Only being new to the SEO environment, I’ve a few problems with our external Online Marketing company. For all I know they’re doing a lot of good work. But I, or anyone at my company, can’t see what they’re actually doing! So I basically hoping some of you have been in the same position! Any help with the below questions would be much appreciated:
- Does anyone have any Key Metrics to measure how “SEO Specialist Companies” are REALLY working for your company and where to measure them?
- What’s the best way to monitor the amount of new links you acquire?
- How can you be sure these links are good quality?
I came out of a meeting with the Ecommerce company we use to help build our online business. Usually after these monthly meetings I come out more confused than when I went in, mainly cause I still have no idea what they actually do. But after a lot of back and forthing, we finally got some info out of them. Of the 20 hours they bill to us, 12 hrs of this is spent on link building! Surely that can’t be good in the long-run. We’re in a niche market, and there is no way you can spend 12 hours a month building quality, relevant links. Surely Google’s Penguin is going to catch these and punish us at some stage. Our online business has been growing month on month for nearly 2 years now, but this has got to end, and dramatically too.
I’ve seen some of these “high-quality” links they’ve building, and in my eyes they have absolutely nothing to do with our business and little or no relevance to us. Of course being new to SEO, I don’t really have the arsenal to have a debate about this with the CEO of a business that “specialises in SEO”. But surely all these links are going to come back and haunt us. In my eyes these look like black-hat techniques, but how can you complain when business is constantly growing.
They do give us a good bit content, which is also a bit crap. The keywords they use are shocking, and VERY “I’ll just lob these in somewhere”. When I analyse some of these on the Google Keywords myself, I have absolutely no idea how they choose these, there search volume is literally non-existant. So hopefully some of you can help me out! For all I know they’re doing a great job, or their ripping us off! Either you’re going to help a small company build its online presence the proper way, or you’ll prove a SEO company is doing a good job and deserves a bigger budget!
Hope you can help!
