You’ve been work­ing con­stant­ly on your SEO strat­e­gy and final­ly decid­ed to hire an expert to help. There’s no doubt they’ll rein­vig­o­rate your whole strat­e­gy – but how can you iden­ti­fy the best of the bunch? These 18 ques­tions will help you find your ide­al candidate.

What is SEO

Search Engine Opti­mi­sa­tion (SEO) is the sec­tor with­in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing that focus­es on improv­ing the rank­ing of web pages with­in search engine results pages. But – you prob­a­bly already know that since you’re con­sid­er­ing hir­ing an SEO consultant.

Why is it so crucial to online businesses?

An effec­tive SEO strat­e­gy can bring huge rewards to busi­ness­es such as increased organ­ic traf­fic, improved site domain author­i­ty, increased brand aware­ness, and attract­ing bet­ter qual­i­ty leads.

Why might a business hire an SEO consultant?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, SEO is a skill in itself. Even peo­ple work­ing with­in mar­ket­ing or busi­ness for years aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly going to be the best can­di­dates for pulling off an effec­tive SEO cam­paign. Plus, busi­ness own­ers have enough on their plates with­out hav­ing to learn all about SEO techniques.

That’s why many opt for hir­ing an SEO con­sul­tant. This is some­one who works on their own, pro­vid­ing rec­om­men­da­tions and strate­gies for busi­ness­es want­i­ng to improve their organ­ic traf­fic. Usu­al­ly, the con­sul­tant just pro­vides the advice rather than imple­ment­ing it.

Before we get into what to ask SEO con­sul­tants, here are some pros and cons of hir­ing one:

Benefits and drawbacks of hiring an SEO consultant

A good SEO con­sul­tant will know the ropes of the indus­try and relieve many duties off the back of whichev­er unfor­tu­nate soul was han­dling it before. Their exper­tise will feel like a breath of fresh air – espe­cial­ly if you were brav­ing the SEO efforts for a while beforehand.

You’ll def­i­nite­ly see a big improve­ment in your web traf­fic, site per­for­mance, lead con­ver­sion, and web devel­op­ment amongst oth­er things. The per­son you hire will also like­ly be well-embed­ded in the SEO com­mu­ni­ty and there­fore can keep you abreast of changes in rank­ing require­ments and best practices.

They’ll come at a big cost, but since all their efforts will be focused on improv­ing your SEO rank­ing, it will be a big time saver com­pared to doing it your­self with all your oth­er tasks simultaneously.

As with any hire, there’s no guar­an­tee that the new­ly appoint­ed SEO con­sul­tant will fit per­fect­ly with your team. There’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­son­al­i­ty clash­es and dif­fer­ences in com­mu­ni­ca­tion styles. Fur­ther­more, it can take a long time for a new team mem­ber to under­stand your busi­ness – which is pret­ty cru­cial to devel­op­ing a tai­lored SEO strategy.

If your con­sul­tant works with oth­er clients, which is most like­ly, you won’t be able to make con­tact any time you need to. There will prob­a­bly be com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges and less-than-desir­able wait times for responses.

Nev­er­the­less, an SEO con­sul­tant can cul­ti­vate out­stand­ing site improve­ments and ease the heavy load of site opti­mi­sa­tion. Their exper­tise means your SEO will be tak­en care of, leav­ing you to address oth­er impor­tant aspects of your business.

Before you send out your job adverts though, or book any can­di­dates in for inter­views, check out our list of ques­tions that cov­ers what to ask SEO con­sul­tants to ensure you hire the best of the bunch:

Questions to ask an SEO consultant

These ques­tions will help you find a can­di­date who’s com­pe­tent, data-dri­ven, and a good fit for your com­pa­ny and its ethos. Plus, you’ll fig­ure out if their meth­ods are above board and if they’ll suit your spe­cif­ic project.

Yep, it’s a big job and those are a lot of require­ments. We’ve bro­ken down our top inter­view ques­tions into three sections:

1) General questions about their experience

• Tell me about your expe­ri­ence in this field.

This one’s pret­ty self-explana­to­ry: you want to know if they’re an expe­ri­enced candidate.

Remem­ber that a per­son with many years of expe­ri­ence won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­form incred­i­bly. A con­trac­tor could have worked for five years in-house at one brand, but their job was­n’t var­ied. On the oth­er hand, a con­trac­tor could have worked for 20 clients across two years and over­come lots of chal­lenges and seen many projects.

There­fore, look for num­ber of clients or projects rather than years.

• Who are your past clients and what work did you do for them?

It’s not essen­tial that the SEO con­sul­tant you hire has expe­ri­ence with your spe­cif­ic indus­try as SEO is a set of skills that can be applied across many nich­es. How­ev­er, if you need help with your key­word research and con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion, you’ll want to know if your can­di­date has done this successfully.

• What results have you achieved from your pre­vi­ous client relationships?

