How to select an SEO Specialist

[PugwashEQ]

Hi All,

Could you learned people offer some help please?

We need to improve our SEO- specifically our DA and our backlinks. We "think" we are producing the right content with the right keywords, but its not working at the moment. We also know that we have some problems with our website- none of which are particularly difficult to resolve, but all of them just take time, and time is not a commodity we have spare right now.

So we're trying to find an SEo specialist that can take some of this work off us- the problem is that the people we have met so far just haven't filled us with confidence and so we haven't moved asked any of them to work for us.

The bit i'm worried about is whether we are actually asking the right questions to help us ascertain whether the SEO company we are talking to are right or not for us.

What questions should we ask? how do you tell the really skilled SEO teams from the overnight one hit wonders? How do you differentiate between SEO tablet?

Can anyone make any recommendations for a Financial Services Boutqie looking to increase its in-bound marketing?

Thanks all

James

 

[fisicx]

We need to improve our SEO- specifically our DA and our backlinks.

If you think that's what you need you are doing it wrong.

Google doesn't care about DA and backlinks aren't important.

What you do need to do if fix the multiple issues with the site starting with your page titles. What ever keywords you are targeting I'd put money on 'Home - CapEQ' not being one of them.

 

[PugwashEQ]

Thanks, Fisi

We know the website has many many errors - which rather proves my question!

We've been through 2 SEO people already- the first took some money, did some good work and then got distracted by another project, the second clearly didn't know how to use WordPress or Elementor and the site never improved.

Ref Backlinks how am i even supposed to work out who to believe?

https://rellify.com/blog/domain-authority/ reckons Domain Authority is crucial! Lots of places tell me that off-page SEO such as backlinks is key- Semrush, and AhRefs are massively focused on backlinks.

With so much confusing messaging it's really hard to know what to do!

I've spent the past 30 years becoming an expert in the world of corporate finance. i know virtually nothing about SEO unfortunately- only what I've spent the past couple of years trying to understand! We're happy to pay someone- just need the right person- and it's that selection we REALLY need help with.

 

[fisicx]

Google used to have a thing called PageRank that gave each page on your site a score. This was one of the ranking signals. They also had a browser toolbar you could install that showed you a version of this score called PR. It became so misunderstood and misused it was dropped in 2009. Moz then decided to create their own scoring system and called it DA. Google takes no notice whatsoever of DA or any of the other various scoring systems used by other tools.

Almost all ranking signals are focused on the actual site. Most of these are well known and easily fixed. Pages titles are still one of the strongest signals. If any SEO company you employed didn't fix these on day one they were a bunch of crooks. And if they didn't tell you to get rid of Elementor at the same time they were also incompetent. If all they focused on was linkbuilding they were doubly incompetent.

SEO is part of your marketing plan. You need to be clear who you are targeting, how you are targeting them and what you want to happen once you have their attention. You then build a site that meets these criteria.

I'm not even sure what this even means:

"Honest class leading advice on buying and selling businesses"

Google will see those words and have no idea what keywords you are targeting especially when the next header is:

"We help business owners grow, acquire and exit"

If you want to rank for something you need to use those words on the page. and then keep using them through the whole site.

You don't need an SEO expert, you need a marketing expert and then an SEO expert.

Have a read of this, it will give you a useful insight into basic SEO principles:

SEO Starter Guide: The Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

A knowledge of basic SEO can have a noticeable impact. Explore the Google SEO starter guide for an overview of search engine optimization essentials.

developers.google.com

 

[antropy]

Almost all ranking signals are focused on the actual site.

Really? I thought Google's USP, the thing that made it different from all search engines before it, was that it used inbound links to decide which sites were most credible?

Paul.

 

[fisicx]

Really? I thought Google's USP, the thing that made it different from all search engines before it, was that it used inbound links to decide which sites were most credible?

