Why do clients decide to work with an SEO agency?

When we are questioning something, from time to time, we must ask two questions ourselves: Why is it a reason, and for what reason is it a reason?

In this blog post, we wanted to do teamwork, where we will share years of experience on why and when clients are looking for an SEO agency to work with. Finding a dream agency and a data-driven team sometimes is hard, but it is inevitable.

While you will scrolling and reading this article, you will see that almost all of us have some relevant reasons regarding this topic. It’s because we all are passionate about the same thing: learnings from experiences and questioning.

Note that this blog post is to emphasize hiring SEO agencies by the clients. However, some of the below reasons might fit with the SEO consultants and client relationships, too. Also, in the final part, you will find the questions that clients should ask themselves while determining if an SEO agency is the right one.

When clients choose to hire an SEO agency, what are the reasons?

Roman Adamita – Director of SEO

When the client has a particular problem

• The client-side is struggling with a specific problem, but they can’t solve it.
• They might have a department that can solve it. But if the problem is too specific, they need to have an expert on it who can say, “Yes, that’s the right way to solve it.”

When the company doesn’t have a team member

• No matter how big the company is and how many team members there are. Companies need to have more accurate processes and in-depth organization when it comes to SEO.
• Usually, the right team of SEO agencies helps to keep the website healthy and increase its organic performance continuously.
• An SEO team can give a better approach, insights, and tactics because they have focused on it for a long time.
• Someone needs to conduct developers and copywriters of the company. When an SEO is patient and has good leadership while communicating with the company’s team, the performance expectations usually go well.

When there’s a better option

• Not every client/company can have a high budget separated just for SEO due to their other investments. So the price of the SEO services might be an essential issue.
• The client might work with another SEO agency before going to yours. If the previous agency didn’t give quality services, reports, or skills that weren’t good enough, clients usually decide to go to another SEO agency.
• If the previous SEO team had lacked passion, poor communication, and no 100% focus, the client leaves the agency and goes to another because they have better references.

Büşra Çildaş – Senior SEO Executive

When the client looks for a magical wand to rewind, all the performance decrease right after a site migration

What is the beginning story? 

• One day a website decides to change its whole website without getting consultancy from an SEO expert. They don’t think it is essential because they don’t have the proper knowledge and are executives. “Come on! I am an executive. I don’t have to know that, either. So why has my team not warned me?”
• They are hectic about the change because they want to show the big boss they have done something good and the website is better. 

What has turned out to be a big problem? 

• The client has changed all of their URL structures, and they haven’t applied any 301 redirects. 
• Thus right after the site migration, the client loses up to 60% of their traffic, and they don’t know why.

What happens after that?

• Then they go to the big brother aka. Google and ask this question “How can we increase our traffic?”. Then, if no one is eligible enough to solve the problem right after getting information, they ask this question “Who can help me increase it?” 
• Then they realize there is something called SEO, and they decide to ask for an expert opinion. 
• And they start to work with an agency?

How about the trust issue? 

• Since the client has a severe problem, he or she will want to solve it asap. However, as responsible SEOs, we need to build a trust relationship and tell them that even a site migration with an expert can hurt organic visibility for at least two months because we change an entire website. Therefore, they need to be patient because we can solve the problem as fast as possible as long as they have the necessary resources such as software and content marketing.

Adem Yıldız – SEO Executive

Big Companies Are Noticing The Gap Between Their Competitors In The Online Organic Market

• If the brand is a wolf in the offline market, but a lamb in the online market;

Companies that are pretty large in some offline markets may want to invest in the online market. One of the most important of these online platforms is the organic side, and they may want to compete with their rivals through an outsourcing model.

• If the brand concentrates the entire budget on just one area in the online market; 

Some big companies have a higher investment on the paid side and may ignore the organic side. But, on the other hand, they may want to increase the share on the organic side when they examine the online market chart. In this case, the agency where they can get counseling will be the SEO agency. You’re walking around blind without a cane, pal. A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.

• If you are a big company, sustainability is your main keyword;

One of the most dynamic structures of online marketing is the organic side. Search engines, especially Google, which dominates the markets, also make algorithm updates to create the best result page for the user. You can’t get the same efficiency for years by just making a development. The outsource resources that will form this sustainability are SEO agencies. Shh, big brother is watching you.

• Big companies like to make sense of data, and the purest trends of users lie on the organic side. 

On the organic side, it’s not just about getting better rankings. User trends are always reflected in search results. So it will help make sense of the data on the organic side and draw a road map. For example, why has our brand search volume fallen in recent months? Seasonal or lack of brand awareness? This, in turn, is the process of returning information on the SEO side to knowledge.