Any good SEO con­sul­tant will be able to pro­vide a port­fo­lio of work, show­ing the progress and results achieved with spe­cif­ic clients. If they don’t, it could be a red flag indi­cat­ing they don’t have any proof, they’re unor­gan­ised, or they’ve inflat­ed the stat­ed results in the first place.

The achieved results speak loud­er than the num­ber of years a can­di­date has under their belt. Some­times, tal­ent is tal­ent. So, be cau­tious of exag­ger­a­tion for this one and seek evi­dence before being “WOW’ed” by big claims.

• How long have your past con­tracts lasted?

Don’t be fooled into think­ing a string of short con­tracts means the can­di­date gets sat­is­fy­ing results quick­ly – no SEO job is free from long wait­ing times. Tri­al and error are defin­ing com­po­nents of SEO and the aver­age time to see results from SEO efforts is 6 months.

So, you can give the green light if a can­di­date states this length of time or longer. Any short­er would sug­gest this can­di­date has­n’t been very suc­cess­ful in their SEO results or per­haps were not an enjoy­able per­son to work with.

• What hap­pens when our con­tract ends?

Though dif­fi­cult to ask, it’s best for both of you to know where you stand before the project begins. If you’re feel­ing bold, you can even ask about ter­mi­nat­ing the rela­tion­ship if you’re not sat­is­fied with their service.

• What ser­vices do you provide?

Before ask­ing about their ser­vices, you’ll need to know what your busi­ness needs. If you’ve already got some­one work­ing on con­tent opti­mi­sa­tion, you won’t need to hire an SEO con­sul­tant who does this.

Not every SEO con­sul­tant will give you the same answer to this ques­tion as they all offer a dif­fer­ent set of skills. For exam­ple, some won’t par­take in activ­i­ties such as PR or back­link­ing whilst being con­fi­dent with URL opti­mi­sa­tion, con­tent, and key­word research.

It isn’t a red flag if a can­di­date admits they have a pref­er­ence on ser­vices – it’s a sign they’ll only do what they’re good at, which bodes well for com­plet­ing your project properly.

Before sign­ing a con­tract, you’ll need to ensure the per­son you hire is going to per­form the tasks you have in mind – as you could be in for a dis­ap­point­ment down the line if you don’t.

• How much do you charge?

SEO work does­n’t come cheap. SEO con­sul­tants will charge between $50 and $150 per hour. If your project togeth­er is a lit­tle more involved, they might ask for a retain­er between $1000 and $2000 per month.

Above all, make sure you hire some­one whose price point aligns with their lev­el of experience.

2) Specific questions about SEO and your project

• Do you have expe­ri­ence with “x”?

If there’s some­thing nag­ging at you that you real­ly want an SEO con­sul­tant to take a look at, now’s the time to men­tion it.

It could be that your main aim is local SEO, and you’ll obvi­ous­ly want to hire some­one expe­ri­enced in this side of things because it requires a dif­fer­ent set of prac­tis­es to what you’d use for an e‑commerce strategy.

What­ev­er your spe­cif­ic goals are, make sure your can­di­date has direct expe­ri­ence with them because not every SEO strate­gist will.

• Now that you know my project require­ments, where would you begin?

The best answer to this ques­tion will depend on your require­ments. How­ev­er, there is one action that all good SEO con­sul­tants will per­form first.

It is a web­site audit – this will give them a clear idea of your site’s cur­rent mar­ket­ing achieve­ments and fail­ures. With­out this, they’ll be fum­bling around in the dark – per­haps fix­ing things they don’t need to and not the things they do.

Includ­ed in this step would be a tech­ni­cal sur­vey of your site. Slow page load­ing speed can bring down so many hard earned SEO efforts, which is a well-known fact in the SEO community.

It’s a great sign if your can­di­date can pro­vide a roadmap in the ear­ly stages as it will show they real­ly know what they’re doing and that they’re invest­ed in the suc­cess of your com­pa­ny’s SEO campaign.

• What tech­niques will you use to improve my rankings?

If they don’t give details about their meth­ods, tread with cau­tion. SEO, although tricky, is not a mys­te­ri­ous art. A good SEO con­sul­tant will be able to quick­ly state the steps required and should list these things:

• key­word research
• con­tent strategy
• URL opti­mi­sa­tion
• inter­nal and exter­nal link­ing strategies
• com­peti­tor analysis

• How will you track the suc­cess of these techniques?

Met­rics are an SEO strate­gist’s best friend – they’re the only way to mea­sure the effi­ca­cy of their efforts. Ear­ly on in your project, a good SEO con­sul­tant will meet with you and learn about your web­site to estab­lish goals. Ide­al­ly, these goals will be high­ly spe­cif­ic, real­is­ti­cal­ly achiev­able, and measurable.

A skilled SEO con­sul­tant will appre­ci­ate that SEO is all about the num­bers – it’s a high­ly log­i­cal prac­tice and so their approach should reflect this. If your can­di­date isn’t too hot on met­rics, it’s a strong sign that their work won’t be optimal.

