What should I be asking the SEO company?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Jason Bean: My initial alarm would be that the company has "promised us page one google". Fairly certain that violates Google`s TOS. You can read more as to why here. https://www.google.com/search...
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  Victoria Gitelshtein: Actually, any SEO company cant promise (!) you smth like this - first page within 6 months. They just can`t. Because 1) it does not totally depends on them but on google algorythms, competition of your keywords and so on.
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  Victoria Gitelshtein: They do can promise you to make certain actions as better as they can and make your placement higher then it originally was.
  Regarding what to demand it can differs. Actually they should tell you before starting to work what they supposed to do, their plan...It can be articles, back links, and other
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  Smruti Palwe Ghodke: Surely you should know where the keywords will be after certain period of time but including that there are other factors you should ask to SEO company.. what is Domain Rating..
  What is traffic on your sale page / service page..and about referring domain .. also how many are dofollow referring domains. Check for quality of backlinks
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  Nickolai Kalachnikov: Thanks for the responses. I guess my question is. I need to write them an email. What are some good questions to ask them? I don`t want to sound like I don`t know much.
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  Delah Gomasi: These are questions you should`ve asked before any money left your account.
  
  - What deliverables will you be completing each month?
  
  - Is GMB optimization included in your service?
  
  - Is content writing included in your service?
  
  - Is conversion rate optimization included in your service.
  
  - What is your link building strategy like?
  
  - Will you be creating PBNS? or will you solely rely on guest-posting?
  
  - Do you complete the work in house or is it white-labelled?
  
  - How much of your work do you outsource?
  
  - What tools will you be using to track rankings?
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  VJ Thakur: Hi buddy, I am a SEO guy. According to my opinion you need to ask backlink which are working and where they are making link?
  Is all the link are coming to your website is a good TF or DA belonging websites?
  What is the status of Google analytics and Google search console?
  Main thing is your website.
  Is your website working properly?
  Their should be no issue on your website like, Speed, content, images, responsive and much more.
  
  Hope this will help you.
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  Jayasanker Jayakrishnan: Your best shot is just logging onto google webmaster and check how many impressions you`re getting for the keywords. If your impression count is steadily increasing, you`ll have better chance of ranking in near future.
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  Frank Geric: First off, I’d ask: What is the strategic plan? What is the content strategy? What do the buyer personas look like? What are the buying preferences and search behaviors of the ideal buyer? What are the deliverables? Is this local, regional or international SEO? What is the project status? The notion of promising page one is naive at best because search results are individualized and no two people will have the same results for the exact same question. Also 6 months is a really short window unless you have huge structural problems with your site (e.g. entire site is “no follow”)
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  Vivek Tiwari: Hello, Frank Geric you have covered almost! please don`t mind me adding a few extra points. - 1 - Did they do buyer persona for content marketing? 2 - How the buyer journey happens? ask them a content strategy according to this. thank you.
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  VJ Thakur: According to Google latest algorithm, they don`t need any backlink or marketing. They need only how trustworthy your site is and the also same for the backlink.
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  Frank Geric: VJ Thakur I’m not sure what that even means. You don’t need backlinks but your backlinks have to be trustworthy???
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  VJ Thakur: I want to say If we are making backing from the website they are not match with our niche, they are useless. Suppose if we are creating 20 link in a day but after few time they are removed or site has been closed. These links are convert to dead link and harmful to our website. Then it is bad According to the Google algorithm.
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  Frank Geric: VJ Thakur spam links have been black hat for 20 years.
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  VJ Thakur: Frank Geric Are you sure?
  
  I don`t go with black hat SEO. I know these types of techniques are slow, but when you get the result you face will be glow 😊
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  Jane Phelps: Because of all the algo changes, it is nearly impossible to promise page 1 rankings. Do you know what the metrics for the competitors are? Is there even realistic expectations to get onto page 1? Run - run away fast!
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  Dennis Dubner: Nickolai will leave this thread even more confused than before, IMHO. Nickolai Kalachnikov you can pm me and I’ll show you via Skype/Zoom how you can control your SEO agency.
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  Albert Prano: The promise of page 1 results is a bad sign. However, if you are not getting monthly progress reports from your SEO company, then request them (or at least a report every 2 months). Of course, it depends what kind of plan you are paying for, but I would want one well-written, optimized blog post each month, which is then promoted on social media. And say NO to low-quality backlinks.
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  Jagdish Prajapat: Nickolai Kalachnikov hi mate
  In SEO there are lots of KPI`s which you can ask the SEO company to track and send you the monthly comparison report. This will help you to understand which thing is improving which is not. And, According to that you can do cross questions with them. Also, if they are not sending you proper report then be aware they might fooling you.
  It would be great if you inbox me your website URL so that I can do sanity check and let you know are they really doing SEO or not. Because single blog in two month is like they are doing nothing.
  For me SEO is only technical, relevance and Authority.
  Happy to help 🙂
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  Nickolai Kalachnikov: This is our URL www.desiren.com.au Would anyone know if our site is on the right track? Thanks in advance. The SEO company sent us a report last month, I guess the only way to tell if anything is being done is by the report they will send us next month