6 questions to ask potential SEO providers
Don’t get caught out by companies who don’t have SEO as a core competence.
Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my big concerns in the dental marketing environment is companies who pretend to know about certain topics but really don’t.
Over the last couple of years there has been a proliferation of so-called experts and gurus lining up to sell marketing services to the unsuspecting dental community. More often than not, these providers actually do something else but see services such as SEO and social media as something which they can bolt-on to their service offer to make more cash.
There are video companies who now do some SEO work (badly), trainers and treatment coordinators who sell social media and email-marketing, print companies who try to build websites and more. In most cases they are good at their core competence but are they really delivering with the other “services” they decided to bolt-on?
So as a dental professional looking to ensure competence, good value and return from such services, how do you actually go about validating what suppliers can (and can’t) do? In this article I’m going to take a look at search engine optimisation (SEO) as a case in point. This is because SEO, done badly, can be really detrimental for a business and very difficult to recover from. So it’s one service which you really do need to get right.
Here are six questions to ask your potential dental SEO provider:
Show me your results – this sounds simple but perhaps not quite a simple as you might think. There are a number of companies out there who can show you page one results in Google but of course won’t show you where their clients are back on page 5. In some cases, these websites have actually been penalised by Google due to bad SEO and are really struggling. It’s worth spending some time having a look around Google to identify websites that aren’t perhaps performing as well as you might have expected – look down in the footer and you’ll see the designer’s credit. Whilst this could be because the site has actually not been subject to any promotion, there are also a lot of examples where they have actually suffered as a result of poor optimisation work. It’s pretty easy to spot if you look carefully.
Is SEO one of the core parts of your business? – a number of companies who have bolted on SEO don’t actually do the work themselves i.e. they outsource it. Consequently they don’t really understand what is a complex and rapidly changing discipline.
For example, there is one company which has a good reputation for brand design and in the last few years has been offering SEO along with their websites. The sites they build are actually quite good but many of them are way back in the rankings due to the poor optimisation which has been used. Closer inspection shows that they have hundreds of really bad links pointing to them, typical of the rubbish that is still offered by some off-shore link vendors. This is indicative of (bad) outsourced SEO and which must be causing the supplier some serious headaches when trying to explain to their clients what happened.
What techniques do you use to promote websites in Google? – if your provider says that they are just going to add keywords to your site and then build some back-links, be cautious. This is indicative of a company hanging on to old techniques which no longer work well on their own. Whilst good links are still very useful, other complementary techniques such as blogging, content generation and social media are now commonplace in well-run internet marketing campaigns.
Are your campaigns bespoke or just come as a package? – all SEO campaigns are different and consequently should be bespoke and tailored to the specific situation. If a company is offering set prices for SEO, be cautious.
Do you provide a clear monthly report and access to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools? – these are the main reporting suites which will show you how your website is progressing. If your new dental marketing partner won’t give you access, then you need to question why.
Do you insist on a long-term contract and need a large deposit up-front? – this is way too prevalent and completely unnecessary. An ethical vendor will not ask you to tie-in to onerous contracts and should leave you free to walk away at any stage.
Summary
There is an ever increasing number of suppliers trying to sell services into the dental business for which they have neither the skill-set or experience to deliver a good job. This is particularly so for SEO and associated services such as social media. Being on the wrong end of poor SEO is bad news and very difficult to recover from.
Consequently it pays to do your homework and try to ensure that the marketing partner you choose is up to the job.
If you would like more information about SEO or perhaps have concerns that your current supplier is not delivering, please get in touch on 01332 672548.