SEO Analysis: Key Questions to Ask Regarding Performance

Many different moving parts are required for a strong search engine optimization campaign with good SEO performance. One element that is often overlooked, however, is SEO analysis.

Think about it. When you see that SEO abbreviation, your mind will be transported to aspects such as keywords, backlinks, and content creation. It can be easy to forget about properly analyzing SEO performance to ensure SEO efforts are going in the right direction.

This is particularly the case if you have partnered with an SEO agency.

When you are working with a specialist agency, you expect a certain level of SEO performance. You anticipate your website rankings on Google to climb, organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. to improve, and conversions to increase. This is why your business signed up to work with an SEO agency in the first place.

As a result, why would you need to analyze performance? The agency will be conducting analysis, reporting the results to you, and taking the necessary actions to refine their SEO strategy, right?

Well, not necessarily.

Certain agencies will be secretive and reticent about sharing performance stats, or even conducting an SEO performance check. While you might be getting told about how your Managed SEO campaign is hitting the right notes, the data could be saying something else.

If you want to find out more performance information, we have listed some key questions to ask your agency regarding SEO analysis. Yet before getting to those, we have listed a number of important questions you need to answer before raising any of your own.

Key performance indicators – do you know these?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are vital for any SEO performance check. As you will know, SEO is a long-term process. It’s not something that can be done over a few weeks or by ticking off certain actions. It takes time, continuous effort, and the ability to adapt to achieve long-lasting, quality SEO results.

KPIs help with keeping the ship on course. They are utilized to monitor progress, provide insights, and assess your website’s SEO status. If KPIs are not used, it will lead to a number of problems – most notably, an ineffective SEO campaign that fails to react and make necessary changes when required.

However, are you aware of the KPIs being used by your SEO agency? If not, you could be struggling to understand how your campaign is performing.

Questions to ask

If you feel you’re not getting the necessary feedback about reports and KPIs, think about the following questions:

• Are you providing SEO reports that cover all KPIs?
• Do these reports include continual progress updates?
• Are the KPI metrics appropriate and accurately reflect our SEO status?
• Do the KPIs help to identify processes that can be improved or changed?

Understanding the KPIs that your SEO agency is going to use is a big factor in how to choose an SEO agency that’s right for your business. You want to work with one that focuses and matches the KPIs that your business works towards.

Is the agency supporting wider business goals?

Ultimately, SEO only plays a supporting role when it comes to your wider business objectives. These goals differ from company to company, but typical examples include boosting sales numbers, increasing brand awareness, and successfully scaling up operations.

However, even if SEO isn’t the main contributor to achieving your business goals, it remains an integral component. The overall strategy to achieve your objectives will encompass an assortment of SEO tactics – ones that your SEO agency should have originally determined were best for attaining the desired result.

This is why it’s important to see if your agency is supporting your wider business goals. Specific SEO objectives should be created to appropriately support your goals, otherwise it will lead to wasted effort, resources, and time.

Questions to ask

If you feel your SEO agency isn’t in-tune with your overall goals and strategies, consider asking these questions:

• Are you attempting to achieve SEO objectives that line up with our business goals?
• Has your agency put together a suitable list of SEO strategies that support our goals?
• How are you making us aware of your SEO tactics and how they aid our strategies?

Ensuring that your SEO agency is working towards your business goals is a great way to figure out how to choose an SEO agency.

Does the agency respond to changes?

SEO is always changing. Google regularly updates its algorithms, giving favoritism to certain tactics while lowering the importance of others. The result: your agency always has to be on the ball to revise their strategy to incorporate these updates.

If they don’t react quickly and make changes, this can be damaging to your entire marketing campaign. What worked last week might see your site plummet down the Google search results.

Questions to ask

If you feel your website’s SEO performance is fluctuating, you may want to ask your agency the following questions:

• How do you stay up-to-date with the latest SEO changes?
• Are you making the necessary updates to my campaign?
• How quickly are you implementing these updates?
• Are you continually conducting keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here.?

Other questions to ask and why

As part of your SEO performance check, you can ask your current agency plenty of other questions. Don’t be hesitant in questioning them when necessary – they should be ready and willing to answer any queries you fire in their direction.

Here are some questions to keep in mind:

• What current technical SEO problems exist that’s slowing down performance? Check to ensure they have diligently gone through your website to identify SEO problems.
• What procedures do you have in place to resolve these problems? If they find any issues, you want to know they can resolve them successfully.
• Is there any way your agency can improve communication? If communication between you and your agency is lacking, see if this can be revised and upgraded.
• What were the results of optimizing our content? Content optimization is key for SEO performance. Make sure the results are at a necessary standard.
• Which research have you performed with regards to competing content? See if they have conducted the required research to identify and measure content by competitors.
• How many new backlinks have you acquired? Backlinks are important for SEO, so ensure you know how many have been acquired by your agency.
• What authority and trust metrics are achieved by these linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages.? Low-quality backlinks are no good. Check with the agency they are high authority links.

If you’re not getting the right answers, it’s time to think about switching to a new SEO company. Are you wondering how to choose an SEO agency correctly this time? Well, we can help! Simply Book A Call and we will discuss the issues with your current SEO agency, what we’ll do to help, and how to proceed forward.