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You have many options if you are looking for local SEO services to help your business reach the top of local search results. You could partner with large SEO firms, but they may not understand precisely what works in your area. Instead, focusing on finding a high-quality SEO service near me could give you the desired results.
Learn more about the steps to finding the right Sunshine Coast SEO agency.
Simplified guide for selecting a Sunshine Coast SEO service near me
Step 1: Define your goals for local SEO
Step 2: Research local SEO agencies
Step 3: Request a consultation meeting
Step 4: Learn more about the agency’s local SEO measurement techniques
Step 5: Meet who you’ll be working with and ask questions
Step 6: Request real-world examples and testimonials
Step 7: Be wary of red flags and warning signs
Step 8: Fully understand the agreement and terms
Our SEO Agency Evaluation Checklist provides you with the essential steps for making an informed choice when selecting an SEO agency.
Define your goals for your SEO
Before reaching to an agency that will provide SEO service near me, you should know what you want to receive from the agency. Understandably, you probably aren’t an SEO expert, so you’re seeking SEO services locally.
Still, you should know the results you want to see from the local SEO service you select. Some goals you may want to consider include:
Improving organic search rankings
Driving more traffic to your website
Reaching a new customer market
Enhancing your standing with existing customers
Improving the number of nearby customers
Gaining more conversions from website visitors
Enhancing the quality of your site’s content
Gaining a greater level of authority online
Generating helpful analytics about your website’s performance
Some local SEO services you’re considering may have specific strengths in some areas. Others may attempt to serve your needs in all these areas equally well.
Whether you seek a local SEO agency to build your online presence from scratch or want to enhance your presence in certain areas, defining goals is an essential first step.
Research local SEO services agency
Next, research local SEO services that you may want to use. You have a few options for determining the best agencies in the Sunshine Coast area.
Ask Around
Ask other businesses in the local area how they handle their SEO. If they use an SEO service, ask whether they believe they’re receiving a good value and the desired results.
If you belong to local business organisations, this is an excellent place to ask for recommendations. If you can ask businesses that perform similar services to your business about their local SEO experiences, such information would be especially helpful.
Visit Digital Marketing Events
If you are attending conferences and events related to your industry or segment of the market, you may find some local SEO services that also attend these events. You can speak directly to the agencies and see examples of their work.
Use Social Media
Visit the social media accounts for any agencies you’re considering. You want to ensure your agency understands how social media fits into an overall local SEO strategy.
This is a good sign if the agencies can generate regular interactions with their followers, especially if you want the local SEO service to help with your social media presence.
Visit the Agency’s Website
What does the website for the local SEO service look like? If the agency has a great-looking website that’s well organized, you can feel comfortable that the agency understands design. If the agency’s website looks dated, you may doubt whether it can help with your website’s design.
Do an Online Search
Perform web searches using terms like “SEO service agency” and “local SEO services.” If one agency routinely appears near the top of the search results, this is a sign of an agency that knows how to achieve local SEO results. If the agency cannot achieve the desired search results for its own website, it might be difficult for you to trust that it will be able to help you.
During your online search, you can check out online reviews for any local SEO agencies you’re considering. Every review may not be entirely truthful or accurate, but the reviews can give you a general idea of how others view the agency.
Our SEO Agency Evaluation Checklist provides you with the essential steps for making an informed choice when selecting an SEO agency.
Request a Consultation Meeting
You can request an introductory meeting after finding a few local SEO services near me that you might like to use. You’d probably expect to meet in person with local agencies in the Sunshine Coast area. However, if you’re more comfortable with a video call meeting, this may be an option, too.
Some of the topics you may want to discuss include the following.
Experience
You want to be confident that the SEO services that you hire have experience with your industry and type of company. If an agency has 10 years of experience but doesn’t understand your company, that experience doesn’t help you much.
Communication
Do you feel like you can easily converse with the members of the agency? Everyone you interact with should be a good listener. They need to be willing to communicate with you in the manner you prefer, whether that’s email, text, phone call, or in person.
