SEO
What Do SEO Agencies Do? (And Tips for Choosing One)
I’ve worked in SEO agencies for the past 10 years. During that time, I have become familiar with how they operate. If you’re looking for the inside scoop on what SEO agencies do, keep scrolling down to find out.
Let’s get started.
The main service an SEO agency will provide is improving your website’s visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
More search visibility means more organic traffic will be driven to your website, sending more leads or customers to your business.
Services supplied by different agencies vary, but your agency should be able to deliver the following core SEO services for your business.
Service | Why you need it |
---|---|
Keyword Research | Targeting the right keywords is a fundamental part of SEO and separates the winners from the losers. |
Link Acquisition | Links are still a ranking factor in Google. So unless you are a big brand, you will need to acquire links to build authority to your website. |
SEO Reporting | Reporting enables you to see how your website is performing against your KPIs. |
Content Creation | Consistently publishing content keeps customers engaged with your brand. |
Technical SEO | Even if you have a development team, it pays to have a technical SEO expert diagnose any SEO issues with your website. |
Let’s explore these services in more detail.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a common starting point for most SEO campaigns.
The agency will use this research to discover what keywords it needs to focus on to improve your website’s search visibility.
Once your agency has completed the keyword research stage, it will usually present its findings to you.
This may come with a lot of SEO jargon, but don’t worry—I’ve translated some phrases you may hear below:
- Search Volume – This refers to the average number of times a user searches for a query in Google each month. Often abbreviated to “SV” or “MSV” (monthly search volume).
- Keyword Difficulty – How difficult it is to appear in Google for the keyword.
- Keyword Ranking – The position within Google of a particular keyword.
If you were thinking, “I could do this keyword research myself,” then you would be right.
You can.
Simply type a domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and check the Organic keywords report.
Let’s try this with ahrefs.com.
By entering our domain, we can see that Ahrefs already ranks for 85,678 keywords.
Clicking on the Competing domains tab, we get a list of our top competitors.
If we look at the first row and click on the keywords unique to our competitor, we can get an idea of what keywords our competitor—in this case, Moz, ranks for.
From this, we have 62,958 keywords we can potentially target that our competitor ranks for, but Ahrefs doesn’t.
We can use this process on all our competitors’ sites, allowing us to form the basis of a keyword research document.
The keyword research process isn’t technically difficult— but the interpretation of the data is where you get the value from your SEO agency.
The agency’s experience across multiple verticals and business sectors means it is well positioned to advise you on your keyword strategy.
Link acquisition
Acquiring links is one of the most important activities in SEO. You need to have links to rank in Google. And yes, it’s still one of the most important confirmed Google ranking factors.
Agencies use different tools to identify link prospects, assess their authority, and contact other websites on your behalf.
For example, they may use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to understand the authority of any link.
Their exact methods for acquiring links will depend on your website and its assets, but some agencies will propose to make a piece of content that they think will attract links naturally.
Sometimes, agencies will also work in tandem with digital PR teams or directly contact journalists and websites.
In my experience, digital PR teams are best at landing the big links, but they need the support of the SEO team to help manage the overall process.
When it comes to link building, there is a lot of associated jargon. You may hear your agency use the following terms:
- Follow/Dofollow Links – These links can influence page rankings with the search engine results.
- Nofollow Links – These links do not influence the search engine rankings of the destination URL.
- Domain Rating (DR) – An SEO metric developed by Ahrefs that looks at the quality and quantity of the backlinks to a website and scores them on a scale from 0 to 100.
- Link Profile – Assessment of all of the links that a website has.
The jargon around links doesn’t stop there, unfortunately. But if you want to get more translations, you can check out our SEO glossary.
SEO reporting
Plot spoiler: SEO agencies love documentation.
When you work with an agency, it will send you decks, spreadsheets, and many other documents.
The documentation acts as the agency’s paper trail and shows that it is delivering the work to you.
Roadmaps
As well as supplying the core services, an SEO agency will provide you with a detailed roadmap when you start working together.
- This will indicate what areas of SEO it will be focusing on, typically for the next three to six months.
- A good roadmap will prioritize resolving any technical issues first and then devote time to the other elements afterward. The reason for this is that if a website has a significant technical issue, no amount of content will be able to change that.
