How Not to "Buy" SEO

Genuine email in my inbox this morning, with everything that's wrong with it:

Our SEO team has resigned recently, and we are considering hiring an SEO agency that can help us draw more traffic from worldwide crypto enthusiasts.

I can't imagine why they resigned. But maybe the following might explain it.

If you can provide us with the following questions, it will help us a lot in considering your company as the right candidate. Thank you.

What is the price range of your company for SEO service per month? (if you have a list, please send me.)

I understand why you'd ask this. It makes total sense. But, I'd focus more on the value than the price - what traffic/value could we get for our budget, realistically?

How many keywords do you cover per month?

Just no. There is no specific number of keywords. There are topics, each with hundreds or even thousands of keywords the content could rank for. SEO should never, ever be sold or bought this way.

It's a bit like asking, "how many ideas will you think about for my marketing strategy?"

Do you have a return policy, if there is no positive result, or ranking goes down after the contract?

You want to stay top of Google forever, or get a refund? No-one who knows anything about marketing, SEO, or Google is ever going to commit to that. Google doesn't work that way, and neither do marketing, nor business. Nor life, for that matter.

Do you require a retainer or can we work together on a project basis?

If you want growth, project work generally doesn't work. Project work is about input, not output - fix 100 broken links and write 10 blogs. Those things may or may not be the most important things to do right now. To understand what is the right thing to do, to get more traffic, you'll need analysis and that needs a retainer.

PARTNER with a good agency or freelancer that is invested in your growth. Stop buying SEO and/or marketing as a commodity. It isn't.

How do you recommend we measure progress in our SEO work?

Rankings, traffic, leads/sales. And the trajectory towards that.