Whether you are thinking of hiring a company to optimize your site for you or are contemplating putting together your own team to work on your site from within the company, there are a number of things you need to do. Aside from screening candidates for their knowledge on SEO, you also need to ask them about what they can do for you. These questions need to be asked if you are serious about making your site do well for you.

These questions can be tweaked to fit SEO companies and specialists alike. You simply need to scale up or scale down your questions to fit whoever you are asking these questions of.

What sites have you handled in the past? – This question should be asked at the onset to establish what kind of work the company or individual has done in the past. Also, they should be asked to provide proof that they indeed were the ones who did work on these sites (if they can) and to give you an explanation of what was done to these sites in order to ascertain their level of competence and success in the field.

What changes do you think my site needs? – This question can be asked another way if you are thinking of putting up a new site. You can ask about recommendations for what your site will need before you go live instead of asking about changes. Either way, the person or company you are asking should be able to present you with recommendations and best practices when it comes to your site. Of course, you should not expect them to outline what these processes will involve. They can give you ideas regarding how to improve your site’s SEO and other aspects of your site.

Ask about keyword phrases that they feel will be best for your site. – While most companies asking to have their sites optimized provide their SEOs with keywords they want to rank for, there are some that ask the SEOs what keywords they should strive to rank for. This is often asked of companies and individuals who initially ask what the company’s main goal is and who their target market will be. You can actually give them a list of keywords you want to rank for and then ask for recommendations on what other keywords or phrases should be added.

How long has it been since you first started doing SEO? – For companies, they can be asked when they started handling customers. Usually, the longer a company has been doing SEO, the better they are at their craft since this would mean that they have been handling websites and optimizing them for that same amount of time. This also means that they have been constantly honing their craft if they have been around for more than 3 years since most SEOs and companies that do not deliver on their promises usually fold after a few years.

Ask about inclusions in reports and how long it will take for favorable results to emerge. – Basic reports usually show you the ranks of the keywords you are requesting that the site focus on. These can also show you what other keywords your site might be ranking for via the Google Webmaster Search Console or what people’s queries are when they search for what your site has to offer. If your site has Google Analytics on it, you will be getting more than just this information in your reports. You will be able to get more detailed information from these companies or individuals when analytics is used.

What improvements in traffic and revenue can I expect from the work that you do? – This can be a very tough question to answer, since there are a number of important factors that come into play where traffic and revenue are concerned. If your site has not been flagged for problems in the past or is a fresh site, there is a huge chance that traffic can increase by 50% over the next 3 to 6 months. As for revenue, that is dependent on what products or services that you offer and how these are presented on your site.

Of course, aside from the questions that you ask, you should also expect your target SEO company or specialist to have questions of their own. After all, how can they take care of your site if they do not have any background information on your company or your site. Some of the questions that these entities should ask should include some of the following:

• What keywords do you want to focus on?
• What are your main goals for the site?
• How many years has the site been up?
• Has anybody handled your site’s SEO in the past?
• What content management system (CMS) do you use?
• How many people have access to your site?
• Are you planning on doing PPC?
• Do you have any social media accounts for the site?
• Who are your major competitors?

When these questions are asked by an SEO company or specialist, you can ascertain that they at least know what they are doing.