• How much time do you need to see sig­nif­i­cant results?

If a can­di­date refus­es to give time esti­mates for results, it could indi­cate that they’re not so expe­ri­enced with SEO con­sul­tan­cy, or that they’re not being 100% hon­est about the time com­mit­ment to your project.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum are can­di­dates claim­ing they can get you to a search engine rank­ing of 1st place in a mat­ter of weeks and these types are also not to be trusted.

On aver­age it takes three months to see some results and six to see big­ger ones.

• Will you need admin­is­tra­tive access to the site?

It can feel like a big risk giv­ing a new employ­ee admin­is­tra­tive access to your site. It’s not always need­ed though – an SEO con­sul­tant might not actu­al­ly car­ry out any tasks but instead pro­vide the advice and sug­ges­tions for what your exist­ing team should be doing.

An ide­al can­di­date will give clear plans to explain why they need to access your site in this way and com­fort you that it’s OK – so don’t be afraid to ask.

• What will you do if there’s an algo­rithm change?

An expe­ri­enced SEO con­sul­tant will know that the play­ing field is always chang­ing. There­fore, they’ll have made them­selves well-equipped to deal with algo­rithm changes (oth­er­wise known as the bane of an SEO strate­gist’s life).

Algo­rithm changes can impact page rank­ings sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and if it goes the wrong way, your busi­ness needs to be pro­tect­ed. An SEO con­sul­tant should be well-informed about what to do. Here’s what they could say:

• Check SEO forums
• Check algo­rithm trackers
• Check Google’s pub­lic Liaison
• What are your favourite SEO tools to use, and which do you have access to?

If the per­son you hire only has access to free tools, your SEO efforts aren’t going to be sup­port­ed by the most accu­rate data.

Since this is their career, good SEO con­sul­tants will have invest­ed in some high qual­i­ty tools to assist them in their job.

The spe­cif­ic tools they list will vary, how­ev­er they should encom­pass these things:

• con­duct­ing key­word research
• tech­ni­cal analysis
• per­for­mance reports
• link build­ing

3) Questions about their working habits

• Will you keep me in the loop about all the changes you make?

Since there can be lots of changes in web page code dur­ing site improve­ments, web­site own­ers will want to be kept informed. The ide­al SEO con­sul­tant will under­stand that your site is impor­tant to you and share its progress with you every step of the way.

• Will you adhere to web­mas­ter guide­lines and best prac­tices? What is your under­stand­ing of these three cat­e­gories: White Hat SEO, Grey Hat SEO, and White Hat SEO?

Before you invite some­one to join your SEO efforts, check out Google’s web­mas­ter guide­lines. This page out­lines some SEO prac­tices – allowed and illic­it. You don’t want to hire some­one who dis­re­gards these rules as it could have severe con­se­quences for your site’s ranking.

Since some SEO tech­niques could result in a penal­ty from Google, busi­ness­es are right to be cau­tious about using Black and Grey Hat SEO meth­ods. How­ev­er, some of these

tech­niques do award some web­sites some tem­po­rary suc­cess, and that’s why some SEO con­sul­tants are tempt­ed to use them. Make sure you’re aware of the dif­fer­ences first, so that you don’t acci­den­tal­ly go along with some­thing illicit.

If you’re not on board with the risk that accom­pa­nies any­thing oth­er than White Hat SEO, you’ll want to ensure the per­son you hire is on the same page.

• How often can you com­mit to reg­u­lar meetings?

With­out reg­u­lar meet­ings, or if they con­stant­ly rain check, your deal­ings with your SEO con­sul­tant might become soured. Ide­al­ly, you’ll be in reg­u­lar con­tact so that you’re kept up to date and can dis­cuss any big changes.

Make your expec­ta­tion of meet­ings (and how reg­u­lar­ly you want them) very clear in this inter­view stage. Let them know that meet­ings will be a paid deliv­er­able that’s non-nego­tiable in your contract.

If there’s much hes­i­ta­tion about this issue, it could be a fore­warn­ing of things to come. No one likes work­ing with some­one who con­stant­ly seems to go off-grid.

The oth­er essen­tial part of meet­ings is being able to under­stand what the SEO con­sul­tant is doing – which could be chal­leng­ing for you if you’re not 100% clued up on the tech­ni­cal terms, phras­es, and process­es of SEO. Let your con­sul­tant know that you’ll need things explained clear­ly so that they know where you stand. You could even ask for a sam­ple of their reports to get a feel for how they work.

Final Thoughts

The bot­tom line is that you can achieve a lot with an SEO con­sul­tant on board, and your affil­i­a­tion will be improved by bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This set of ques­tions isn’t just to work out how good they are; it’s also a chance for you to explain your expec­ta­tions. Clear con­ver­sa­tions will no doubt enrich your work­ing rela­tion­ship with your con­sul­tant and lead to a high­ly suc­cess­ful partnership.

If you’re still not set on an SEO con­sul­tant and you’d like to enquire about our ser­vices, you can check them out by clicking: