What real SEO feels like
In short, SEO can feel like a drag, but that is highly dependent on the competition. If you’re targeting a keyword, but you see in SERPs the top 5-10 are BIG brands (McDonalds, Microsoft, Oracle levels of “BIG”). Do you think there’s a chance you can beat them? probably not… In contrast, the top 5-10 are competitors you’ve never even heard of – much more possible.
I find Local SEO to be much “easier” and “quicker” to rank up for, simply because you’re competing against only so many local businesses. And from what I have seen, I must say, a lot of their SEO sucks! National SEO on the other hand, unless you have an incredibly unique product, that also will take lots of time – so brace yourself.
Communication
Everything you do in SEO must have purpose. An SEO or agency should let you know what they are working on, already published and why it helps your SEO.
I personally like to match the communication style of the client.
- If they are more comfortable with a group chat, sending updates like you’re friends – go for it.
- If they are more hands-off, like to set-and-forget – go for it.
- If they prefer going over reports on schedule – go for it.
The most important thing, is that you come to an agreement with the agency/freelancer on how to communicate.
An agency/freelancer could argue “well, that’s not how my business works, I send reports every 3 months and that’s what you get”. Reports are great, but I find constant or even weekly communication with the client helps build trust – especially early on right after signing.
Let’s look at it this way, most business owners have the same sentiment where they throw money at SEO but it feels like black hole. No results and no communication. So, what’s the opposite of that? More communication! Every update over a message, text, call, whatever is a signal in their brain that “something is getting done, phew!”. Otherwise they’re twiddling their thumbs waiting for the report to be sent out, IF they even remember to look at it.
Progress
This depends on where you currently stand in SEO, and this is why an SEO Audit should be conducted before beginning.
- Your agency needs to outline what your SEO looks like today compared to competitors.
- They must show you what you’re missing/lacking.
- They should outline what they are planning to do and in what order. (remember to ask “why?”)
- A roadmap is very helpful to see it from the big picture.
- As a bonus, they should show you what needs to be cleaned up (if anything). When businesses leave a terrible SEO/agency, a lot of times there is some cleanup to do. Spammy blogs, spammy links, spammy pages – you’d be surprised what people do and claim it to be “for SEO”.
Having all of this information, we can realistically see when you could possibly start to see movement. If you have a huge mess on your website, your agency has to clean that up, first. Depending on how bad it is, it would be a month, 2 months or less/more. Same thing with competitors, if they are miles ahead of you with quality backlinks, you’re in for at least 1-2 years. If you’re basically starting from ground 0, you have at least 1 year up ahead…
It varies, so any “we’ll rank you up in 30 days” is an outright lie, and the above is why.
BIG Note
I have seen lots of Ads on Facebook from agencies claiming they will rank you up in 30-days. I don’t know how they do it, but, if I were to do the same – this is how I would go about it:
- Find a stupid easy keyword to rank up for in your niche.
- Create a landing page or optimize an existing page for that keyword.
- Create a few links for that page and maybe generate fake traffic so it gets traction.
- Ta-Da! We got you to #1, see?! Now, sign here…
… Be careful, always ask why.
Setbacks
Several times a year, Google likes to release Core algorithm updates and Spam updates. Identical to the Windows updates we all hate, a lot of times these updates can make your graphs and rankings look odd. When this happens, SEOs have to read through the new changes and correct course if any content was negatively affected.