What Questions to Ask in SEO Interview
-
Tomorrow morning I have a call with an SEO company interested in doing some work with our company. Its a larger company who do a lot of SEO work, and seem to have good feedback around the place.
But we have been very very white hat in our all our our SEO work so far, and some of their wording on their site talks about "Negotiations and acquisitions of link partners".. which gives me the feel they might be a little grey hat..
What are some good questions we should ask these guys to make sure what they are doing is legit, and not going to get us stung for anything?
And what sort of work should we get them to do, if we are happy to take care of content creation, on page optimisation and social media activities?
Thanks!
-
Even if it's legit, if there's anything I don't like about a potential company, I wouldn't employ their services - there's plenty of competition. Would you want your company associated with the sort of content you mention? You could always ask them about those links and see what they say. It might be worth paying more money just to go with a company that has a reliable reputation.
There's some good advice about employing a link builder below the video here: http://www.stephanspencer.com/hiring-a-link-builder/
-
Thanks for your responses.
I had a look in OSE as per your sugestion Heather, and looks like they have a lot of directory submissions stuff, and the rest seems pretty natural.
However there was one thing that stood out. They had a bunch of different sites which had a link in the sidebar. All these sites were on the exact same wordpress theme and look like they could have been created by the company for SEO.Is that the kind of "shadow Sites" mentioned in the Google Webmasters pad that Alex linked to? The sites seem to have legit content, but have obviously all been created very quickly and used to generate links back to the site..
Any thoughts?
Is this legit, or should we be concerned?
-
There's some good advice here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
I remember reading a really useful article about hiring an SEO company, I thought it was here on SEOmoz, but I can't find it. This looks helpful though: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2066873/Selecting-an-SEO-Firm-The-What-How-and-Who
-
I would ask to see work they've done for other clients, then take a look at their clients' backlink profile in Open Site Explorer. This should give you an idea about their link building tactics if you think that will be a concern.
Content creation would be a good area for them to start as you could sign off any content before it goes live or gets distributed. You'd then get a feel for their professionalism and knowledge.
Hope that helps and good luck!
Heather
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Friendly Facets
Hi I'm still stuck on the subject if SEO friendly facets. Firstly, is it worth investing time in over things like SEO campaigns/content marketing as I'm the only one working on SEO and trying to prioritise all tasks 🙂 Can I set up facets so they are SEO friendly - should they simply be blocked? my concern is wasting crawl budget and duplicate pages. Here's an example of a page on the site - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables Here's an example of a facet URL - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/lift-tables#facet:-1002779711011711697110,-700000000000001001651484832107103,-700000000000001057452564832109109&productBeginIndex:0&orderBy:5&pageView:list& What would be the best course of action to take to make them SEO friendly? Tips would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Feefo customer reviews for SEO
Hey Guys, I'm not overly techy, but, I need to advise on Feefo integration. I have been reading and it seems that https://support.feefo.com/support/solutions/articles/8000042161-full-integration-javascript-on-page this is the best integration method. Do you guys have any pointers with using Feefo? Are we still good to use intermediaries like this to handle our reviews for us? Thanks in advance for any help. Kay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London0 -
HTTPS 301 Redirect Question
Hi, I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB. Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic? Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | opstart0 -
Content Audit Questions
Hi Mozzers Having worked on my companies site for a couple of months now correcting many issues, im now ready to begin looking at a content review, many areas of the site contain duplicate content, the main causes being 1. Category Page Duplications
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
e.g.
Widget Page Contains ("Blue Widget Extract")
Widget Page Contains ("Red Widget Extract")
Blue Widget Page Contains ("Same Blue Widget Extract")
Red Widget Page Contains ("Same Red Widget Extract") 2. Product Descriptions
Item 1 (Identical to item 2 with the exception of a few words and technical specs)
Item 2 Causing almost all the content on the site to get devalued. Whilst i've cleared all moz errors and warnings im certain this is causing devaluation of most of the website. I was hoping you could answer these questions so I know what to expect once i have made the changes. Will the pages that had duplicate content recover once they possess unique content or should i expect a hard and slow climb back? The website has never receive any warnings from Google, does this mean recovery for penalties like duplicate content will be quicker Several pages rank on page 1 for fairly competitive keywords despite having duplicate content and keyword spammy content. What are the chances of shooting myself in the foot by editing this content? I know I will have to wait for google to crawl the pages before i see any reflection in the changes, but how long after google has crawled the page should I get a realistic idea of how positive the changes were? As always, thanks for you time!0 -
SEO of blogging websites
What are the best practices of doing SEO of article/blogging websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Information Architecture Question
I've got a site architecture / branding / SEO question for my own site (http://www.strikemodels.com/). In brief, the site sells kits and accessories for model warships that shoot and sink each other. My husband (Stephen) runs the business, and makes many of the parts we sell in our workshop/garage. Stephen wants to have a section where he talks about the equipment he is building/ using, and give updates on each of the pieces. This is equipment we use to make products, not equipment that we sell. For example, he's building an EDM machine, and getting a plastic injection molding machine and an ultrasonic welder up and running. We have a blog section where we post about updates about items that we sell, how to use our products, etc. This is more of a place for him to talk about what he's doing in the shop, and would also serve in future years as something he could point people to regarding his skills as an engineer if needed. I'm looking for opinions and options as to where to put this. Is there a way to use a different category in the blog and have items in the blog show up under a different page if they're in the "Stephen's Corner" category? Other options would be a separate site just for that, or to do threads on the a forum dedicated to the hobby. I'd prefer to keep things on our own site to keep all of the benefits together. Thoughts on structure or ways to make this work? Things I hadn't thought about? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KeriMorgret0 -
Read More & SEO
I have just had my site redesigned. The site was designed with only important facts bullets at the top of the page and all other information is below in the read more section that expands when clicked. I am wondering if I need to have this information in the read more section visible to the customer or if having the majority of the text in the read more is OK? and how it will effect rankings having it this way? I have had spots #1 &2 on Google for my keywords- until the site was redesigned...wondering if this was part of the reason. I have moved some of the text up to be visible on some of the pages - but it makes the site look cramped - and competes with the ease of use the site design Any insight on this is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cheri110 -
Mobile SEO
Hey, In the following article, Google recommended using a 301 redirect but doesn't specify why. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/making-websites-mobile-friendly.html I assume this is to pass over link equity to the relevant mobile/desktop variation. Can anyone confirm this? Also is there any other reason? Again assuming this would keep the correct URLs in the correct index? Anything else anyone can chip in would be great. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0