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Custom Google Analytics Reports You Can Actually Use

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google-analytics

www.vicimediainc.com

As a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a little thing called Google Analytics. Google Analytics (or GA) collects data such as referral traffic, paid search traffic, social traffic, and more to help you track where your visitors are coming from and what they’re doing. But these default reports just barely scratch the surface of what Google Analytics has to offer.

In fact, if you just use the defaults and regular configurations, you’re only utilizing 30% of what Google Analytics has to offer.

Let’s talk about the other 70%: Google Analytics Custom Reports.

Like its name, a custom GA report is one that you create and customize based on the information you need. You can create your own report or you can utilize the reports from the Google Solutions Gallery – which allows you to access to custom reports created by others.

Here are five GA custom reports created by the experts that you can either import into your own account or re-create to customize further.

Site Speed Metrics by Browser & Browser Version

This site performance custom reports allows you to identify browsers or versions of browsers that have slow load times. You’ll want to keep a close eye on how long before the page is actually usable, known as the average document interactive time. Make sure your site is loading quickly to keep your bounce rate low – especially since slow sites are a conversion killer.

Metrics by Day of Week Name & Name

This custom report is great for finding out when an online store or site is most active. This is especially helpful if you’re planning to run a promotion or flash sale. It’ll show you the day of the week and even hour of the day when your customers are most active on your site.

Paid vs. Organic Search Performance

If you’re running a paid advertisement, this custom report is a must-have. It allows you to take a peek into the user experience of both paid ads and organic search. You will be able to see the behavioral differences between the two and learn ways to improve user experience.

All Campaigns: Cost Analysis

This custom report allows you to see how much you spent on an ad, how often it appeared, how many people clicked on it, the per session value, the cost per click, and more.

PPC Keyword/Matched Query Report

If you’re looking to find out which queries are being matched to your ad, this report will do the trick. It’ll give you an understanding of what PPC type – exact, phrase, broad – you should use in order to keep your ads relevant.

Whether you plan on creating your own custom Google Analytics report or using one of the above ones, you’ll gain insight into your customers behavior so you can take your business to the next level.

In need of some marketing help? Let Retaliate1st help. We offer services such as search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media. Learn more about our services here.

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How to Get Your Site Featured in Google’s Snippet

How Do You Get Your Site Featured in Google’s Snippet?

Getting to the top of Google’s search pages is no longer enough to dominate your completion. While good SEO keeps your site on the first page, and well-written ads keep you atop the PPC results, there is a newcomer in the search world: Snippets

Snippets

Google wants to help searchers. It’s what launched them to become the dominant search engine that they are today. Anyone who remembers the frustrating search results on Yahoo, Lycos, or Dogpile will attest that Google simply delivers better search results.

With mobile and “question” searches rising, Google has changed the game again.

In almost any search you’re now bound to find a snippet of info, often enumerated, in a small box between the final PPC ad and the first organic listing. Below is the snippet that appears for the search “How to Get More Leads:”

Snippets Are Quick Answers

Google puts up snippets with the best info available. This allows users to get the answers they’re looking for without clicking the link. However, since the snippets tend to display only part of the info, the links inside of the snippet box tend to be clicked a lot.

  • Google can source simple, direct answers from their own knowledge base.
  • But, most business or product related queries are sourced from third party sites, i.e., your web site.

Imagine the potential traffic that would result in an SEO strategy that lands you in the top 3 of the PPC ads, with a featured snippet, and then the top organic search result.

How to Get a Featured Snippet

The problem is that getting your site featured isn’t easy. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And, with snippet results being so new, we’re not even exactly sure how Google pulls the info. Or, if they will rotate results in the future.

But, we can speculate and improve our business sites so that we have the best possible chance of being featured. At worst, you’ll improve the content of your site and make your customers very happy. An informative, easy-to-read site will almost always bring in more leads, clients, and sales.

Step 1:

  • SearchEngineLand recommends the following tactic for your first step:

Identify a common, simple question related to your market area. Provide a clear and direct answer to the question. Offer value added info beyond the direct answer. Make it easy for users (and Google) to find the information

The advice is solid. Their answer is actually the featured snippet for the search “how to get a featured snippet.”

Step 2:

  • Answer Questions

Research the most asked questions about your product, service, or industry. Create pages and blog posts that answer this question.

Be direct

– title pages and blogs with the exact question wording. Then, answer the query with as much info as needed. Use numbered lists and bullet points.

Break up info to make it both easier for your customer to absorb (or skim), and for Google to pull the best bits.