Yunus Yaşar – SEO Associate

Small Companies that are trying to improve their search optimization by themselves

Small companies also want to have space on the digital ocean full of ships and boats to increase their online presence. But, not always believe they should spare some budget for optimization. In such times like this, they burden someone’s (most of the time the web developer[web dev]) shoulders since the web dev is the person who understands the algorithms the best in the team.

Of course, a web dev can also understand and improve search engine optimization, but it is never their primary focus. No matter how well they optimize the website for the search engines by researching all the good resources such as Moz, Search Engine Journal (SEJ), Search Engine Roundtable (SER), guides that Google provides, or any other help, they will have some troubles after a certain point.  

• When they are stuck on what else they can improve 

Several factors can impact a website’s performance on SERPs, including page speed, crawlability, content quality, and more. However, there are more parameters for a good SERP performance, each with lots of details. 

For example, you should consider user intent, metadata, image optimization, and several others while creating high-quality content.

In other words, SEO is a never-ending process with lots of details. At one point, the person responsible for improving SEO will feel stuck on what else they can do to compete with other websites in their field.

• When they have to face unexpected massive declines in their traffic(mostly during algorithm changes)

Users’ search behavior constantly changes. And Google -as the biggest search engine that wants to keep the quality at the top for their users- wants to adapt those changes accordingly. That is why they always roll out some algorithm changes to adapt to users’ behavior changes. Generally, Google rolls out two core algorithm updates a year and hundreds of mini-updates during the year, which sometimes don’t even reveal what’s changed. In times like these, it is natural to see some fluctuations in the performance of specific pages or overall website performance. 

People who work in the SEO industry always have to keep with what’s new to build their whole digital life accordingly. They read news and blog posts every day. Their “following” lists on social media are primarily full of Google advocates, thought-leaders in the industry, and the other publishers mentioned above. Thus, SEOs can interpret the unexpected drops of the traffic spending less time. I, personally, don’t believe that web devs desire to spend their time keeping track of what Google is changing, again and again, every day, especially while they want to focus on improving their coding and programming skills.

Web devs will do their best to improve the pages for search engines, but after seeing that algorithm updates can negatively impact the websites a few times, they’ll decide to knock on some doors to leave this burden. They might be the best at their specialty, but you know, every captain can control only one ship at a time, and oceans are full of challenges. It’s time to admit that every kind of ship needs to be treated mainly.

Unless there is a storm, no captain is the best captain. 

• When they start to aim for higher conversion/revenue

Let’s assume that the web dev is a workaholic and works like a robot. They do nothing but eat, sleep, or improve themselves in both developing and optimizing search engines. What will happen if the aims go higher in revenue and conversion as the company becomes more prominent? 

Yes! Now, you know that the web dev is also a human being; they have only two eyes, two hands, and one brain, just like you and me. And in case you missed this point, one day is also 24 hours for them. So their capabilities will not be enough even if they don’t end up with exhaustion or even a burn-out syndrome. So, in this case, you should either make someone share the web dev’s burden or start researching an agency to solve your specific problems.

Şahin Seçil – Co-Founder

• They had never heard of SEO services before, but their consultant convinced them to get them.
• They don’t have time to keep up with trends and changes. They would like to get a monthly or quarterly audit.
• You get good reviews from several trusted friends.
• You start working with one of their competitors, and they are impressed by the changes in the metrics.

Müge Kürüm – Managing Director

I want to add a few bonus sentences towards the end. If you want to achieve sustainable growth in the long term, before starting to work with any SEO agency, ask yourself these questions:

If you intend to hire an SEO agency, you should ask the following questions:

1. Did the agency clearly understand my needs and expectations and offer a solution?
2. Am I sure of the agency’s level of knowledge, and do I believe that they will lead us to success? For example, have they achieved success by doing a similar study before?
3. Has the agency established the communication channels and platforms to be used to continue the project? For example, did they try to get to know my brand like someone from the in-house team?
4. Did the agency lead me to set goals and KPIs at the beginning of the project to measure expectations?
5. Have they organized periodic evaluation meetings or talked about them?
6. On the way to success, will they create comprehensive reporting screens to follow the metrics moment by moment?
7. Has the agency transparently shared the workflow that needs to be done to achieve the goal?
8. Will they keep me informed of growth opportunities in different areas by following the sector and its competitors?
9. Will they be able to guide me most accurately by staying up to date in the ever-changing digital world?