A How question

How do I know if an SEO company understands my goals?

3 min read Cites 1 source

Test it rather than assume it. Understanding shows in four things you can check before you sign: whether the company can explain your business back to you accurately, whether it defines success in terms of what your business needs rather than rankings alone, whether it tells you what it would not do, and whether it asks about the limits you work within. A proposal that reflects all four was written for you. One that could be sent to any business in your industry was not.

Ask the company to explain your business back to you

After the first conversation, ask the company to summarize, in a few sentences, what you sell, who buys it, what makes a good customer for you, and what you want from search. Its answer shows how much it listened. Google’s guide to hiring an SEO recommends checking whether a company is interested in your business at all; this test goes one step further and checks whether that interest produced an accurate picture. Gaps and errors in the summary are worth correcting before any plan is built on them.

Listen to how it defines success

Rankings and traffic are steps on the way, not the goal. Understanding shows when the plan connects to the actions that matter to your business: booked appointments for a service company, purchases for a store, quote or demo requests for a business selling to other businesses. In analytics, those actions are recorded as key events, and the company should ask whether yours are set up and offer to set them up if they are not. If every measure of success it mentions is a position or a traffic figure, ask how each one connects to the inquiries or sales you need.

Ask what it would not do

A plan built around your goals involves choices, and choices mean leaving things out. Ask the company which services it would not recommend for you right now, which searches it would not target, and which part of your site it would not touch first, and why. A company that recommends everything at once has not prioritized around your goals; one that can explain what it would leave aside, and why, has.

Notice whether it asks about your limits

Goals come with constraints: how many new inquiries your team can handle, which services have the best margins, which months are busy or quiet, which areas you serve, and what you cannot offer. A company that asks about these is planning for the business you actually run. One that never asks may bring you more of the wrong inquiries, or more than you can serve.

Look for your goals in the proposal

The final check is on paper. The proposal should restate your goals in your terms, tie each part of the work to one of them, and name the measures that will show progress, with the source for each. If you cannot trace a line from a proposed task to a goal you stated, ask the company to draw it. If it cannot, the task is in the proposal for some other reason.

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