Excitement Level
You shouldn’t expect the SEO service to provide specific ideas about your company’s SEO strategy at this meeting. However, during this initial consultation, you can look for signs that the agency is excited about your project. You want to feel confident that the agency can deliver creative solutions for you.
If the agency professionals you’re meeting with seem bored or distracted, you may wonder whether you’ll have their full attention after you hire them.
Our SEO Agency Evaluation Checklist provides you with the essential steps for making an informed choice when selecting an SEO agency.
Learn More About the Agency's SEO Measurement Techniques
When setting up an SEO strategy, you need to be able to measure the campaign’s results. If the local SEO service you are considering tells you to “trust us” regarding the success of your campaign, this is not good enough. It would help if you had tangible numbers and statistics.
Any high-quality local SEO service should be proud to show you how it’s helping your SEO performance through easily understood measurements.
Explaining measurements for a local SEO strategy
Ask the agency what kinds of measurement techniques it uses to determine the performance of its SEO campaigns.
Any good local SEO agency should be able to use terms you can understand to explain how it takes measurements. If the agency is being vague about its techniques, you may wonder whether it actually generates measurements you can use.
Showing Improvement
Ask directly about a local SEO agency’s performance metrics and methods before it starts working for you. You want to have access to baseline measurements so you can be certain the agency’s local SEO techniques are working.
A digital marketing SEO service might be unable — or unwilling — to give you access to this type of baseline data. If so, you might not trust that the service is being honest about improvements to your SEO results.
Frequency of Reports
Because taking measurements of a website’s SEO performance is so easy with modern tools, you should expect the agency to give you reports regularly. Having daily reports might generate too much information for you, but weekly or monthly reports are normal.
The reports should clearly show your website’s performance over time with information and data you can understand.
Adjusting Your Campaign
Ask your SEO services provider how it determines when it’s time to reevaluate a client’s SEO campaign. It should be able to use tangible measurements of your SEO performance to determine when adjustments are necessary.
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Meet Who You’ll Be Working With and Ask Questions
After the initial meeting, you may be ready to select an SEO services agency. Before signing any contracts, though, you should request a second meeting. This is where you can gain some specific ideas about how the agency will support your website’s SEO efforts before you make a final choice.
Because you haven’t hired the agency as your SEO service yet, your contact person may not have a plan in place. During this meeting, you can focus more on generalities, rather than specifics, regarding how the agency will provide service to you.
Contact Person
If you would like to have one constant point of contact for questions, ask whether the agency provides this option. Without one person assigned to your account, usually called an “account manager,” you may have to explain your situation every time you call, which can be frustrating.
Ask to meet your contact and determine whether you can work well with this person. Ask yourself whether this person matches the way you like to work. Your contact should be willing to meet with you as regularly as you want to discuss your SEO strategy.
Expectations for Results
Ask how soon the agency expects to be able to deliver measurable results for your website. Although you may want to hear that the results will be immediate, this probably isn’t realistic.
It’s not unusual to need two to four months to see improvements from any SEO campaign. If the contact person at the agency is making promises about seeing significant changes in a week or two, you should be wary. Ask for examples of timelines that the SEO agency has generated in the past for clients.
Ask for Website Improvement Ideas
Ask if you can meet some of the other members of the team, like content creators, designers, or SEO specialists. Ask these experts if they can provide a few examples of areas where your website and SEO strategy could improve.
Until you hire the agency, no one is going to provide a full-blown strategy for you. However, it’s not unreasonable to request a quick review of the strengths and weaknesses of your current website.
Our SEO Agency Evaluation Checklist provides you with the essential steps for making an informed choice when selecting an SEO agency.
Request Real-World Examples and Testimonials
You should ask the local SEO service for some examples of past SEO campaigns that were successful. A request like this can be a little tricky, as the agency may have anonymity agreements with its clients. However, the SEO services should be able to give you a few examples of its past work, even if it can’t give you specific names of other clients.
