SEO Sales Pitches - How to Handle?

This month a highly valued client reached out to me and forwarded two emails she received from a company offering SEO services. My first inclination was to just assure her we are handling SEO and digital marketing for them and we're on top of things, so not to worry. Then I looked more carefully at the email from the "competition" to check what claims they were making. Let me explain.

You might have gotten these too. A company stating they've done a review of your website and have identified things that are lacking. Below is an example of what our client sent us...

 We totally understand at Alt Media Studios this would raise your eyebrows (if you were our client). SEO companies are successful in selling packages to those wanting to improve their site ranking. Obviously this method is effective, so I wanted to give this particular situation due attention. One of the emails our client forwarded had some specific things that they claimed needed to improve, so it caught my eye. There were four items specifically, listed as follows:

1. Website Speed
2. Link Diversity
3. Domain Authority
4. Competition Comparison

I assured our client I would let our Digital Marketing Coordinator (the account manager for their SEO campaign) know about this so we can make sure these issues are being attended to. The Coordinator is assigning multiple duties to internal team members (i.e., developers, creative design team, social media specialists, PPC analysts, etc.) so there are many moving parts in any given month as we perform this service. We want to make sure if there is credence to these claims we focus on resolving them.

From the perspective of the client, these things might seem like mumbo-jumbo, but the email can effectively question the existing company's performance of SEO. Alt Media Studios is well-suited to perform SEO and digital marketing on our clients sites because we build the sites from scratch and have full access to the code, which lets us perform "drilled down" techniques. We can really get in there and optimize the site. Not all SEO companies can do this as effectively. For example, Wordpress sites have plugins and you can only go so far, such as assigning meta titles and descriptions. Beyond that, access can become limited. We can attend to so much more, including in-depth techniques such as Schema coding, image optimization, content development...while reading and responding to data provided by Google's Search Console.

After further review of the competitor's claim, we noticed these issues were being attended to regularly by our team. We did make a slight adjustment to the home page image, and after we ran a Google Chrome browser tool, the page speed is currently at 97/100. We will continue to respond to any issues that come up on site improvement (and issues always come up...that's the nature of this type of work.) SEO is never a one-and-done project. It takes time, there's always something to do, and Google changes their algorithm constantly.

One analogy comes to mind when it comes to outside companies trying to poach SEO work. You could compare it to a cleaning company that knocks on your door and says they noticed your house is dirty. You take pride in your house and have always been happy with the cleaning service you currently have. Sure, there's cobwebs here and there (maybe in between the walls or up in the attic). There's always something that can be done to make it cleaner. Your dog might have gotten his wet nose looking outside the window this afternoon while you were at work. It needs some Windex and paper towel. Should you rush to hire the new company, or can you tell your existing cleaning company to make sure to get the windows the next time they are there? Maybe a little sprucing up here and there where possible. Of course that's not to say the existing company shouldn't continue to perform, but switching around just because you believe every claim that is made will get you nowhere fast. In fact, it might mean taking one or several steps back, costing you money and time.

Do you want an honest evaluation of your website? What tools are out there that give an accurate picture of your site's health, that can identify areas of improvement, to help your ranking and result in more business? Contact us to discuss!