Changing your SEO company is sometimes necessary, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. In the first article in this 3 part series we looked at how to choose your new provider, once you’ve decided that you need to make the switch, and how to give yourself the best chance of selecting an agency that’s going to be more successful/effective.
In this second part of the series, we’re going to look at what details you might need to request from your current SEO provider, to give to the new agency you’ve chosen, so they have as much information as possible to start turning things around.
Judge the Mood
Regardless of the results they’ve delivered on your particular project, the vast majority of SEO providers are professional businesses, and it’s reasonable to expect that they would act that way. Just because they haven’t delivered and you’ve decided to switch to another agency, shouldn’t mean that you’re unable to get them to cooperate and provide the information you’re asking for.
However, this isn’t a perfect world and rightly or wrongly, they may be unhappy about your decision, and prove to be less than helpful. If you’ve worked with your current provider for some time, you will probably have a good idea of how they are likely to react when you break the bad news – which might dictate whether you ask for the information you need before or after you tell them you’re leaving.
Whatever their reaction is likely to be, it’s important that you get as much information from them as you can about the work they’ve done on your SEO, and while it’s not ideal, it may be in your best interests to request the information before you tell them of your intentions to move on.
They may realise from you’re request that you’re thinking about leaving anyway, but if they are going to be difficult, this might be the best way to get the information you need.
What Information Do You Need?
You may already have a lot of the information you need, if you’ve been receiving comprehensive and regular reports from your current SEO company. If you’ve shared these reports with your new agency, they will probably already have told you of any gaps or glaring omissions, or additional details it would be useful for them to have, in which case, you can request this information from your current provider.
You should have been receiving regular reports, at least on a monthly basis, with details about what’s been done and the results to date. It would be a good idea to let your new provider have copies of these, so they have an understanding of what they’re working with from the start. If you’re missing any reports, ask your current SEO company for copies; if you haven’t been receiving any reports, then you need to ask them to provide you with one, outlining everything they have done as part of your SEO project in as much detail as possible. Ideally, you want any reports from your current provider to include as much as possible of the following:
- Keywords: Which keywords have they been targeting? If they recommended those keywords, what research did they do to ascertain that these were the best search terms for your project? How do these keywords compare to those your competitors are targeting?
- Rankings: What are your rankings for these terms, and how have they improved/worsened while they have been working on your SEO? If you’ve had a significant fall in rankings, what do they think is reason behind this?
- Techniques: What techniques have they employed to help improve your rankings and increase your traffic? How have they carried out the work that’s been done? Bearing in mind the poor results that are making you think of changing SEO companies, how have they adapted their approach to try and improve things?
- Site Optimisation: What changes have they made, or recommended be made, to your site, specifically to the on-page optimisation, that would help improve your ranking and traffic? What impact have any changes had?
- Links: What specific links have they built to your site to help improve your rankings? How have these links been built and is it possible to see what effect (good or bad) they had on your rankings and traffic?
- Competitor Analysis: Have they carried out any competitor analysis, and if so, what are your competitors doing to rank above you? How have they used this analysis to drive the work they’ve been doing?
Some of this information is quite in-depth, and may fall a little outside of what you could reasonably expect in a regular monthly report, depending on your SEO budget and the services being provided. The key thing to understand however, is that if you can get as much of this information as possible before you part company with your current provider, it could make things a lot easier for your new SEO agency – which means that you could see things start to turn around much quicker.
In the third and final part of our series on changing SEO companies, we look at a few housekeeping matters you’ll need to attend to once you’ve left your current agency, and also look forward, to offer some advice on how you can make sure the partnership with your new SEO has the best possible chance of success. In the meantime, to find out more about how we could help with your SEO project, visit our Services page, and fill out the enquiry form if you’d like to discuss thing sin more detail.