Inbound links used to be a major ranking signal but then people used all sorts of dodgy linkbuilding techniques to boost ranking so Google changed tack, dumped millions of links and make on site signals much more important. What google does look for are reviews, citations and referrals. Reviews are self explanatory. Citations are when someone else sings your praises. Referrals are when you get a recommendation. You have to earn all of these.

With link building the general rule is: the easier a link is to obtain the lower the value of that link.

Get the on-site right and you don't need to worry about links. @Tin's course explains everything:

Ecommerce SEO in 2022 - DIY SEO Course for UK Ecommerce Sites

Learn Ecommerce SEO - Written for Ecommerce Owners by Experienced UK SEO - 5 STAR Reviews DIY SEO for Ecommerce Websites - Can't Afford a Pro? Get this Course Today!

www.freshbananas.co.uk

 

[makeusvisible]

As mentioned above, it sounds like in your mind you have already decided that what you need are backlinks. If that is your remit, you are going to end up with some poor applicants, and more than likely end up causing damage to your domain rather than improvement.

Just a few of the factors you should be including within your remit of finding the right provider below;

Site structure: Is your site well structured and easy to navigate for users and search engines. Is the content well presented and properly marked up.

Content: Do you have good quality and unique content. Does that content interlink well contextually, and are you working on a constant and ongoing content strategy.

Outreach: Rather than building backlinks, think of building relationships with other businesses. Grow your links organically by creating content that people want to link to, and by building connections with other businesses. Monitor the citations, and ensure if any pop-up, you are on them int a flash for a backlink.

If the website on your profile is the correct one, then you need to have a look from the ground up. Even your METAs are incorrect, which is going to lead to an extremely poor click-thru rate, even if you do appear in search.

And finally....just be 100% that SEO is what you need. There are many channels you could market into, which can often be more cost effective early on. If you don't have a solid handle on which keywords work, and if your site actually converts, then using SEO as a strategy to find this out can be time-consuming, expensive, and unfruitful.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I have a broad piece of advice for selecting providers of any value service (or potentially product), and that is to listen closely to the questions they ask you and how they manage your expectations, whilst initially ignoring and claims and promises they make.

A provider of any substance will want lots of specific info about you and will challenge you. A weak one will promise the moon on a stick, and possibly throw in some shabby closes.

Final step before choosing is to seek solid evidence of any claims they have made (give some leeway for sales optimism!)

 

[PugwashEQ]

Thanks All,

There is much that we know is wrong with our site- we are so busy we just don't have the time to fix it....hence being happy to pay someone!

Our investment in SEO isn't something we want to pay off for the next 12-18 (we have almost all the work we can handle for that period), but its a much longer term play. Ideally we want to get to the stage that our website fits nicely into much of the other marketing work we are doing as a tool that positions our team as the industry experts they really are and leads people to be aware of us, and to engage with us. No client will ever buy from us solely because of them finding our website- but hopefully they might still find us and be interested enough to start a conversation- ultimately we want people to be able to find our site and think that they could trust us!

We know what we want- its the opportunity to help business owners learn about how to buy and sell businesses by giving them honest expert advice that's primarily in their best interest (rather than in ours- which is what many of our colleagues do in our field!) - but the only way we can achieve this is to increase our visibility over time!

 

[PugwashEQ]

As mentioned above, it sounds like in your mind you have already decided that what you need are backlinks. If that is your remit, you are going to end up with some poor applicants, and more than likely end up causing damage to your domain rather than improvement.

And finally....just be 100% that SEO is what you need. There are many channels you could market into, which can often be more cost effective early on. If you don't have a solid handle on which keywords work, and if your site actually converts, then using SEO as a strategy to find this out can be time-consuming, expensive, and unfruitful.

Thanks MUV- really haven't decided on anything except wanting to start a journey on building SEO! We'll take advice from anyone, but educating ourselves is proving the hardest barrier- there is too much info and too little that has a good basis in fact it seems.

Google used to have a thing called PageRank that gave each page on your site a score. This was one of the ranking signals. They also had a browser toolbar you could install that showed you a version of this score called PR. It became so misunderstood and misused it was dropped in 2009. Moz then decided to create their own scoring system and called it DA. Google takes no notice whatsoever of DA or any of the other various scoring systems used by other tools.

