How To Keep Your SEO Agency Honest

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for The SEO Show, where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello and welcome to the SEO show for another week. I am Michael Costin. I'm joined by Arthur Fabik and today we're talking how to keep your SEO agency honest. What an exciting topic. It is an exciting topic because the old SEO world, it's tough to know whether you're dealing with someone that's doing a lot of work or someone that's taking you for a ride. And the unfortunate thing with SEO is it does take time and If you're investing in someone that's not doing much for you, it could be 6, 8, 10, 12 months and, you know, big opportunity costs, you know, results you could have had if you were working with someone that was good. So we are going to give you nine pointers here that you can use to keep your agency honest. You know, obviously there's nuances, little sort of, um, things, you know, ins and outs of every deliverable that you, you won't be able to tell just from listening to this episode, but you will get a really good grasp for whether your agency is delivering good work or bad work. So you ready? You excited? Let's get into it. Okay. I'm so excited. Can't you tell? You do look, you look very excited. You're smiling, you're beaming, you're ready to talk, keeping agencies honest. Let's get into it. We work in the agency space. We know how to keep them honest. And the first place you're going to want to start is budget. Because if you're spending $500 a month, $750, even a grand a month, you're probably not getting a lot of SEO for that investment.

ARTHUR: No, it's a very small budget, very hard to make any progress with that sort of budget.

MICHAEL: And there's a lot of people out there that will take your money at that level. You really just need to be pragmatic and realistic about it. Like if you're spending 750 bucks a month on a service, how much time are they really going to be able to dedicate to you? Like you, if you're in business, you know what Australian staff and super and payroll tax and software and computers and all that stuff costs.

ARTHUR: Electricity, overheads, rent.

MICHAEL: Overheads. Yep. That sort of stuff. Bills, costs. What are they really going to be able to do for 750, 500 buck a month investment? That's just on the staff costs. You're going to be one of like 50 that that team member looks after. Yeah.

ARTHUR: Not to mention SEO tools as well. Yes. Everything, everything comes at a price.

MICHAEL: Ahrefs have raised their prices. It all costs money. And then the actual deliverables themselves. So link building. So we all know in SEO that links are the most important thing in the world. Everybody knows that. If you don't, you should know that. And links cost money. So for 500 bucks a month, 750 bucks a month, even a grand a month. If an agency is trying to pay for staff and like rent and overheads and for links and make a profit because they are a business that's trying to make a profit, what are they going to do? They're going to cut costs. They're going to deliver a watered down service so that they can make numbers work. Exactly right.

ARTHUR: I think as well, if you're getting quotes from multiple agencies and they're charging or quoting you $3,000, $4,000 and then someone comes in and says, I can do it for a grand, that should ring alarm bells because if everyone else is quoting you significantly higher, they're probably quoting you what it would take in terms of time and investment and links and everything to actually get your results.

MICHAEL: Yes. So there's a Jeff Bezos said, your margin is my opportunity in Amazon. So the thing is, he's saying there is he wants to be the cheapest possible because the competitors trying to make profit is an opportunity for him. But that is not the case in SEO because there are unavoidable costs. Of course.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So if you look, if you're looking at products and stuff, obviously you can buy something at the cheapest price possible, but service is very different.

MICHAEL: So budget's the first one, and it dovetails into the second point we have, which is links. Everybody knows links are the most important thing in SEO. Authority is where you're going to be able to stand out from your competitors. And if you're not getting links built every month, and if the links aren't quality, then you're not going to stand a chance of competing in any really commercially valuable space. So if you want to keep your agency honest, you should be getting a link report every month. You know, what have you built? Can I see these links? If they don't provide that, ask for it. If they then get a bit cagey about it, that is a massive red flag because Everything should be out in the open. Shouldn't be hiding behind closed doors in the shadows. Like, Oh, we're not, we're not going to let you see our links. Sometimes they'll say things like, you know, it's proprietary or, you know, that you don't need to know that. Like we do all the selections and you know, just trust us. That's a red flag. And if you can keep an eye on your links using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush anyway, but first and foremost, straight up ask for a report. And if they're not forthcoming with that report, that's a red flag. Agree. Um, we have done some episodes in the past on how to tell, um, what makes a good link. So episode 44, you can go back to, and we walk you through all the different criteria and metrics that we look at when assessing a link quality. So if your agency is providing you with a link report, maybe pick one or two a month and just do your own little health check on the links. And that's going to help you keep things honest because not every link is created equal, There can be strong authoritative links that move the needle, or there can be spam links bought on Fiverr. And agencies out there will do a little bit of everything depending on who you work with. So that's another way to keep them honest, like do a bit of research and educate yourself on what makes a quality link, and then run the fine tooth comb over what they're delivering to you. All right, what else? What would you use to keep an agency honest, Arthur? Outside of budget and links, where are you turning to next to see that they're actually delivering on what they're promising?