Step 3

  • Make your snippet-worthy information easy to find

This requires some basic SEO housekeeping:

  • Giving each article or blog a strong title that uses the question
  • Using the question and its variation in the content
  • Adding pictures or video, with proper tagging, as needed
  • Over deliver on info. Don’t skimp on the answer. You can provide long copy while also using bullets and numbered lists.
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How To Get Better Targeting on Your Organic Traffic

Everyone wants free traffic. Organic traffic is the best traffic. It is free and it is natural – like the food and its good for you. There is a way to further benefit from organic traffic and that is to optimize the targeting on your organic reach on social media. If the targeting is laser focused then there is a much higher chance of converting that free traffic into a paying customer and making money. Savvy marketers are increasing their organic traffic, but optimizing the targeting on their organic social media reach. Retaliate1st provides our guide to growing your organic traffic.

Targeting To Grow Your Organic Traffic

  1. Better Targeting on Organic Social Media Reach

Much like you can target your ideal audience with paid facebook ads, you are now able to do something similar with organic posts.

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This could help you reach much more of your audience through non-paid ads. It’s still not going to reach everyone, but it will expose your messages to many more people than are seeing them now.

Not everyone who follows your page will want to see every post you make, nor will the be interested in all of your news and events. But, when you target your audience for your posts, you can reach those who have:

  • Liked, shared, or commented on similar posts in the past
  • Took action on similar posts in the past
  • Have interests that match your news/event/post
  • Are in the demographic you’re targeting

While it’s important to target the best possible audience, the best part about this is that you can now leave out those who won’t be interested in what you’re saying this particular time. This increases the juice of each post, gaining more engagement with your audience.

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  1. Paid Engagement Posts

These do cost a little money to boost, but for next to noghitn you can boost yoru paid and non paid engagement. First, make sure you use this on your best posts.

Content Is Key For Organic Traffic

A little research will show you clearly that some of your posts or post types are in the top 1 – 5% of yoru best interatcions – likes, shares, clicks, etc.

Forget the stuff that gets very little recognition, stick to only our best content.

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Now, after posting your best stuff, you can reach more people by boosting post-engagement. Yes, it will cost you $5 – 20 per post. But, you help your organic reach as well because you are almost guaranteed that:

  • This top-quality post will get likes, their friends see these likes and can interact with your page
  • This post will be shared. More shares = a ton more organic views (which leads to likes, further shares, etc.), thereby boosting your organic juice for each of these posts
  1. Use More Video

The rise of video content on Youtube, Vine, Snapchat has lead to less text-based posts being viewed on Facebook.

If you want to overcome this hurdle, simply post more video content. Producing video is easier than ever, with the iPhone and top android phones shooting super high quality video. Video, quick edit, post. Use a good Call to Action and your post engagement will soar.

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The 6 Best Extensions for Your Site’s SEO and Adwords

SEO is the perfect tactic to optimize to drive free traffic to your website. While organic traffic is fantastic and can be created through optimizing web pages, this organic traffic can be amplified by using SEO extensions. Here Retaliate1st list our favorite SEO extensions to boost your organic traffic.

The 6 Best Extensions for Your Site’s SEO and Adwords

Google Tag Assistant

IF you are running your company’s SEO without help from a professional firm, or if you just want to check up on your SEO investment, Tag Assistant can help you verity that Adwords and Analytics are up and running properly. The best part about this extension is that with one click it lays out everything you need to see without digging around in the minuteau of Adwords (and it’s oft-lugubrious interface) or analytics.

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Builtwith

Builtwith works with Google Chrome, and Is an excellent way to see what your competitors are up to by letting you know what they’re using to build their site. You can see

PageRank for Firefox

This is a great tool for evaluating other sites when it comes to building links, guest posting, forming joint ventures, etc. The best part is, you don’t have to dig at all – the site’s Page Rank is displayed right in the toolbar at the top of your browser.

Further SEO Extensions

Majestic SEO Backlink Analyizer

If linking building is part of your SEO strategy, you need to make sure those links are not coming from bad neighborhoods. Further, you want the best quality links possible to your site. You can check out anchor text, site reputation, as well as Page Rank and a few other key indicators.

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Boomerang

This isn’t so much for SEO as it is a productivity tool. Boomerang for Gmail allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, schedule follow ups. IF you are dealing with multiple clients, and working with people in different time zones, this tool is a life saver. No more worrying that you’re emailing your Japanese clients at 4am Tokyo time… just schedule the emails to hit their offices during work hours. This can cut down on a lot of back and forth.