Almost all ranking signals are focused on the actual site. Most of these are well known and easily fixed. Pages titles are still one of the strongest signals. If any SEO company you employed didn't fix these on day one they were a bunch of crooks. And if they didn't tell you to get rid of Elementor at the same time they were also incompetent. If all they focused on was linkbuilding they were doubly incompetent.

SEO is part of your marketing plan. You need to be clear who you are targeting, how you are targeting them and what you want to happen once you have their attention. You then build a site that meets these criteria.

SEO Starter Guide: The Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers

A knowledge of basic SEO can have a noticeable impact. Explore the Google SEO starter guide for an overview of search engine optimization essentials.

developers.google.com

Thanks Fisi- your whole post was really useful, particularly the parts above- especially the link to the SEO guide, which is probably the first piece of work we've come across that i actually feel comfortable trusting!

 

[fisicx]

Those are admirable aims but you don't need to do any SEO work yet.

If people know who you are that can easily find your website by searching for the company name.

If people are interested in buying and selling businesses where do they start? Do they begin with a Google search? If so, what sort of things are they searching for? You have this data already so you just need to apply it to the site. But you then want people to begin a conversation to hopefully use your services. You don't make it easy, it should be the whole focus of your site instead you hide it way behind a load of marketing guff.

Fixing the site will go a long way to sorting out your SEO issues. There are plenty of people here on the forum that can help you with this.

 

[PugwashEQ]

100% of our traffic is direct at the moment- the site is currently used as an accessible sales brochure.

Its our second site since founding 24 months ago- i fear we're going to be into a third site soon after reading these messages

The complexity is that business owners look in many places - accountants, other business owners, forums, google search, etc etc There are some big players in our sector who have a particularly large internet presence and very active outbound marketing. We generate much of our work on reputation and referral but we would like to have more than one pillar to our pipelines!

 

[fisicx]

...correlate the positions and the number of backlinks.

Nope. The number of backlinks is irrelevant. The type and quality of link is the only thing that matters.

 

[fisicx]

I'm not saying that the number of backlinks is more important than their quality. I just meant that backlinks are very important for the success of the project.

No they aren’t and haven’t been for a long time. If you keep up to date with marketing and seo news you will understand why. Google knows people do linkbuilding and has downgraded the signal value. It now looks for different inbound signals as explained above.

 

[DotMedia]

Unfortunately there are many so-called SEO specialists out there who will be happy to take your money and deliver practically nothing.

A client of mine previously used a mid-sized digital marketing agency based in Essex to optimise her ecommerce site... 10k in and she still hadn't had a sale, I was in shock when she told me. ?

My advice would be to avoid anyone that 'guarantees results', that are charging next to nothing and any decent specialist should be able to show you what they've achieved for other clients.

 

[makeusvisible]

Unfortunately there are many so-called SEO specialists out there who will be happy to take your money and deliver practically nothing.

A client of mine previously used a mid-sized digital marketing agency based in Essex to optimise her ecommerce site... 10k in and she still hadn't had a sale, I was in shock when she told me. ?

My advice would be to avoid anyone that 'guarantees results', that are charging next to nothing and any decent specialist should be able to show you what they've achieved for other clients.

I definitely don't want to play devil's advocate, but if the provider's remit was to provide SEO services, then the revenue of the site doesn't really fall within their remit.

The reason many people jump into buying SEO, is because they think it's a silver bullet to sales and growth, and it really isn't. If you are looking to quickly drive traffic, drive enquiries, or drive sales, SEO is the worst possible channel to start with.

If the goal is to get a start up going from £0 to something, SEO is very rarely a good option. Yes, you may start from day one, and even during the build of your website, but it needs to be compliment by other channels; for example, google text ads, social media, paid social ads, google shopping etc etc, and it all needs to be alongside branding, conversion optimisation, a decent website, decent copy and good images. Not, just SEO.

