Fairly recently Laura did a great post on How to prepare for a design meeting.. Today, I wanted to add to that by providing some detail on how to get the best out of an initial SEO meeting.
When entering into a relationship with an SEO company, you are entering into a partnership whereby both yourself and the company have a part to play. While the SEO company will have an in-depth knowledge of all things relating to online marketing, you know your business & products inside out. In order to effectively market those products and services; a good SEO company will likely ask some pretty probing questions of your business. While the day to day products are fresh in our minds, the bigger picture stuff can take a bit more thought, in order to help you get the most out of your relationship with your SEO company; we’ve put together the following list of commonly asked questions:
These questions will usually fall into three main categories;
Your Business
- Be prepared to talk about your company background & history
- What is the company mantra/ethos?
- Who are the key stakeholders?
- How is your brand perceived within the wider industry?
- What are your key products & services?
- Are there any golden products which account for larger proportions of revenue?
- Are there any key products currently under performing?
- What are your business’ aims & objectives?
- Think about whether these meet the SMART mnemonic.
- Who are you main competitors?
- These may be people you come up against in pitch situations
- Who is the target market?
- Have you ever done any demographic profiling?
- What do you wish to achieve with online marketing?
- Are there any specific business areas your looking to promote?
- Are there any specific business areas your looking to promote?
- Do you have any specific targets already in mind?
- In order to discuss specific revenue or traffic targets and how achievable these are; your seo company will probably want to weigh up current site performance
- Do you have a specific marketing/online marketing budget in mind?
- Sometimes a sensitive issue but when discussed openly, it allows your SEO company to fit a custom solution around your budget
- Have you previously engaged in online marketing?
- What marketing channels (online & offline) do you currently utilise?
- This should include SEO, PPC, email marketing, brochures, leaflet drops etc..
- Try to also provide dates, this will enable your SEO company to analyse peaks & troughs in your traffic levels.
- If SEO has previously been used, what keywords was the campaign targeting?
- If so, what were the results of such activity?
- Was it successful?
- What areas were you left dissatisfied with?
- Do you have an up to date marketing schedule? If so it would be beneficial to bring this with you.
- From this, your SEO company can align their online campaigns around your existing marketing campaigns helping to maximise impact
- Is the vast majority of new business currently gathered via online or offline channels?
- What is the current split?
- Are you looking to increase the contribution of online?
- What role would you anticipate the website playing in reaching the company objectives?
- Who is responsible for overseeing changes to the website?
- Does this require third party involvement or can the changes be implemented in-house?
- Is there any specific change control process to affect change within the site?
- If this is the case, when are the next release dates?
- What (if any) analytics package is being used? It may be beneficial to grant your search partner access.
- Common analytics packages include Google Analytics, Lynchpin and Site Intelligence
- Are there any problem areas already identified within the site in terms of promoting/selling products and services?
- Try to think about why you went looking for a search marketing company in the first place
- Are you happy with current site functionality?
Previous Marketing Activity
The Site Itself
Think there’s anything we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments!
