In our last post we gave you an idea of what you can expect to pay for search engine optimisation in the UK.  In this post we will share how you can make sure you are getting value for money.

Firstly you should make sure you know exactly what you are paying for.  Some SEO Agencies seem to operate on a ‘smoke and mirrors’ policy and seem reluctant to tell you what they are actually doing.  You should have a detailed SEO proposal that clearly shows what your SEO provider will do for you – whether as a one-off or an ongoing monthly basis.

Every activity done should be measurable either by a detailed report showing content created / circulated with links to that content or a simple spreadsheet showing details of any on-page work completed.

If part of the work involves an initial website SEO audit you should see the report and agree with your SEO provider what activities need to be done first – i.e. the work that will achieve maximum impact should be prioritised.

Many automated SEO audits feature ‘aspirational’ to do lists which in truth will not have a huge impact on your online success.  These can be ignored – don’t invest in something that is not needed.

Keyword research is usually done at the beginning of every SEO program, but often we see this done only as a one-off exercise.  Keyword research should be ongoing and to fail to do this work each month will probably mean you are paying to optimise your content for keywords that are no longer the most effective.

Google and the other major search engines have invested heavily in making sure that sites using ‘spam’ SEO techniques do not achieve a high ranking position.  Many sites for long established businesses will have used what are now classed as ‘spam’ or ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques in the past, albeit unwittingly at the time and this is an issue that needs to be resolved before any new SEO work is undertaken.  If there are any manual actions or ‘spammy’ links to the site they need to be removed.

A regular link audit is recommended so that any issues can be sorted out quickly.  It is important that your SEO partner has your site in their Google webmaster Tools (GWT) account to see if there are any new issues – your monthly SEO report should also cover work done for you on link audits and GWT issues, including crawl errors, duplicate content, titles etc.

SEO in 2015 should not just be about increasing your rankings in the search engines.  It should also look at the important issues such as the number of visitors to your website, the number of conversions – all of which can be measured using Google Analytics.

Social media is also a key component in your SEO strategy, especially in terms of content syndication.  Again a measure should be in place to show the work done in terms of posts to your news feeds, video and blog post syndication to the social bookmarking sites etc.

Good SEO is a good investment, bad, often cheap, SEO is a waste of money.  Make sure you know what you are paying for.

If you would like more information about GB Web Marketing SEO services please leave a comment below or use the contact page.