No doubt, you’ve received at least one of those pestering “please outsource your SEO to us” emails or cold calls from outsourced call centres pitching cheap “so called” SEO services.
Fact is you’re not alone… in this interview David Krauter, head of SEO Brisbane at Websites That Sell reveals they get the same calls… and… they themselves are an SEO Company!
So go figure?
However, while it’s funny it also creates a problem in the SEO industry.
People get sold, tricked and confused into making bad buying decisions.
Which is why we decided to interview a true expert on the subject. To finally shed some light on this problem and how you the entrepreneur, business owner or marketing manager can distinguish a good SEO Company from a bad one.
So without any further adieu let’s get into the Q&A with David Krauter, founder of Websites That Sell and head of SEO Brisbane.
1) What makes you qualified to talk about SEO?
DAVID: I first cut my teeth on direct response marketing in 2007. Helping local business owners build databases to market to and to drive buyers into their shops using offline direct response marketing.
It was when the internet really started to gain momentum as a marketing channel. Around this time I discovered such direct response marketing strategies work just as well, if not better, online.
And as Google quickly replaced newspapers, yellow pages and local magazines as advertising/marketing mediums, we shifted our focus. We started to specialise in getting our clients found on Google instead.
We’ve seen (and experienced ourselves) every major Google update since. We’ve ranked our own money sites, we rank for some competitive SEO terms ourselves and have ranked hundreds of clients for their keywords over the better part of the last decade.
We don’t teach.
We do!
It’s what makes us qualified to actually speak on the subject of SEO and choosing a quality SEO agency.
2) What does Websites That Sell do?
DAVID: Today we’ve narrowed our focus to just Websites & SEO.
Our vision is to become Australia’s leading digital agency that companies can trust to generate meaningful & impactful results via their Website & Google.
While we are super focused on just Websites & Google traffic, we have not forgotten where we’ve came from. In all we do, we are marketers first and then website & SEO/PPC geeks second.
This is what makes everything we do generate meaningful & impactful results.
3) What are some of the hard hitting questions someone should ask a potential SEO provider?
We’ve actually written a full guide on this subject “17 [EASY] Tips To Find The Best SEO Company” but if I’d have to narrow it down to 3 of the best questions to ask a SEO Company I’d say it’s the following (these will set the professionals apart from the amateurs):
i) Can you show me results? Has the company had ranking success before?
I don’t think it’s as important that they rank themselves as it is to have proof of client results. Client results trumps every other proof in my opinion. Yes a company might be able to spend all their money on their own rankings, but can they replicate this success across different industries, cities and websites on budget and within reasonable time frames? When choosing an agency, that’s going to be the most important part.
ii) What are you actually going to do?
Too many times we have clients coming to us saying “the other company said they would do this” but we never saw any of it. Your proposal should outline everything you receive and provide an outline if reporting will be provided on actual work completed. We personally report on all work we complete 3 levels deep (work completed, ranking reports, traffic/conversion reports)
iii) Here’s my Goal, how will what you do help achieve this?
This is really where the rubber meets the road. If an SEO doesn’t understand marketing and doesn’t understand growing a business then all they will talk about is rankings. While you are wanting to generate more calls, increase profits and scale your business they’re ranting on about rankings. If this is the case. Beware 😉 Make sure the SEO services provided or quoted actually underpin the objectives you’re wanting to achieve.
4) What are some “must knows” before hiring an SEO firm?
SEO can be a technical jargon filled nightmare. And no. You don’t need to know all the tech stuff. But it is good to know a few things and be educated about the following before starting the conversation of hiring an SEO firm.
i) What are Good & bad keywords to target in SEO?
ii) What is considered Black & White hat SEO?
iii) What are reasonable timeframes & ranking basics
Here’s also a resources, a beginners guide to seo: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
5) How Is Websites That Sell different to every other SEO Company out there?
As I already outlined, we’re marketers first and then SEO & Website geeks second.
However in our approach to SEO we go one step further.
We tell clients… Forget SEO. We do “TARGETED SEO”.
It’s our proprietary process to take your website & business from generating immediate profit to then duplicating/multiplying that profit and then scaling your business to become the authority in your industry.
The difference is that everything we do comes from a foundation of marketing & conversions.
No random choice of keywords, everything is targeted based on objectives & return on investment.
To get a full picture of this would require a whole new article, which lucky for you, you can read more about here.
6) What’s next for Websites That Sell?
One of our company values is CONSTANT GROWTH. We believe there is always room for improvement, change & doing things more efficiently. Standing still = going backwards. Our aim is to always stay one step ahead of the pack.
It’s what’s required with Googles’ ever changing landscape, hence we make it such an important value for our company.
With that we will continually test and push the boundaries to becoming Australia’s leading digital agency that companies can trust to generate meaningful and impactful results via their Website & Google.
You can visit Websites That Sell’s agency website at https://www.WebsitesThatSell.com.au and get in touch with David Krauter on his profile page.
