Let’s just back up a second and get back to the basics of SEO strategies.
Ask yourself this question: Why do I want to hire an eCommerce SEO company in the first place?
Is it because they’ve promised growth for your eCommerce website? More sales? Better brand visibility in the search engines?
To be true, those things can follow from an eCommerce SEO campaign. They are among the reasons that most digital marketers consider SEO the most effective marketing channel.
But we need to understand what we’re getting into here. SEO is a collection of practices that will increase your website’s rankings in the SERPs, generating higher visibility for a set of target keywords (as well as a better user experience).
So ultimately, what you’re literally paying for is some subset of those practices that are supposed to get your website to show up higher in the organic rankings.
This makes SEO completely unique in the world of digital marketing in that you can quite literally get an understanding of the proficiency of the marketing agency before you buy anything.
Knowing this, you can look at an agency’s current organic rankings to see how well they can do what they say they can do.
Anyone can make a bunch of promises, but in SEO, you can check Google to see, in a matter of seconds, if that agency has the ability to make good on them.
For instance, take a keyword like the one in this article – eCommerce SEO company. Add a few others in, like “eCommerce SEO services,” “SEO consultant,” or “SEO agency.”
You could also get industry specific. Say you’re in the fashion industry. You could try “fashion SEO experts,” or “SEO for fashion.”
See if the agency you’ve been talking with shows up in the organic search listings. They should be on page one or at least on page two.
Remember, something like 75% of all clicks go to listings on the first page of the search results, so showing up on page one is a way bigger deal than showing up on page two.
But, showing up at all is also important. Something like 90% or even more of all website pages either get no traffic or are not indexed at all.
If the agency doesn’t show up for keywords like these (which are extremely competitive, by the way) you could try longer-tail keywords. That is, more specific keywords.
For instance, you could look for something like “eCommerce SEO services for fashion companies” or even “SEO services for fashion in [your city].”
The bottom line here is that it’s in your best interest if you do not hire a company that does not show up in the organic search results.
Now you might be asking what the reason for this is, and if it is not yet apparent, it’s because when you buy SEO, you’re buying a company’s ability to get your online store to show up in the search results.
Now ask yourself: if this company’s own website does not show up in the search results for the very services that they are selling (which promise to get your company to appear there) why would you pay for that?
It would be like going to a coffee shop and ordering a coffee, only to look around and notice not only that there were no other patrons drinking coffee, but that there were no coffee or espresso machines visible, and no sugar or creamer anywhere in sight.
Getting Started Hiring an eCommerce SEO Company
Hiring an eCommerce SEO company is not without its challenges but at the very least, this is one industry where you can sort of see the quality of what you’ll be getting (or at least the intended effects) before you pay.
So keep this little tactic in mind when you’re looking around for creative ways to spend your marketing dollars.
