How Can I Check out the Local SEO Services Before Hiring One?

Are you afraid of getting burned?

You’re not alone.

Nearly every contractor I have ever spoken with about SEO tells me he/she has been burned 4 times.

SEO is an interesting profession.

So many people call themselves SEOs but having nothing to back up that claim. And, their work just isn't going to make you money.

So how do you check out the local SEO services before you hire one to ensure you aren’t burned?

Here’s a quick rundown on ways to make sure the SEO you hire knows his/her stuff:

  1. Always look at results of their clients - don’t accept 4 or 5 good rankings as success...it usually takes at least a hundred good rankings to really kill it on the Internet
  2. Talk with the contractors that own the websites they show you. Rankings aren’t all it takes to do well...ask about how happy they are with the results and if they’re making $$$$$.
  3. There are many errors in websites that keep sites from doing well on the Internet, including load speed and coding errors. Go to www.gtmetrix.com and check the speed and performance of his site and some of his clients’ sites. If they don’t get at least a “B” on each of the 2 areas their sites are too slow and probably won't rank well.
  4. Go to https://validator.w3.org and check the same url’s you checked above for errors. Html errors kill good organic rankings
  5. Go to Google and type in site:and the url of any site to see how it looks in the index. (ex: site:www.myseoguys.com) This will tell you if the pages of their sites are being found by Google and how they look. Are the marketing messages you see compelling? This can also tell you if the site has been hacked.

The ways I showed you above to check out the local contractor SEO services before hiring one are easy and don't require any technical knowledge. You may not understand every error that you see but you will know if there are more than one or two errors the SEO is not very good and likely won't perform for you.

Thanks for checking out this post and leave us your thoughts and comments.