Question For SEO Companies From An On-line Retailer

[Palmbourne]

When employing an SEO company what should I be looking for? When I go to a companies website I look for how many keywords they have ranked on Semrush. Most of the companies that I have looked at do not rank very many. Saying most I am talking about 10-12 companies. There was one company that had a lot more than anyone else but their reviews were awful.

Then I look at their clients websites to see how many keywords they have ranked and this is where I am baffled. Quite a lot of them especially retail sites with lots of products have very few keywords ranked and my belief is that the more related keywords that you have ranked the better you will do.

I also look at how the thier organic traffic is doing over a number of months. what surprises me most is that companies are advertising clients websites where it looks like traffic is climbing and then all of a sudden there is a big drop. Am I missing something in order to find a company that will do what we are paying them for?

Thank you in advance.

[MattAntonino]

Number of keywords ranked in SEMRush?

This isn't such a great metric for a number of reasons.

1. SEMRush as a whole isn't all that great for small to mid-sized sites. It's great for huge sites and even "pretty large" places but I wouldn't think you'll find many results on dentists, plumbers, photographers & even SEO agencies.

2. "my belief is that the more related keywords that you have ranked the better you will do."

I'll take "dresses" and you take 250 keywords related to window tinting in Kyoto. "More" keywords isn't necessarily better. A lot of SEO agencies don't bother trying to rank keywords as they're often busy working on client work and not on their own marketing (I know two of the agencies I'm intimately familiar with don't 'drink their own koolaid' - their marketing is way behind their actual skills.)

Finding a good company is challenging but you should look places like here (Moz Q&A is great and you get to know people before you work with them) as well as LinkedIn local groups, social media (again, insight) and try to get an idea of what someone's philosophy is before you engage them.

When you talk about traffic "drop offs" - again, if this is SEMrush, it's hard to say ... but I've seen frequently when a company is engaging an SEO agency that has their own private network, the contract ends and they remove links. If you have 20-200 strong links removed, you're going to take a massive dive. Also, check if these dives are around algorithm changes.