You should describe your business and the extent of your SEO projects. Tell us what “you like” what you are trying to achieve (led / sales / traffic / branding / reputation management) and a history of the company and the domain / domains.
If you plan to implement a redesign or rebuild your website, be sure to talk about it. A qualitative SEO project begins with keyword analysis / competitive analysis and how the information is used in the creation of your information architecture.
Do your best not to launch a new website, then hire an SEO company. They should definitely be part of the process. Be sure to list all internal resources available (IT team / Copywriters / Public Relations / Bloggers, designers, etc.). By defining both what you are trying to achieve and the inner resources you have, to support this project, so will the SEO providers able to clearly define the role they will play in the process.
Basic information when creating a business listing:
1. Name of company.
2. Contact Information:
a. Staff available for participation in the SEO effort (web developer / Copywriters, etc.).
b. Name / Title / Phone / E-mail for each individual person.
3. How much, if any experiences, these individuals in search engine optimisation?
4. Site / sites to be optimised.
5. List all domains owned by your company (especially those that can be replicas of the site to be optimised). If this is a long list, send them in a separate document / Excel.
6. A brief summary of previous SEO efforts.
7. Competitors’ websites (list 4-5).
8. Top 10 keywords in focus.
a. List of keywords.
b. How would refer clients to your company’s products and / or services? What words are used in your industry? Have you tried these keywords through Google Adwords? (See below). Remember that the real success of search engine optimisation comes from getting traffic from a large number of keywords, this list is just a starting point.
c. Use your keywords when listing your business on business listing directories. This helps create backlinks for your website.
9. Paid Search (PPC) History (If previous PPC campaigns available):
a. What sponsored keywords that have driven the best results. Send SEO provider a spreadsheet showing Impressions / CTR / Conversion Rate / CPC for each keyword, this is handled in-house or at an agency? Will SEO company have the opportunity to work with these individuals or can / should they even manage PPC?
10. Social Media:
a. Is the company currently active in social channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube?
b. Do you have a blog? if so, what is the address?
c. If so, who is responsible for the maintenance of social presence?
d. How do you measure the success of social media?
e. Can SEO firm to have communication with social media team and help drive the strategy?
f. Make sure to add your business to business listing directories – Facebook, google+, twitter, etc
11. Public Relations:
a. Do you have PR in in-house or with an agency? (If no internal PR, just type “none”)
b. Can SEO firm have influence over strategy and / or contents of PR work?
c. Is PR efforts a part of your social media strategy?
12. Is your website for e-commerce?
a. If “yes”, do you use product feeds?
13. Do you work with Affiliate Marketing Program?
14. Do you offer coupons?
15. Video:
a. Does your company video content?
b. If yes, you have the content on Youtube?
16. Images:
a. Do you have a Flickr account?
17. Local (Is local search important to your business?)
a. Do you have information in your Google Places?
18. Budget: SEK 000.00 per month?
a. If suppliers know what your budget is, they can develop a solution based on the number of hours you can afford. If you wish, you can solve this by simply entering your goals, and provide other information listed here and then say “tell me how much this will cost.” Costs will vary greatly, but you should be able to get a good cost comparison.
19. What is the expected time frame to realize a positive return on investment for your efforts? (Search engine optimisation takes time, expectations must be reasonable).
20. Do you have a Google webmaster tools?
Site structure:
1. What content management system you use, if any?
2. How frequently updated web site?
3. Web Hosting: Shared / Dedicated? Apache / IIS?
4. How long has the site live?
5. Do you have a site map? (Google Sitemap? Xml, other?)
What changes are you willing to do on the site?
1. Add additional pages?
2. Change website navigation?
3. Change the copy or categories?
4. Change the copy / add copy?
5. Change the Title Tags?
6. Rewrite / Change URLs?
7. Produce digital assets (video, media room, slide shows, podcast)?
Link Marketing, business listing directories:
1. How did you generate links to your website? (Natural, some natural / paid, press releases? For those who get paid, if any, they run out?)
a. You may already know that Google has guidelines on paid links
2. Do you have a PR department that sends out press releases for you optimise these? Can SEO firm have a say in how this is handled?
3. You have a list of partners / suppliers who can consider linking to you?
4. All social media activities (do you have a blog? If so, which URL? Bloggers among the staff?).
a. If “no” blog, would you consider creating one? SEO can now communicate about the content on the blog?
5. Do you have a list of current directories?
6. Do you participate in other forms of online / offline marketing? If yes, give some background on these efforts.
7. Link building on sites like – artmsg.com – business listing directories.
How do you define “success”?
1. What are the key figures of “success”? (Ranking / traffic / leads / branding / reputation management). What is the highest priority products / pages / services on your website? Do you have a clearly defined target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) goals? (That is 500 SEK per lead). If not, do you have other “conversions” (such as downloading a pdf) that you can assign a value to?
2. What is your target audience? (Demographics)
3. What analysis tools do you use today? (Or do you need an SEO company that installs Analytics for you?). Have you set up conversion tracking? (For the leads / sales / download pdf, etc.). If you do not have analytics in place, provide current provider contracted to install targets for organic search traffic? Additional fees may apply for Analytics set-up.
4. Are there any functions (forms, shopping carts, etc.) that are not hosted on the server that hosts the site?
Learn more about how to demands do a search provider:
There is a lot to think about when you should hire a SEO provider and how your brand should be managed in search engines and social media.
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