Websites
Ideally, the agency can point you to some websites it worked on in the past that achieved high search rankings. If the websites operate in an industry similar to yours, such examples are even more valuable.
Ask for some screenshots of what the website looked like before the campaign began. Seeing exactly how the agency made changes can generate helpful information.
Perhaps you can speak to a past client to learn more about how the agency delivered improved results. Such testimonials are invaluable if the agency can provide them.
Case Studies
If the agency cannot share the names of other clients, perhaps it published some case studies that show the steps it took without revealing the clients’ names. Case studies can include statistics on improvements that the agency generated for its clients. They also can discuss philosophies the agency followed to improve SEO results in specific areas of the website or across the board.
Statistical Analysis
A good SEO agency near me can often show you reports that offer tangible examples of the progress it delivered for other clients. It may need to hide the name of the client or website on the report, but you can at least see a pattern of success.
Be Wary of Red Flags and Warning Signs
Before you decide which SEO service to hire,” think back to all the conversations you had with the team members at the agency. Did anything sound too good to be true? If so, you may want to further analyse the agency. Some of the red flags to watch for regarding an agency that isn’t being truthful with you include:
Quick results: If the agency promises an almost instant turnaround of your SEO results, this is highly unlikely to happen.
Ranking guarantees: Any local SEO agency that guarantees you the number one ranking in Google’s search engines is almost certainly not being honest with you.
Not understanding your industry: An agency that tells you the industry in which you operate doesn’t matter for a local SEO strategy is not being truthful. It may be covering up the fact that it doesn’t understand your industry well.
Vague answers: You shouldn’t expect an SEO agency to discuss specific strategies with you until you hire it. However, if it feels like the agency is being purposefully vague or evasive about answering your questions, this is a red flag.
Guaranteeing backlinks: Backlinks are key for improving the performance of your website. When other websites include links to your website, it shows authority on your part. However, you must obtain backlinks properly and from high-quality sources, or Google eventually will punish your website rankings. Make sure the agency has a plan in place to help you obtain backlinks that come from reputable sources.
Unenthusiastic vibes: The local SEO strategy service you select should show excitement about working for you. During your meetings, if you feel like the agency isn’t very interested in your industry or website, you may want to look elsewhere.
Missed calls or meetings: If the agency has to reschedule initial meetings with you or outright misses a meeting before you choose to hire it, this is a significant red flag. If the agency team is missing meetings now, things almost certainly will be worse after you start paying for the local SEO service.
Our SEO Agency Evaluation Checklist provides you with the essential steps for making an informed choice when selecting an SEO agency.
Fully Understand the Agreement and Terms
When you are ready to hire a local SEO service, you’ll have to sign an agreement or contract. Do not sign this contract without fully reviewing it. Some of the items to watch for include the following.
Pricing Terms
If the agency is offering extremely low prices at first, be sure you understand the terms. If the price will increase in the future, you need to know by how much and when the price increase takes effect.
Agencies that are severely undercutting the cost compared to other agencies may not have the experience you want.
Services Included
Some agencies may only provide the most basic services as part of their base fees. Other services may cost extra. Your contract should spell out exactly what you receive for your base fee and what costs extra.
Meeting Metrics
Some SEO agencies may be willing to include metrics requirements in the agreement. If the agency fails to help you reach those metrics, you may want a clause in the contract that allows you to opt out of it.
Cancellations
You may want a cancellation clause as part of the contract. Even if you aren’t receiving the results you want to see, the contract may lock you in for a certain period of time, meaning you cannot opt out. You may have to pay a cancellation fee.
Recapping How To Choose the Best SEO Services
When you want an SEO service that improves your local search engines rankings, you need to focus on finding a firm that understands the Sunshine Coast area. You’ll find a trustworthy partner when you follow our steps to find a high quality and successful SEO firm near you.
At LawSEO, we create custom digital marketing solutions aimed at helping Sunshine Coast businesses grow and find more clients through their local search results. Reach out to us at (07) 5476-7673 to learn more about what we can do for you or schedule a free discovery call.