For any sales pro, follow ups are essential. Boomerang will do all of these for you.

Keywords Everywhere

This Chome extension can cut down on your keyword research time dramatically. When you search something in Google, it will display the volume of searches for this term and gives you the average cost per click for that keyword or phrase. This will help you cut out a lot of groundwork when searching for perfect keywords and phrases, and you’ll get a quick idea of what you’ll need to invest in Adwords to make them work for you.

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3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

Running adwords, Facebook ads, or even pouring time and effort into SEO campaigns only to drive traffic to a landing page that doesn’t convert is maddening. It’s also a waste of resources. Even if you craft a fantastic ad, your landing page must walk the visitor from curious clicker to lead. This is an art and a science, and its why designers and marketers charge so much to develop high-converting landing pages.

If you have the budget for it, get a pro to build your landing page. If you don’t, learn how to do it yourself until you can raise the capital to hire someone.

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Follow these – tips and you’ll build a landing page that converts visitors into leads, and leads into sales. Even if you do have the budget to go pro, you can use these tips to evaluate what the marketer has designed for you.

3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

  1. Every Page Must Have a Clear, Powerful Headline

Many businesses make one of two mistakes when developing landing pages:

  • Their headline is weak and does nothing to inspire visitors to take the step of buying/signing up/calling.
  • Their headline is well-written, but is confusing or doesn’t mesh with the test of the ad and landing page

Writing great headlines has been the subject of countless books and sales courses, so it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain it fully, but if you lead with benefits, ask a question or create interest, you’ll be head-and-shoulders above your competition.

If you manage to create a great headline, don’t waste it by matching it to a landing page with text that doesn’t quite fit the main message. Also, keep your headline in form with your ad text. The headlines of your ad and landing page can be very similar, or at least close enough so that your visitor knows they’re in the right place.

  1. Bullets are Weapons

The current fashion is to build a great headline, then follow it up with a few bullet points worth of text, then ask for the sale or sign-up.

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Great idea. But choose your bullets wisely.

Bullet Points

In reality, bullets are just sub-headlines, and should be bursting with benefits. Not features! Don’t waste a bullet telling me your product is blue unless that somehow benefits me. Now, you can say

  • Our Widget Only Weighs .5oz, So it Fits in Your Pocket (and we now offer it in blue!)

That statement pairs benefit with feature, which is common practice on landing pages and sales letters because it’s proven to work. In this case, it’s a good idea to follow the bold benefit, and italicized parenthetical feature.

Pick your strongest 3 – 5 benefits and turn them into your bullet points. Put your strongest first and last, since your last bullet point will be just above, or to the left of the call to action.landing page

  1. Call to Action Better Call Them to Action

Your call to action is vital. Weak CTAs lose leads.

Online, most companies turn to the simple, and ineffective, “Submit” to get the customer’s info. Submit is a terrible, boring, and is loaded with subversive subtext. No one wants to submit to anything, especially when giving their info to strangers online.

Use strong CTAs on web forms:

  • Click Here (basic but proven to work)
  • Click Here + Benefit (Click Here to Get Your 10% Discount/Free E-book/Free Estimate)
  • Yes! Give Me My Benefit (discount/info/estimate)

Match the benefit in the CTA with the major benefit promised in your headline for maximum conversions. For more tips on converting using inbound methods check out our optimization page.

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4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

Marekting has many trends that rise and fall. The current trend that many marketers are focusing on is content marketing. Content marketing requires that a company creates content to power an inbound engine and drive leads or sales via their website. However, there is a flaw with content marketing. How do you come up with ideas for content? Especially as you start to scale the content up. Retaliate1st has pioneered content marketing for many companies, including start-ups in the pet, tech, wearable and app world. Here we make our 4 recommendations on how you can continually come up with content to power your content marketing and inbound strategy.

4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

  1. Google Auto-Suggest

Google’s autosuggest feature is a treasure trove for content creators. Google suggests the actual phrases or questions that people are searching for, so you know that these autosuggests will make great page and blog titles.

Google makes these suggestions based on real searches. The most popular get placed in the auto-suggest categories. If you click on one, you’ll notice at the bottom of the page there are even more suggested links.

How do you use this data to your advantage?

If you have a food deliver service in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse neighborhood, start by typing in “food delivery”

You’ll see results like:

  • Food delivery near me
  • Food delivery near me open
  • Food delivery Rittenhouse
  • Food deliveries near here

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You just found at least 4 article titles that will carry a ton of SEO value if they’re written and optimized well.

