If your SEO is done correctly, it can deliver lead after lead for your business, so it’s worth more than one opinion.
It’s easy to make SEO seem complicated, but it’s about making your website the best resource for the keyword someone is searching for.
Any business, product, or service can benefit from SEO—it’s like having the best, highest-converting advert for your business served up to people who are in a position to buy now. Ranking in the top three for any given keyword effectively automatically positions you as THE expert for what your next potential client wants.
If you are investing in SEO, but you do not see any results, or you are getting reports that don’t seem to make sense, it might be time to get a second opinion.
I am not saying your current SEO agency is bad; I am suggesting something is not working as it should be.
It could be them, but it might also be your site build, hosting, keyword choice, niche, timing, or any combination. There’s more to a lack of return on SEO investment than issues with the agency or freelance SEO expert delivering the work.
Getting a second opinion on your SEO: what it means for your business.
I have no issue with other people scrutinising my work, but we’ve got to compare apples with apples.
If you would like a second option for your website’s SEO, I will need to know exactly what you asked them to do or what they said they would accomplish.
The original brief is often forgotten over time, and I hear a lot from clients who are unsure exactly what their SEO agency is doing for them.
This can be further compounded when clients are sent a monthly, ambiguous or confusing report.
Getting a second opinion can help you understand whether your current SEO is working, whether it’s bringing you the right kind of traffic and whether this new traffic is bringing you new business.
The purpose of SEO is to create new business; it’s not just about higher positions, more ranking keywords, and the number of backlinks your site has.
A second opinion will also give you confidence in what is already being done or will help confirm if your SEO concerns are correct.
I am not trying to take business away from SEOs who are doing a great job; a second opinion is designed to demonstrate this if it’s true and give you options if it’s not.
Have you been sold to?
Some SEO agencies have more salespeople than SEO experts.
Aggressive sales techniques that over-promise to get you signed up for something and then deliver very little are common.
Many SEO agencies will use the line ‘it takes at least six months to show any results‘ to lock you into a twelve-month contract—this is the last thing your business needs. You should be able to cancel whenever you like.
Most SEO experts agree that you need at least three months to demonstrate improvement, but after this, it should be a rolling monthly contract that you can cancel with one month’s notice.
The point here is that you may have been sold SEO that you don’t get delivered, so again, a second opinion about it will help to prove what is going on—it can’t get you out of a contract. Still, it can be something that you can use to ensure that, however long is left on your contract, you can try and get your money’s worth.
Understandably, clients often think that the companies that rank #1 for ‘SEO’ are the best SEO companies – this might sound odd, but remember that they are best at their SEO; it does not mean that they will automatically be the best fit for you.
I know what I can and can’t do for clients regarding SEO; if my skillsets don’t match your objectives, I will tell you that other people won’t.
Do you feel confused about the SEO work being done on your site?
Trusting your gut is often the best approach to auditing your current SEO arrangements,
If you feel something is not quite right, you are probably right.
This might be a hunch or a feeling, but if you are concerned that something is not right, getting a second opinion of your SEO will do one of two things:
- Confirm that your SEO is working and that you have nothing to worry about.
- Highlight where there are issues and what needs to be done.
All mouth and trousers.
I am not a self-styled SEO expert who’s read a few blogs and knows a little bit more than you; I run several businesses, one of which is a 7-figure business, and I generate all new business leads solely through organic SEO.
Let's have a chat about your SEOYou need more than just Google Analytics to get an objective opinion about your SEO.
I can show you where your keywords rank in the search and how much traffic your site is getting, but forming an objective opinion on how well your SEO is doing requires more than that.
You can’t just leave it at SEO alone.
If you want to close the circle, you will need to know about conversions, as these are the purposes of SEO – traffic to your site is one thing, and enquiries or sales are another.
Keywords that lead to conversions have been anonymised for years, so you will need other data to prove the effectiveness of your SEO. One of the best ways to do this is by using a CRM.
There are probably three main ways in which leads contact you when they have an enquiry:
- They call you
- The email you
- They complete a form on your website
There are others, such as chat, WhatsApp, text messages and so on, but these are the most common in the B2B sector where I mainly work.
Note that I gauge the quality of a lead based on the channel used to reach out – if someone emails or calls me, I consider that a more important lead than if someone sends me a Whatsapp message, anyhow…
If they call you, they’ve got your number from somewhere, and this might not be your website.
If they email you, the same is true.
If they complete a form on your site and get dropped into your CRM, they have 100% been on your website.
Emails and phone calls can be tricky to track (if you are not using something fancy and/or expensive to do this).
Therefore, the only way to get an idea of where the lead has come from is to ask them, which feels a little old-fashioned.
If they complete a form on your website, your CRM should be able to tell you what page of your site they were on and what pages they visited before completing the form (cookies assumed to be accepted).
This data is crucial when providing an objective opinion about how well your SEO works.
If all your enquiries come in via phone, it can be hard to get the data – especially if you are a small business.
If all your enquiries come in via email, you can have a dedicated email address that you only use on the website, but that’s not infallible as emails get used everywhere.
So, forms are the easiest and cheapest way of linking enquiries to website pages and then to the keywords the page ranks for.
You’ve just had a form submission from Jim.
From the CRM, you can see that Jim converted on Page C but landed on Page A; Page A ranks in the top three for Keywords X, Y and Z, so it’s a safe assumption (if there is such a thing) to make that Jim Googled one of these Keywords.
This probably sounds overly simple, but you would be amazed at how many small businesses do not use a CRM and instead try to work this stuff out using Analytics—it’s very hard to do this unless you are a full-time Analytics pro.
For less than $100 per month, you can get something like Hubspot and use unbranded HubSpot forms on your site.
You can then also use the CRM to add records to these enquiries and then use the data to build a solid picture of:
- What pages on your site are ranking well
- Which of these pages are converting well
- How many leads do they generate
- And so on
Of course, I am not even getting into your new business conversion rates here; the lower they are, the more new business leads you need, and the dance continues.
How much money does your website make you?
This is the real question you are asking when you want to know how effective your SEO is: how much money do we make?
You run a business, and it’s your job to make money, so if you would like me to provide a second opinion about your SEO, I will also need to see the figures – I can tell you how effective your SEO is by looking at your GP for last year if we know how much of that GP was generated directly via organic SEO, and this is where the CRM comes in to play again.
The bottom line.
I am very happy to invest some of my time examining your business and SEO to see if there is room for improvement.
I’ll give you 30 minutes for free. We can chat, and I will run some top-level reports and share them with you.
Your SEO should be making you money. If it’s not, then, in my opinion, it’s not working for you. So after we take an initial look at your site, rankings, and sales, we can put a plan into place for getting your SEO working—it won’t be quick, it won’t be cheap, but when it’s working, it will pay for itself.
Dave
Dave is a WordPress SEO expert with over 20 years experience in designing, building and optimising WordPress (and non-WordPress) websites for people who are serious about SEO and want to generate more new business from their websites. He's run a creative agency for 25+ years, employs 17 staff and enjoys a good rant about SEO.
