People paying for search engine optimization have no idea what they’re paying for, how it works, or why. There, it’s been said.
There are people out there paying real, actual dollars for something they don’t understand, most likely because someone else convinced them it was a good idea.
Perhaps it was an article. Perhaps it was another industry insider, or a friend in the vertical. Either way, merchants pay for SEO and have no idea what it is.
Now, here’s why this matters. When you don’t really understand what you’re getting, it’s impossible to know if it’s worth it or not.
So let’s back this up a little bit. Why would you click on a paid ad for services that promise organic rankings?
Why would you not just look at the organic listings? This is one of the few industries, if not the only one, in which you can actually see the quality of the work you should be getting before you pay for it.
Case in point: when you sell SEO services (speaking from the perspective of an eCommerce SEO agency) you should have serious organic rankings.
Now, for merchants, this means when you look something up in the organic search results, you should be vetting the listings at the top of the SERPs.
Let’s be clear about this. Agencies that sell eCommerce SEO services are selling some package that promises to increase organic rankings.
This could include any combination of keyword research, audits, competitive analysis, technical optimizations, structure optimizations, copy creation, on-page optimizations, and link building, among others.
Now, the goal of making these optimizations is to increase the organic rankings of a client’s website.
If the agency in question can do it for a client, why shouldn’t they be able to do it for their own websites?
That’s a rhetorical question – they should be able to do it.
No merchant should be buying eCommerce SEO services from an agency that does not produce good organic rankings for its own website.
That’s the bottom line. Do not believe the promises, the case studies – any of that. There is one thing you should be looking at to justify intent to purchase (or not) and it’s the agency’s current organic rankings.
Let’s just look at this from another angle. If the agency can’t produce quality organic rankings for its own website, why would you believe that they can do it for your website?
And moreover, why would you pay them money to do so, if they can’t even do it for their own website?
So here’s what you need to do, if you’re thinking about starting an SEO campaign with an agency partner: you need to put their current rankings under a microscope.
Get a group of keywords and start looking at the agency’s current rankings. What you need to find is some proof that this agency can do it.
Start with the basics: eCommerce SEO, SEO services, SEO near (your location) and so on and so forth.
If you can’t find that agency on page one, try some more specific keywords, relevant to your vertical. For instance, if you sell tobacco, they could be tobacco SEO, SEO services for tobacco, cigar SEO, cigar store SEO, and so on and so forth.
And if that fails, go with a long-tail query, like “why eCommerce SEO is important,” or “how will SEO help my business?”
If you can’t find the agency ranking on page one for anything, move on. There’s an eCommerce SEO agency out there for you, you just need to find them in the organic results.