Customer Centric Content Marketing

The idea is to get into the mind of your customer. Play around with questions you’ve been asked.

A basic search for “can I order food” returns these suggestions:

  • Can I order food with paypal
  • Can I order food with a check
  • Can I order food to a hotel
  • Can I order food near here

Again, you have 4 SEO-rich titles and topics that people are actually searching for.

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  1. Trade Magazines

If you’re selling B2B services or products, trade magazines are loaded with ideas. Just because something has been written about doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a fresh perspective on the issue.

Plus, every magazine has a letters to the editor section. Again, what better place to address questions than those coming directly from your potential customers.

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Check the back of the magazine. If you’ve been reading it for a few months, you’ll notice a few advertisers that are listed consistently. This is because whatever they’re selling, readers are buying. Study the ads, the products, and services they sell and address these things on your site, in your newsletter, and in your content strategy.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing

  1. Lead Forms

If your lead form has a text box with “how can we help you,” or if you have a help page on your site, the questions and concerns of your customers can not only help you create new content, but it will also help you from dealing with redundant issues.

If 15-people are writing in to ask where they can buy your widget in Green instead of red, then either make the answer clearer on your website, or address it in an FAQ. Either way, you have new content plus you won’t have to answer another 15-emails about the green vs red conundrum.

  1. Social Media

Searching hashtags, trends, or simply following brands that offer similar, or related, services to yours can help you get into the mind of potential customers. Is there a need out there not being filled? More importantly, is there a want going unsatisfied?

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Content Marketing –> SEO and Social Media

Can your business step in with the solution? Are a lot of Facebookers asking where they can find a product similar to yours? Or, are they confused about how a new app works? Find the questions, craft a response, post it to your website and social media channels. It will help your business climb in the Google rankings, and it will help your customers see why they should buy from you.

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How To Write Ad Copy To Get Clicks On Facebook and Instagram

If you’ve ever hired a top-gun copywriter, or wracked your own brain for the best possible ad copy on Facebook and Instagram, only to come up with sub-par results, it may not be your words that sunk the ship.

The visual you choose can have a huge impact on the success of your ad copy and posts.

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5 Ways To Dominate With Ad Copy

  1. Brightly colored visuals, especially those with blue as the dominant color, attract 80% more readers than darker pictures. Both Instagram and Facebook use a white background and a lot of white space. Placing bright, colorful pictures in the info stream helps draw the attention of users.
  2. A recent study showed that nearly 70% of senior marketing execs felt that visual content (pictures, infographics, video, graphics, etc.) were a major part of their branding, marketing, and social media campaigns. Graphic ads are using very short copy combined with stunning visuals to build brands and increase leads on social media.
  3. Facebook Ads: ads and posts with relevant images got nearly 95% more views than those without a relevant picture. This should tell you that you not only need great photos with your ads, but that you should also keep the “zany picture to draw attention” tactic to a minimum. A picture of a clown with bloody fangs may draw the eye, but when Facebookers see that it’s attached to an ad about wristwatches, they’re going to look away. And, they may reject your brand in the future because your ads came off as dishonest.

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Advanced Ad Copy

  1. Infographics get three-times more shares and likes on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Most of your infographics should be purely informational, with a strong call to action built in.
  2. Web users followed directions nearly 350% better when they were showed the path through a visual vs. text only. This can be applied to your Facebook and Instagram ads in an effort to grab more leads. Helping people understand the process visually could land you triple the sign-ups and follows. Instagram posts get nearly 4x’s the likes when using a picture featuring a face. No matter what your product or service is, have it featured with real people to draw more customer attention.
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How to Bootstrap Your Digital Marketing

In the early stages of your business, or during the initial launch of a new product or service, you may not have an unlimited budget to promote your new venture online. But, this doesn’t mean that you have to skimp on your digital marketing efforts. You can bootstrap your digital marketing.

Even if your business is brand new, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Bootstrapping, or using cash flow and profits to fund the next phase of your business. The concept is battle-tested, and it works.

But, do the rules apply to online businesses? How can you best re-invest profits to grow your business by marketing online?

In the early stages of your business, or during the initial launch of a new product or service, you may not have an unlimited budget to promote your new venture online. But, this doesn’t mean that you have to skimp on your digital marketing efforts.

digital-marketing

Even if your business is brand new, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Bootstrapping, or using cash flow and profits to fund the next phase of your business. The concept is battle-tested, and it works.