Kick-off calls and weekly catchups
After you have received the SEO campaign roadmap, you will likely be invited to a “kick-off call,” and the agency will run through the SEO roadmap with you.
This is your chance to confirm that you are happy with the campaign’s focus and confirm, or set, your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Following the kick-off call, you’ll typically have weekly catchup calls with the SEO team.
You will often be given access to an SEO performance dashboard and informed when your monthly report is delivered, allowing you to track the campaign’s performance.
Monthly SEO reports
Providing SEO reports is a big focus for any agency. It is its way of communicating what happened in your SEO campaign, why it happened, and the next steps.
Most agencies will supply at least a monthly report, but other agencies have been known to do weekly or even daily reports.
SEO reporting makes the agency accountable and allows your business to show the wins and losses internally to key stakeholders with ease—by sharing the deck.
Content creation
SEO agencies will create any type of content for your website that you require. The main types of content they will help you with include but are not limited to:
- Blog post content.
- Landing page content.
- Meta descriptions and page titles.
Let’s take a close look at these types of content:
Blog post content
- The agency should deliver a content calendar when you start working with it. This will be your plan for the next few months in terms of blog post content.
- Most agencies will have someone in-house or work with an outsourced content writer to produce your content.
- The agency will typically recommend how many posts it thinks will be necessary per month—this is largely dependent on your budget.
- The agency will usually upload and format the content itself if you have given it access to the CMS.
Landing page content
- With landing page content, an agency will provide recommendations on what it thinks is the best approach to take.
- It will write the content, and it will be written in-house or with a trusted outsourced partner.
- The agency should be able to upload the content itself if it has CMS access.
Meta descriptions and page title content
- When it comes to meta descriptions and page titles, these will most likely be automatically generated using formulas if you have a big website.
- The agency should be able to upload the content itself if it has CMS access.
Technical SEO
Good technical SEO skills are arguably the most lucrative skill set you can have in SEO.
When you approach an SEO agency, it will showcase its technical SEO credentials and try to diagnose many of your website’s issues by conducting a technical SEO audit.
Usually, it will do this by running a crawl of your website.
Here are a few specific examples of typical checks it will make:
- Checking your website is crawlable and indexed in Google and other major search engines.
- Reviewing your site’s structure; check that it is logical and optimized for search engines.
- Reviewing your website’s performance such as site speed and Core Web Vitals.
- Reviewing the internal and external links of your website and share opportunities for improvement.
- Reviewing your canonicals and redirects to ensure they are implemented properly.
- Reviewing your sitemap and robots.txt files to ensure that they are implemented correctly.
- Reviewing your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts.
- Ensuring your images are optimized for search.
This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea of what technical elements the agency will consider. It will pick up this information from running a website crawl on a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit.
Once your agency has completed the technical SEO audit, you may think everything is complete in terms of technical SEO—but it doesn’t end there.
Technical SEO is still required to maintain the site and ensure there are no significant problems with the website from a technical standpoint.
Believe it or not, it is common for businesses of all sizes to make substantial technical site errors without even being aware of them.
We have run through what an SEO agency does, but what are the benefits of hiring an SEO agency?
Here are a few:
- Fully managed SEO – Allows you to focus on your business.
- Access to experienced SEO specialists – You can leverage them for your business.
- Access to enterprise SEO tools – Gives you better insights into your website’s SEO.
- Achieve your business objectives – Helps your business realize its goals by creating a personalized strategy.
- Collaboration with your internal teams – SEOs are used to working with other channels, such as PR, PPC, and affiliates, so they can work with your internal teams if required.
- Learn from them – The SEO agency will be more than willing to share its knowledge with you. You can use this as a stepping stone to build your own SEO team further down the line.
The bottom line is that an SEO agency is a good fit for a company that wants a hands-off approach to dealing with SEO.
Hiring an SEO team can be a long process, and attracting SEO talent can be challenging. Working with an agency, though, can let you side-step these issues.
Now you know what an SEO agency does and what the benefits are, here are a few tips on what to ask and be aware of.
Be aware of the “we’re an award-winning” agency line
If I had a dollar for every award-winning SEO agency I have encountered in my career, I would be a rich man.
