How to Onboard Your Selected Search Agency – Checklist by Bruce Clay

Nice guide, we start now with SEO Agency and this article help us! Thank :)

I would definitely share this checklist to my colleague who is interested in SEO. I hope he will use these points when he will launch his agency. Thank you!

Thank you for this article. Now I will work on the same strategy for my clients.

it sure matters the most if both parties culturally fit! This is a good checklist for that.

A great guide. Thank you very much :)

It definitely matters the most if both parties culturally fit! This is a good checklist for that.
personally, I strongly advise anyone to review particulars of a clients business practice before even thinking about a contract.

Although this is for onboarding an agency, it was very useful for me (agency) to see how the process would go from a clients point of view. Thank you, for this checklist. Found a couple of things that I haven’t thought about and will definitely implement in my own checklist for my clients.

I hired couple of marketing agencies for promoting my cleaning business and most of the time I made a wrong decision. I believe this checklist will help me this time in hiring a right marketing agency. Thank you for sharing! It’s very helpful and informative.

Extraordinary useful post. A debt of gratitude is in order for sharing the agenda too. In some cases, it is exceptionally hard to discover SEO office when you are in charge of SEO in 17 nations. You need to pick one worldwide organization or locally per nation.

Nice checklist before hiring any SEO agency. All these points should always be take care. Also need to keep an eye on weekly report to check the status of work.Thanks for sharing!

Hello Dear Sir, this blog post is very useful information for the new bloggers, your blog post went to get a lot of new education after I read it,
Please continue to post such an informative blog. Therefore, people like us will be motivated in real life.
I’m new in this area and I’m building my website, I’m working hard on this
Your blogs are very useful here and especially to this blog, which provide this point information, I have received lots of help to read this blog post, please continue to share this kind of information.
Thank you.

Thanks for informative Article and your description is very easy to understand.

Great informative post. Thanks for sharing the checklist also. Sometimes it is very difficult to find SEO agency when you are responsible for SEO in 17 countries. You have to choose one global agency or locally per country. I have some experiences that those two option have advantages and disadvantages. In case of global agencies, you do not have too much attention; they have always bigger and most important clients, from the other hand small agencies have different level of knowledge and are very difficult to manage. I think that good solution is internal team and limited cooperation with good quality specialist locally. What do you think?

Excellent check list points. I really appreciate them, and I will definitely take them on board hiring my next SEO agency. However, I’ve got a feeling you can see these points from the perspective of an agency.
How to secure yourself by not choosing complete losers wanting your money!!!
I always make a quick check list:
– do they have a physical office with a real registered address
– what’s their experience and expertise, [read About page]
– what are current and previous customers [find out their portfolio, they must have something to show up.]
– social media [noboy can afford to neglect at least every week fresh engagement]
– their branding [here is no room for any omissions]

very interesting article, thanks for share.

I agree with the article! I like how it was explained! If your going to onboard seo agency. Why not ask them for samples or proof of their work? I would make them sign a contract stating they must follow the companies rules. I would check the work before hiring them. That my 5 cents!

The points explained in this article are quite relevant in understanding work. I can relate to the part educating the agency since I was able to do experience being taught about my work.

Very well explained by this article, Thank You.

Hey Bruce,

I appreciate your Article, Very well explained and covered every single point in your checklist. Thanks for Sharing this Informational post with us.

Cheers,
Stecy

Hi Bruce Clay,

Those are wonderful check-list;
RE :”educating your agency”
For me as a SEO specialist, these items help a lot to understand the client, their business process and products/services. This is helpful to find out the better keywords to target in the SEO campaign, as well as to explore more opportunities for the client via online.

Cheers,
Theeban

Nice article, this is kind of checklist everyone should print and follow step by step during process of introducing new SEO agency.
One of the things you must avoid is to set your communication style during the pitch process.

This is really GOLD. You made things easy with Digital Agency On boarding. Thanks a lot.

Good morning Paula,

Thanks for the helpful information. Please feel free to use the e-mail address associated with my blog comment to send me more information about your services. I am seeking some kind of help on PPC campaigns and have a small budget. Let’s chat and see what we can come up with. Thanks! :-)

To talk about search agency, I am looking for someone experienced in SEM PPC to help me with PPC ad writing. Who in the U.S. would you recommend personally with that if you don’t me asking?