But, do the rules apply to online businesses? How can you best re-invest profits to grow your business by marketing online?

Bootstrap your Digital Marketing

  1. Start with Social Capital

Using social media to promote your business on a budget is nothing new. In fact, it’s not even very effective when you try the totally cost-free route. If you have an amazing product or service that goes viral, great. But for most businesses, that’s not happening right away.

You start a Facebook page, an Instagram, a Pintrest account and are faced with the social media equivalent of a writer’s blank page fears: there’s no one there. You can promote to friends, like other pages, and go through the litany of low/no cost promotion options. You should do those. But, it’s going to be a long climb if you rely solely on these methods.

The good news is that Facebook ads are great for small or new businesses on a budget.

Promoting your posts and “buying” likes is amazingly cost-effective. If the thought of advertising, and losing your shirt, on Google’s pay per click program, Facebook ads are for you.

First, for a few hundred bucks, you can grow your audience to several thousand people. If you are focusing on ads rather than followers, the cost is largely the same. So, it’s possible to spend under a grand and get the word out to thousands of potential customers.

If your site, landing pages, product pages, and copywriting are on-point, you’ll generate sales and leads. Now you can use these profits to expand your ad campaigns.

Digital Marketing for Beginners

  1. Do Work In-House… for Now

You’ve decided to take to Facebook to run ads.

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Who’s doing your ad writing?

Who’s doing the copy for your landing pages, product pages, and website?

These should be done by copywriting professionals. Great copy equals leads and sales; poorly written ads and web pages cost you leads, sales, and losses in ad revenue.

But, early on, you may not have the budget to hire top copywriters. You may not even have the capital to hire mid-level writers.

You’ll have to either:

  • Write ads yourself – this is a free option, but comes with an enormous challenge: writing great ads is not easy.

However, writing passable ads isn’t impossible. There are dozens of books on how to write good Facebook ads. Pick one up, study it, practice writing ads (on paper), then try a few out online. Testing is the only way to know if ads work, so take mini-budgets and test two versions of the same ad. Pick the winner and run with it. Once it generates a few sales, take the profits and hire someone better than you.

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  • Hire a copywriting intern – there are a lot of talented copywriters still learning their way, or studying marketing in college. One of the easiest ways to land big copywriting gigs is to have a killer portfolio.

Newbies need to build their work, so will be willing to work just to build it up their portfolios. Find a few good writers, have them produce ads and your web copy that generates some capital, then use the profits to hire pros. This method is great because you can continue to utilize up-and-comers to produce content while you funnel profits into getting high-end work done on your sales funnel.

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5 Steps to Dominating Google Local

Google Local is a great way for start-ups and small businesses to grab a foot hold in their industry. It allows marketers to target local customers and consumers to search for local businesses and products. Here we list our 5 keys to dominating Google Local.

5 Steps to Dominating Google Local

  1. Consistency in NAP

Consistency in branding is important. It’s even more important when it comes to your listing on Google MyBusiness (Google Local) and across the internet on local sites. If you want to crack the top 3 in map listings, your business’ info must be on point.

Make sure that your business’ name, address, and phone number is the same on all sites. This can get tricky if you are using local numbers for different offices, but if you can manage to use an 800 number as your go-to, then add the locals as secondary points of contact, that’s a safe bet.

While it may seem trivial, make sure your address is the same on all sites that list your business. Sometimes this can be daunting because dozens of new sites pop up every day, and many of them simply scrape your info and post it. They make mistakes.

  • If your office is on 100 Third street, and one of them lists it as 100 3rd street, you will run into problems.

Your business name should be consistent as well. Keep it simple! If you’re Joe’s Plumbing, don’t get cute with Joe’s Plumbing Brooklyn, Joe’s Plumbing Staten Island, Joe’s Plumbing and Hot Tubs. Pick one, and stick to it.

Google Local Guidelines

From Google’s guidelines regarding business names:

Any additional information, when relevant, can be included in other sections of your business information (e.g., “Address“, “Categories“). Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g., “Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters” instead of “Google”) by including marketing taglines, store codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions, or containment information (e.g. “Chase ATM in Duane Reade”) is not permitted.

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  1. Choose the Best Categories

Don’t “category stuff.” Google views this in the same way they view keyword stuffing, ie, they’ll hit you for it. Pick out the minimal number of categories that fit your business.