That said, nobody ethical would sell SEO to someone who isn't in a position to be making sales once their site ranks.

 

[DotMedia]

I definitely don't want to play devil's advocate, but if the provider's remit was to provide SEO services, then the revenue of the site doesn't really fall within their remit.

The reason many people jump into buying SEO, is because they think it's a silver bullet to sales and growth, and it really isn't. If you are looking to quickly drive traffic, drive enquiries, or drive sales, SEO is the worst possible channel to start with.

If the goal is to get a start up going from £0 to something, SEO is very rarely a good option. Yes, you may start from day one, and even during the build of your website, but it needs to be compliment by other channels; for example, google text ads, social media, paid social ads, google shopping etc etc, and it all needs to be alongside branding, conversion optimisation, a decent website, decent copy and good images. Not, just SEO.

That said, nobody ethical would sell SEO to someone who isn't in a position to be making sales once their site ranks.

I totally agree with that but any specialist that is worth one's salt would be advising the client all of that from day one, whether they offer those services or not... unfortunately too many these days are more concerned about taking the client for a ride and not on what they can actually realistically deliver.

If the product and website is even half decent... 6 months and 10k is more than enough to achieve one sale.

 

[SimonO]

Infrequent lurker, first time poster here. Apologies for the analogy but I hope it will help you choose a specialist.

In your original post you seem preoccupied with the fact that you're going on the M56 (links) rather than heading to Manchester (more leads). Yes inbound links are important, but they're not the only thing that matters. By the sound of it your primary goal is brand awareness, which SEO is useful for, and it's what you should be asking for.

Focus on capturing customers at the start of their journey (Do I qualify for entrepreneurs relief? etc...) so if/when they come to sell it's you that they want to speak to

 

[Paul Carmen]

Without seeing your brief for the SEO work, and your marketing plan, no one here can really answer you. Even your responses to fisicx and MUV have not given a clear indication of what you need, what your current marketing is, who the big competitors are, and we don't know what you're trying to do.

Realistically, this needs to have a holistic approach to capture and engage customers and that means at every touch point; e.g. if customers search in Google first what do they search for; what type of customers do you want to attract; e.g. sole traders, SMEs, big corporations etc, all will be different and look for different things.

If they do find you, what are your credentials, where do customers validate your expertise; your Google listing says you're closed, there are no reviews on it, not much on social media. It may be that this is unimportant (it usually is important), is there much in the trade press/websites and other industry touch points?

What marketing do you do now, how well does it and the website convert, how do you see this integrating with the SEO work. The website seems to have no real contact process, other than live chat, there isn't a form, or tool to encourage leads, even the phone number is hard to find, it doesn't seem customer focused.

If there are lots of siloed people/teams working on different elements, then its unlikely that it will be successful.

The growth and marketing plan is key, this should focus on: -

• What are the ideal services you wish to sell
• Who are your ideal customers
• Where do they look and what do they look for
• What do you need to do to convince them to work with you
• What do you know, or can you learn from your website, plus the current/recent marketing and SEO work
• Who are the competitors and how competitive is the market
• What is your short, medium and long term growth plans

This will determine what you should be doing with the website, other channels and touch points, plus how to structure your short to long term marketing and test campaigns, SEO etc, to understand what works and then plan for the future.

 

[kulture]

I once read a book on e-commerce which had a description that stuck in my mind.

Imagine a website as a funnel with holes in it. The conversions being what comes through the bottom. There is no point investing in any kind of marketing or SEO that delivers visitors to your site until you fix most of the holes. If for example you have a 1% conversion rate then you need 100 visitors to convert 1. If your site is better and gets a 10% conversion rate then you only need to find 10 visitors for the same result.

Fix the site first. Any money or time spent on anything else first is wasted.