ARTHUR: I guess have a look at what they're reporting on. So a lot of agencies will report on fluffy metrics that don't really mean anything. Um, but really they should be reporting on, I guess, three core things, organic traffic because it's SEO, organic conversions or revenue or whatever conversion that they're tracking and then also rankings. So I think it's just making sure that they're reporting on what matters and they're not trying to, I guess, muddy the water with other random metrics that don't really matter.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And make sure the keywords that they're using are actually valuable. So if you're a plumber, it would be like plumber Eastwood or plumber Doncaster or whatever. But if they're reporting on best plumber for U-bend pipes in Southeast Victoria, you're not going to be getting a lot of leads from that. So make sure that they're aligned with the stuff that matters to you.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I'd also be conscious if they have any guarantees about keyword rankings and top positions after a certain period of time, that's often a red flag as well, because they're often going to pick really long tail keywords that they know they can rank to hit that guarantee. And those keywords won't have any search volumes. So something to definitely keep on the top of your mind. Yep.

MICHAEL: And so with the reporting, it should be a set cadence to it. Like normally it's monthly and there should be commentary that is customized to you. Here's what we did, here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's what we're planning to do in the months ahead. Um, it should be open and honest about, you know, organic traffic and organic keywords. As Arthur said, obviously this stuff isn't going to prove, approve, improve instantly when you start working with an agency, but you could see trends pretty quickly. Um, and they should be, educating you, I guess, in what they're doing and why, so that you can feel confident that you're on the right path. And you're not just sort of left there out, you know, floating in outer space in the void without knowing what's going on. So, um, if your report is just a automatically generated PDF that doesn't really give you anything, then take it to them and say, listen, I need a bit more commentary and customized input on what's going on. Um, Site change tracker is another one I like to use. Well, I use it all the time, of course, but if I was keeping an agency honest as a business, making sure that actual work is being done on my site is a pretty obvious place. Yeah, for sure. So, um, agencies should be creating content or doing keyword mapping and saying, you know, this is what we're going to do. And then most of the time implementing that stuff on your site. So you can use a tool like Ahrefs to run your pages through the tool and it will show you what has changed on the site and where. And the idea is that you'd be expecting to see your title tags changing or your H1 tags changing, the body copy getting longer because they're adding content to it. And it's pretty easy to keep on top of this stuff using a tool like Ahrefs. And if you see that nothing's been done on the site, then what are they actually optimizing now?

ARTHUR: Exactly.

MICHAEL: You don't always have to be changing things all the time. You know, it's often the case that work will be done in tranches or sort of blasts. And then there might be months where they're not doing so much on site, they're focusing on links, whatever. But over a campaign, you'd expect to see changes made on a website if they're trying to improve that website to rank in Google.

ARTHUR: Yeah, absolutely. Especially at the start. And I know like a lot of listeners won't have ahrefs, but if you've got a WordPress site, you can always have a look, um, and see revisions done to a page. So you'll be, you'll be able to see when someone's logged in and actually updated content and you can see what content and what things they've changed. Um, so my recommendation is always create a separate login for your agency because that way you can see them log in and you can see what changes they're making under that login. Yep. Beautiful.

MICHAEL: Love it. Um, Another thing that I think you can use is the manual penalties report in Search Console. So manual penalties are pretty rare these days, but Search Console, just setting Search Console up and having access to it yourself as the representative of your business is important because you can see, you know, Google will notify you in there if it's delivered a penalty on you. It will notify you if there's problems with the site. Now you do need to take these with a grain of, Is it a grain of salt, grain of sand, pinch of salt? Grain of salt. Grain of salt. Yeah. Grain of salt, because it likes to throw out warnings that don't matter. You've got a 10% increase in 404 errors, you know, that doesn't matter. But if you get a penalty, you want to know about it. And an agency, a dodgy one may not be forthcoming with that. So if you're trying to keep them honest, be in search console, keep on top of what's going on with the notification.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Look, we get a lot of clients hitting us up with those, I guess, nonsense issues that pop up in search console, but any good agency will just tell you, you know, you don't need to worry about this. This is why this means nothing. This is just, you know, something that's triggered because of this. So definitely sign up to it and get those alerts because, you know, amongst all that, there will be, there might be something important.

