About the Author
Corey is the owner and President/CEO of Voltage. He has spent 18 years working in strategic and leadership roles focused on growing national and local client brands with award-winning, ROI-generating digital strategies. He's a recent recipient of the KCDMA 2019 Marketer of the Year award.
The number of people within companies or agencies who have SEO on their resume has grown over the years. With that, and with seemingly every agency saying they do SEO, it can be hard to know the depth and level of expertise possessed by them if you’re seeking to hire someone to work in-house on your team or externally like an agency to be an extension of the team.
I want to warn you that SEO is not a commodity and while so many can speak the language and know the “best practices”, that best practices alone are not going to generate the level of ROI that you’re likely seeking.
The fact that SEO takes time to get to the return on investment and see results makes it even more frustrating if you get just best practices or the work of someone who is just doing “checklist” or “cookie-cutter” SEO without taking a strategic, problem-solving approach.
There are a number of indicators and signs to watch for to make sure you’re getting a strategic and expert-led approach versus just the basics.
Those start with strategy. If you’ve been on our website long, you’ve likely seen our content about the Digital Marketing Success Plan™. Initial strategy and planning, plus ongoing and agile strategy is critical to seeing a campaign all the way through to ROI. If you think you might be getting cookie-cutter SEO or want to make sure you know the dangers and what to watch for–check out the full article I contributed recently to Search Engine Land titled: Avoiding cookie-cutter SEO: 8 red flags to watch out for.