a trade show does not mean that person is more qualified than anyone else. It means they have more time on their hands or have enough of their client’s money that they can send someone to attend or have someone else working while they go meet and greet.

What SEM conferences have members of your staff spoken at, and which ones will your staff speak at this year?

What trade publications (online or paper) do members of your staff write for, and on what topics?

Again, if you have the time to do these things, that’s great. But it is not a question that will really help you know that you are hiring someone that can help you make more sales with your website.

Obviously, those that do have the time to attend conferences and write to trade publications will disagree. Most of the time I am so busy working on my client’s projects that I don’t even have time to finish my own websites, so I certainly don’t have time to run around marketing myself as the next Internet Guru.

Please submit 3 links to articles you or your employees have written.

I do try to take the time to write articles and my blogs, but sometimes that doesn’t even get done because my clients need me on their projects.

In which forums is your agency “known”? (SEW, Sphinn, Cre8asite, High Rankings, etc.)
Please provide links to your social media and forum profile pages.

Wow, having the time not only to attend seo conferences and trade shows, but also to write to trade publications, participate in forums a lot, and hang around on social networking sites qualifies someone to be an seo expert?

There are real seo experts that do have the time to do these things. So I’m not saying by doing them they are not an seo expert. What I am saying is that doing these things does not necessarily mean that they are an seo expert. So the questions about these things will not help you qualify someone as an seo expert.

What traditional business affiliations (BBB, Chambers of Commerce, etc.) does your firm have?

Not a requirement for an online business. A simple google search for the company will provide more ionformation than the fact they joined the BBB.

Are you a SEMPO member?

Not required and membership in sempo does not autmatically qualify someone to handle my seo needs. It’s a great place to network with all those guys you met at the last seo trade show though.

Does your agency have in-house programmers and designers, or do you outsource?

Good question.

If outsourcing, what are your partner-vendors’ URLs?

None of your business. I have seo companies that use our services as a content provider and other things, but that agreement is between us and them and it comes with nondisclosure agreements. So they are not going to give you my url nor should they.

What analytics applications, other than Google Analytics, are used?

Is there an in-house method to measure offline conversions (phone, etc.)?

What experience does your agency have in local/mobile?

All three of those are great questions.

The point is that if 10 seo company owners wrote the questions they thought you should ask an seo company before hiring them, you would not get the same questions recommended by any of them. There would be a few all agree on, but there would be major differences between them.

Marty Weintraub is owner and principal of AimClear, a search engine optimization (SEO) Internet marketing firm in Duluth and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Marty has been providing PPC (pay per click) and organic optimization to businesses in Minnesota since 2001.

Everyone learned seo in different ways. There are a lot of seo “experts” that are followers and not leaders though, as with any field of expertise. These people tend to read whatever their seo mentor writes and then they do that for all of their clients. They do not innovate or get creative. They follow a specific school of thought led by one well-known search engine marketing expert.

It does not mean they are bad seo companies to hire. They are following some standard practices that have a track record of success. So they can get you some decent results. They will help you keep up with your competitors.

The problem is that the web is constantly changing. You need a leader who innovates and knows when to be a little creative in their approach to seo to be ahead of the pack rather than to simply keep up.

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