What I am saying here is that many SEO agencies will say they are award-winning and proudly update their page titles to prove it.
The problem is that almost every reputable agency is award-winning, meaning that it is not the distinguishing factor it used to be.
A quick Google of this phrase shows that there are a lot of agencies out there that describe themselves in this way.
Be aware of the “we’re a Google Partner” line
In a similar way that the award-winning agency has become a bit of a cliche, there are also some unscrupulous agencies that will add Google Partner images and badges to their websites.
They do this to look more impressive. Here’s an example of someone complaining about this issue on a support thread.
Sidenote.
A Google Partner is an approved advertising agency or third party that manages Google Ads accounts on behalf of other brands or businesses. Google Partner status is concerned more with PPC and is not an endorsement of an agency’s SEO services.
If you are unsure of an agency’s status, always check beforehand to confirm if it is legitimate using this directory.
Ask what SEO tools they use
They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep—in SEO, you can say the same about the tools an agency uses.
It’s worth asking what SEO tools an agency has. If you choose to work with the agency, these tools will be your data sources.
SEO tools can vary in price—so by asking this question, you can get an idea of how much it spends.
For example, if it is using an enterprise SEO tool, then it’s probably clear from this that it is serious about SEO, and cash flow isn’t an issue for it.
On the other hand, if it is using a tool you know you can use for free, or fairly cheaply, and you get the impression it lacks expertise—this could be a potential red flag.
Ask about budgets
When it comes to budgets, you will typically need at least a four-figure monthly budget to work with a reputable SEO agency.
The reality is that if you have a smaller budget for SEO, then it may be worth working with an SEO consultant instead.
The reason for this is that agencies typically prioritize their highest-paying clients—because they mean the most to their business.
Ask if they outsource
When I started my career over 10 years ago, outsourcing was fairly rare in agency land.
But 10 years later, it’s now more common and something that even the big media agencies do to reduce costs.
When you think of outsourcing, it generally has negative connotations, but it can also be positive. Outsourcing can work for everyone if an agency has the right processes and training in place.
The bottom line here is to ensure that you are happy with the quality of the work.
Ask to see the SEO team
Agencies usually get the sales teams to do most of the work in the pitch stages, as that’s their specialty.
But as a prospective client, it’s worth remembering that the sales team won’t be the people working on the account with you.
Ask to see the SEO team members, and judge whether you think they will be a good fit with your business. A good team should act as an extension of your own business.
You don’t have to interrogate each member of the SEO team, asking about their experience. But you’ll probably be able to feel if the team is experienced or not just with a quick chat.
Once you have established that it’s a team you want to work with, it’s worth asking how many hours of senior SEO experience you will get on the account.
The agency is unlikely to refuse any of your requests early on since they will try their hardest to win you over as a client.
This is the best time to ask all your questions, get answers, and learn about the necessary details added to the contract.
Get testimonials
Sometimes, the best way to understand what an agency is like is to talk to some of its other clients.
Ask for testimonials from the agency’s other clients and, if possible, for a phone or video call. You’ll get much more information this way than from a forwarded email saying how great the agency is.
Case studies
Most agencies have a bunch of case studies on their websites about how they got a 10X ROI for a client they worked with. It’s a good idea to read these carefully—these are usually the best examples of their work. It will show you what they are capable of.
Final thoughts
SEO agencies are there to make your life easier, enabling you to spend more time focusing on your business. They will suit many businesses out there, but not all.
If your business can’t support a four-figure monthly retainer fee, then an agency is probably not right for you.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions (and get answers) before you sign on the dotted line.
Got more questions? Ping me on Twitter. 🙂
SEO
Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It
Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when…
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
-
SEO6 days ago
Contact Us Page Examples: 44 Designs For Inspiration
-
SEO7 days ago
Google’s Advice For Ranking: Stop Showing
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 22, 2024
-
SEO7 days ago
Save Time With Keywords Explorer Tool
-
WORDPRESS6 days ago
WordPress Block Themes Explained in 250 Seconds – WordPress.com News
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Local Search Developments from Q1 2024
-
PPC7 days ago
The 8 Best Lead Generation Ideas from Marketing Experts
-
PPC6 days ago
Mastering Lead Generation in Paid Search Advertising
You must be logged in to post a comment Login