 

[JaredMol]

@PugwashEQ Hi there. I can definitely say that SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tools that are there. It's difficult because you need to deal with something that you can't control (I mean Google). On this basis, my first piece of advice is that don't believe agencies/freelancers that give you a guarantee that you will reach +100500 traffic and increase your sales 10X. That's just a sales trick and mostly is a scam. A good professional won't give such recommendations, because he understands that he doesn't have a direct influence on Google. You can update the site, create good content, build the links, but that still won't mean that your site will reach position #1 in two weeks.
Speaking of time, you must also understand that it's a long run. In SEO there is no fast results. It can take from 6 months to one year to see the results (the time varies depending on the niche). So also ignore those who say that it will be ASAP.

In SEO there are only three things that work: Technical condition of the site, Content, Backlinks.
It's also important to the work step by step. Don't create backlinks to your site, if the site has technical problems, or the content is really poor. First you need to be sure from the technical site that everything is ok:
— Can the site be crawled by google?
— Are there any indexing errors?
— Is the robots.txt set ok?
etc.
Tech is important, because if the site won't be indexed, then all the efforts that you put won't to anything. Consider tech SEO as the foundation of your home. Content is its walls. Links are its roof. When you build a house.

Work with companies/individuals that put the time in the research. Competitor audit, keyword research, backlink audit — all these things should be done first. After the research is done, they should start a strategy. You must know where they will lead your site, what they will do to achieve your goals. So set up the KPI and keep a track on their work.
Hope this info will help you

 

[tony84]

I emailed a couple of companies and those who got back to me and within my budget I had a chat with.

I know a little bit about SEO so I sort of had an idea of who were just b/s'ing and those who knew what they were doing. I then just chose one from there, pretty happy with the decision I made, but that was some years ago now.

 

[UKOnlineServices]

Look at the track record of your prospects. Anyone who knows anything about increasing website traffic has to have something to show for it.
On a side note, if your website is build with Elementor, then, out of my experience, it is probably ill-optimised,

 

[sarahosmond066]

@PugwashEQ Hi there. I can definitely say that SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tools that are there. It's difficult because you need to deal with something that you can't control (I mean Google). On this basis, my first piece of advice is that don't believe agencies/freelancers that give you a guarantee that you will reach +100500 traffic and increase your sales 10X. That's just a sales trick and mostly is a scam. A good professional won't give such recommendations, because he understands that he doesn't have a direct influence on Google. You can update the site, create good content, build the links, but that still won't mean that your site will reach position #1 in two weeks.
Speaking of time, you must also understand that it's a long run. In SEO there is no fast results. It can take from 6 months to one year to see the results (the time varies depending on the niche). So also ignore those who say that it will be ASAP.

In SEO there are only three things that work: Technical condition of the site, Content, Backlinks.
It's also important to the work step by step. Don't create backlinks to your site, if the site has technical problems, or the content is really poor. First you need to be sure from the technical site that everything is ok:
— Can the site be crawled by google?
— Are there any indexing errors?
— Is the robots.txt set ok?
etc.
Tech is important, because if the site won't be indexed, then all the efforts that you put won't to anything. Consider tech SEO as the foundation of your home. Content is its walls. Links are its roof. When you build a house.

Work with companies/individuals that put the time in the research. Competitor audit, keyword research, backlink audit — all these things should be done first. After the research is done, they should start a strategy. You must know where they will lead your site, what they will do to achieve your goals. So set up the KPI and keep a track on their work.
Hope this info will help you

I totally agreed with @JaredMol because you are totally a practical person in SEO. The same thoughts I was going to write in my reply. But when I read your post, It makes me wow for you. And really one who is a realistic and genuine SEO practitioner will never generate the scams to grab a customer just for the sake of earning.
Above all, the more I would like to add for the help of @PugwashEQ is, that whenever you are going to hire an SEO company must talk to them to do the following
1. audit your website.
2. tell you the potential (branded and non-branded) Keywords
3. and conditions whether the DA and PA would be one a point or the Spam Score (these are technical aspects of SEO)
So, when someone will guide you in this way that means the company is genuine and the person to whom you are talking is really known with actual SEO.
Remember:
Never whenever you are going to hire an SEO company, never demand them to create a huge number of backlinks, but demand them to bring your keywords to top rankings and keep your spam score zero, or a maximum 2% spam score could be acceptable.
Thank You.