MICHAEL: Yeah. That sort of links nicely with one of the points we have here, which is communication. So Arthur mentioned the agency should be explaining, you know, these, Alerts matter. These ones don't. And that is an important thing. Like it's your agency communicating to you throughout the month. So for example, in our business, we put our clients into a Slack channel with their team that they can just chat to throughout the day about their SEO campaign at any given time. Communication is super important, particularly with SEO, where things might take a while to move. you want to know that the work's being done and that you're in good hands and that you, you have a team that you're tapped into. So if an agency is just generating an automatic report and not really communicating, they're hard to get on the phone, they don't respond to emails. That is pretty dicey. Like you should expect pretty quick communication, you know, within a business day turnaround when you're inquired with them. And if you're not, that's a sign that they're not delivering a standard that is acceptable because plenty of agencies are able to deliver that. So yeah, What's their comms like? Are they a partner that's educating you or are they a vendor that just does their own thing in the background and you don't know what that thing is? The only other one that I had here, which is a pretty big one because a lot of agencies will roll onto a content creation type thing once they've done the initial work up front. And you know, what content are they creating? Cause, Not all content is created equal. A lot of content is just created for the sake of it, you know, because their mega hyper SEO package bundle that they've signed you up to has five blog posts a month and you're getting just garbage blog posts written for you that get published and they don't do one iota for your rank traffic.

ARTHUR: So no, I hate posting for the sake of posting. It's nonsense and it can make your site look worse. Like if you're just posting gibberish that isn't related to anything and just fluff, I reckon it can have a negative effect.

MICHAEL: Absolutely. So content needs to have a purpose. They should be focused on your main category pages or keyword opportunities. Supporting content on the blog does have its part, but not just for the sake of ticking whatever their package says. So, and then look at the quality of it. Is it written with. American spellings or like weird turns of phrase, or does it obviously look like ChatGPT wrote it, which we can all sort of pick up on by now. Massively, yeah. They're red flags and you can keep them honest. You know, who's writing this content? Like, can I speak to them? Sort of thing. Yeah. If you're really suspicious on what they're up to. For sure. I would say one that we don't have in the list here, but packages like we've, we've teased, you know, my hyper, my hyper mega package or my mega global package or whatever. Normally, if you're just being shoehorned into a package, just be wary. That's something to be wary of. I don't know how you're going to keep them honest, but probably would keep them honest by saying like, what aspect of this is bespoke to me? Like, what's the actual strategy here? Or are you just sort of ticking items on a list?

ARTHUR: Yeah, they would have like an itemized list of things that you'd get in each like bronze, silver, platinum package or whatever they decide to call it. But I think, yeah, having bespoke pricing, every site's going to be different. So it's very hard to, you know, package that up. Like we don't package our retainers. You know, you can pay for additional link building and things like that or content, but every site's going to be very different. So it's not a one size fits all type package.

MICHAEL: Yep. So, prescription without diagnosis is something we talk about where if you went to a doctor and said, oh, I've got a sore shoulder, he's like, right, surgery, you need to get general anesthetic, then I'm going to go and operate, clean it up, bang, you're done. But he hasn't even looked at you. That's sort of what a lot of SEO agencies that have packages do. Really, you want to have the doctor that's a specialist in shoulders, take a look at it to begin with, tell you the plan, why that's the plan. what the outcomes will be for you and maybe give you some options based on budget or healing timeframe, whatever. You want the SEO equivalent of that. So that way you know what the plan is and you can keep your agency honest by holding them to the plan that they've come up with for you. Whereas if they're just a vendor churning out a generic package for you, it's not really customized to you and you don't really, you know, it's hard to hold them to account really. Um, so yeah, they're the main ones I think. If you are able to get on top of a good grasp of all of that stuff and keep on top of your agencies using these methods outlined, you're going to know whether you have a good one or a bad one. Because one thing I will say is that all of them on their shiny websites can look good. You know, they've got the reviews, testimonials, that sort of stuff. It can be hard to separate. Which ones are actually dodgy? I'd say maybe do a deep dive on the review side of things. Maybe the first reviews that come up aren't always truly indicative of what a business is like and you need to dig a bit deeper. Maybe look at some other review sites and that way you'll get a feel for whether they're dodgy or not. That's a good way of keeping them honest.

ARTHUR: I was going to say on the flip side, some look really dodgy. Just immediately look dodgy.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ARTHUR: Some face value, just like the site looks awful. The pricing is just off, like very cheap. Yeah. Like just poor spelling, spelling mistakes. Yeah. But I'm sure they snag clients. Yeah. Price conscious. Yeah. Price conscious clients and rip them off. So be very careful.

MICHAEL: Yeah. At the end of the day, some people will always value the cheapest price and that's fine. But, um. I guess this is more for people that sort of are willing to invest and just want to make sure that they're working with a good partner. These are pointers that are going to help you figure that out for yourself when it might be tough to do traditionally, because it's, yeah, you don't know where to look or what to look for. So hopefully this helps. We'll be back next week with another episode of the SEO show, but until then. Happy SEOing. Happy SEOing.

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