Content Drives Google Local

  1. Add Content

Add as much relevant, helpful info as possible on your Google+ local page. IT’s possible to add video, photos, and long-form text. It’s no secret that Google thrives on content, and rewards content marketing. If you have videos of your product or service, add them. Link to your YouTube page.

  • Have pictures of your product? Social media-driven photos of your customers? Add them.
  • Go into detail (benefit-driven detail) about your products, services, staff, awards you’ve won, and what you can do for the customer.

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  1. Cultivate Customer Reviews

This is good practice in general, as user reviews are crucial to the health of your business. Having customers review you on your Google listing is important to both your business’ reputation, and your local ranking. Well-reviewed businesses have a leg up on the competition.

  1. Build High Quality Links

Links to your business site help with SEO. The stronger your main site is, the stronger your local listing will be. Links from quality sites helps build domain authority, which in turn boosts your local ranking.

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6 Key Questions to Ask an SEO Firm

Despite the insider blogs that proclaim that SEO is Dead, the reality is that as long as Google exists and dominates the market, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will be a huge part of the success of your business. Most people cannot perform SEO elements themselves and the key decision is which SEO firm they should hire. Here Retaliate1st list the questions you should ask any SEO form you are considering hiring.

Offsite SEO Factors

Offsite SEO Factors

6 Key Questions to Ask an SEO Firm Before Hiring Them

Even those who scream that paid traffic is superior miss the fact that unless your site is optimized, you’ll pay more for clicks and lose visitors, leads, and sales because your site is confusing to use, doesn’t have good content, or is poorly written. At its base SEO is taking great copywriting and optimizing it slightly for the search engines.

It is an art and a science, and should be done by a professional. But, the SEO field is rich with scammers, fly-by-night companies, and fraudulent freelancers.

Before you make the wise decision to invest in professional services, ask the SEO firm these questions:

  1. What’s Your Method?

How an SEO firm plans to get your business to the top of the rankings heap can tell you a lot about how successful they are.

Everyone has their own methods, and some are better suited for your business than others, but some are just plain terrible.

The SEO Firm Should Have a Method

For example, link building is still a key to getting your site ranked. It’s old-school, time-consuming, and requires an investment of cash. But, it works.

However, if you do a quick search and find that most links in your industry cost between 20 and 50-dollars, and the firm is pitching you on getting 10,000 links for $19.99, you can be sure they’re involved with spam tactics.

2. How Good is Your Content?

Content --> SEO and Social Media

Content –> SEO and Social Media

Not all SEO firms will provide content, but they should. Content is the future of digital marketing. Without relevant, useful, well-written content, your site (and yoru sales) will suffer.

The easiest way tot get a handle on their skills is to ask for samples. Even if they’re new, they can mock up an article or two for you.

If the text reads like it was written by a foreigner, or by a computer program, they’re trying to scam you. Google hates garbage content and will penalize your business.

  1. Who Have Your Worked With?

It doesn’t matter if they’ve worked with Fortune 500 companies, or a mom-and-pop shoe store, everyone outside of a complete newbie will have reviews. If not, don’t be shy about asking for references from past clients.

Don’t neglect this step! It can tell you a lot about the service you’re about to invest in. Even if they’re inexperienced, every SEO expert has done some free work to build their portfolio, so they should absolutely have a handful of references and reviews.

Is Your SEO Firm Producing Results

  1. How Will I Know It’s Working?

If your business site is new, it can take a while to show up on Page 1. Sometimes you’ll see your site climb slowly, going from page 25 to 20 to 16 to 15 to 8, and so on until it reaches number one. Sometimes, it will be lost in space then suddenly pop up on the top of page 2 before climbing to the first page.

In between, there are several ways to measure progress. Ask them what analytics they’ll share with you so that you can track progress together. If they’re unwilling to share data, or give you vague answers rife with meaningless buzzwords, don’t do business with them.

  1. Which Type of SEO Do Your Perform?

SEO can be broken down into:

  • On-page – optimizing text, photos, video, landing pages, and all content for your search terms. If they provide content, this should be done along with content creation as well as helping you optimize any self-generated content.
  • Off-Page – Link building either through paid links or building links by creating articles, guest postings, and blogs. Both should be used for best results.
  • Internal – Working on coding so that Google’s bots can “Crawl” your site.

Your best bet is to hire a firm that does all three.

on-page-seo

  1. Do You Guarantee Your Work

Few SEO firms guarantee their work. IF they don’t, they’re probably not very good. Yes, SEO is mercurial, but the best firms keep in step with Google’s temeprmental changes, and keep pushing yoru site to the top no matter what updates hit.

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