One of the things you must avoid is to set your communication style during the pitch process. Communication style extends to not just how the work is communicated but the pace as well.

It definitely matters the most if both parties culturally fit! This is a good checklist for that.

Excellent Idea. It’s not about optimizing search engines. It’s about Optimizing the Client’s Business.

I love the idea of a brand brief. Do you have issues with clients having difficulties in describing their brand to you?

Nice article, this is kind of checklist everyone should print and follow step by step during process of introducing new SEO agency.

Thanks for sharing! Perkful points mentioned!Just you have to check track record and strategies that company are following!

>>”Agreed that a smaller SEO company could sell without it”

I fail to see what the size of an agency has to do with carrying out Due Diligence on a new client’s business in order to create an all-round successful campaign.

It’s about possessing solid, broad-spectrum competence in fields beyond simple “One-Trick Pony” SEO, not about agency size. In this day and age, “Mine’s bigger than yours.” counts for little – if anything – anymore.

It’s not about optimizing search engines. It’s about Optimizing the Client’s Business.

A successful promoter needs to have deep understanding of Marketing, Conversion Optimization, Publicity Tactics, and not a little Consumer Psychology in order to properly “Optimize” for his/her customer, regardless of whether that promoter happens to be a Solo Operator or a large agency.

Speaking from a professional perspective as a Disaster Recovery Specialist, I can safely say that I’ve spent far more time cleaning up after larger SEO Agencies than I have after “Lone Gunmen”.

Over the years I’ve theorized that this is due to the fact that as agencies increase in size, they run an ever-growing risk of “Homogenized Thinking”. Optimizing by “Rote and Manual”, rather than by true “Knowledge and Experience”, their staff get stuck in the rut of identical “Out of the Box” formulas being applied to all clients, instead of developing custom campaigns based upon the customer’s individual business needs.

So, in effect, agency size can be – and frequently is – inversely proportional to amount of business intelligence gathered from prospective and new clients.

Great informative post. Thanks for sharing the checklist. Its really helpful. This will really help me a lot. I would like to know more about link building and social media marketing. Can you include those topics in your next post. I am a regular visitor of this blog. Thanks!

@ Bruce Clay –
personally, I strongly advise anyone to review particulars of a clients business practice before even thinking about a contract.

The simple truth is that far to many simply don’t have anywhere near the budget for what they need, let alone what they want.
I know it may seem a little harsh, but it’s far easier to turn them down at the start before you start expending time/effort looking things over or spending time with them on the phone.
I also find it a fair marker of how serious people are about their business. If they have to dig out basic figures, then you know you are likely to be looking at fixing more than a little optimisation issue or two, and are instead looking at working over procedures/processes, as well as things like communications etc.

From a clients perspective – being able to show their cards, show willing and provide immediate insight into the current state of affairs can go a long way to winning a professional over.
If you are looking at an SEO who doesn’t want to know the ins-and-outs, then you may find they are suited to helping with only a focused set of problems (I think I worded that rather politely :D).

Great Check list. I always follow the each post shared by you. every time when i visit here find latest and informative things.

Keep Posted!

Hmmmm – I see no mention of data/information preparation?
I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve been called in on a project and not needed to look at statistics, or poor over qualitative feedback etc.
(And even in those few cases, I’ve still asked for a quick “overview” of market share, audience-breakdown by type/location etc. – so even if I don’t “see” the data, someone has to know enough to give me the gist of things!)

I’d also add an additional step or preparatory phase – unburdening.
This is the point when the client has to understand and accept the following;
a) some things cannot be done,
b) some things cannot be done in the time frame asked for,
c) some things have been done wrong/improperly/incompletely previously,
d) some things are missing and need to be generated/tracked from that point forward
e) they are going to have to make changes to their perceptions and their reactions
f) they are going to have to follow the advice/instruction given
Once the emotional/egotistical baggage is out the way – you can start making headway.

If all you are doing is “hiring an SEO” for the sole purpose of “link building” and “keyword optimisation” – none of that really matters. All you need to do is prep in case G catches you and boots you down the SERPs.
But if you are hiring an agency with marketing in mind – you “should” find that they want to know, see and play with just about everything/everyone!