 

[fisicx]

1. audit your website.
2. tell you the potential (branded and non-branded) Keywords
3. and conditions whether the DA and PA would be one a point or the Spam Score (these are technical aspects of SEO)

Oh dear.
1. An audit isn't necessary. Especially if you use an automated tool
2. Nope, that's not how you do keyword analysis
3. Completely irrelevant - Google care's not one jot about any of these.

 

[Bygfut Media]

Hi @PugwashEQ, I've had a quick look at your website and as most have pointed out, it'd be best to fix it before thinking about SEO.

The whole essence of SEO is to bring traffic, but if that traffic comes to a poorly optimised (i.e. UI/UX) website, then it's not going to convert. You could get the best SEO specialist and have traffic pouring in the next minute, but if the traffic doesn't convert, then it'll be a waste of time, money and effort.

Whether you're using Elementor (which you are) or block builders, this isn't about those tools. It's about what you're trying to communicate to your visitors - your keywords, if used strategically on your website pages, could help your visitors understand your business. With the current content structure, it could be confusing for some.

I presume there are two types of people you're targeting?

1. Those looking to sell / merge
2. Those looking to acquire

If the above is incorrect, please do share who your ideal clients are (if you want, that is).

There needs to be some form of communication on the homepage that'll help any of these people to figure out what CapEQ can do for them straight away. So ask a question (or questions)... find out who they are and what they want and then direct them to the right resource on your website.

I didn't find an FAQ section. This could also help explain things further (or better) for some visitors.

I think in this current age of websites, the quality of your contents and how relevant they are to your visitors are important things to consider. Google is also looking at that, because they want to show people websites they believe are useful to the person carrying out a search on their platform. If they feel your website is not aligned to their "taste", then it'd be a tough nut to crack.

I hope this helps.

To your success!

 

[Beautinow]

Just one thing I want to add to the conversion:

Instead of hiring an SEO specialist, hire a digital marketing specialist that optimises for SEO. Pure technical style SEO is pretty much dead.

 

[fisicx]

Pure technical style SEO is pretty much dead.

Depends on the business. It still works very well for a lot of people.

 

[B2B TIMES]

@PugwashEQ Hi there. I can definitely say that SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tools that are there. It's difficult because you need to deal with something that you can't control (I mean Google). On this basis, my first piece of advice is that don't believe agencies/freelancers that give you a guarantee that you will reach +100500 traffic and increase your sales 10X. That's just a sales trick and mostly is a scam. A good professional won't give such recommendations, because he understands that he doesn't have a direct influence on Google. You can update the site, create good content, build the links, but that still won't mean that your site will reach position #1 in two weeks.
Speaking of time, you must also understand that it's a long run. In SEO there is no fast results. It can take from 6 months to one year to see the results (the time varies depending on the niche). So also ignore those who say that it will be ASAP.

In SEO there are only three things that work: Technical condition of the site, Content, Backlinks.
It's also important to the work step by step. Don't create backlinks to your site, if the site has technical problems, or the content is really poor. First you need to be sure from the technical site that everything is ok:
— Can the site be crawled by google?
— Are there any indexing errors?
— Is the robots.txt set ok?
etc.
Tech is important, because if the site won't be indexed, then all the efforts that you put won't to anything. Consider tech SEO as the foundation of your home. Content is its walls. Links are its roof. When you build a house.

Work with companies/individuals that put the time in the research. Competitor audit, keyword research, backlink audit — all these things should be done first. After the research is done, they should start a strategy. You must know where they will lead your site, what they will do to achieve your goals. So set up the KPI and keep a track on their work.
Hope this info will help you

You are right. Most of freelancers and SEO agencies are giving guaranteed result that is not possible in SEO.