There are virtually infinite tasks that you can assign to your Orange County SEO company, but some are more critical than others. For instance, if you find that you’re not ranking highly for specific long-tail keywords, then you might ask them to help you in that area. If you feel like your content could use an update, then you might tell them to make that a priority.

There are some things that you’re probably going to want them to do, though, regardless of what else is on your list. When you interview some candidates to see if they’ll be a good fit for your company, be sure to talk to them about these five aspects of SEO.

Make Use of a Trusted Payment Processor

You might be a business in Orange County that’s focused on e-commerce, or you might split your online sales with those coming from your brick-and-mortar location. If you sell anything online, though, your customers trusting you could not be any more critical.

Because of that, you want to have a payment system set up on your website that you know is secure. If it can be hacked, then credit card numbers can be exposed, along with other customer data. Make sure that your SEO company knows how to set up a secure payment method on your site if you don’t have one yet, and then make sure that your customers know about it too.

Wherever you ask for credit card information on your site, stress that your clients can feel safe giving it to you. It’s also helpful if you take Apple Pay, PayPal, and some of the other popular methods that exist today.

Gauge Your Promotional Expenditures

This isn’t directly related to SEO, Orange County businesses, but if your agency is going to be handling your marketing, then you need to be sure that they can get the most out of your budget. When you sit down with them, tell them how much you have to spend and what you’d like to see back from it. If they feel like it’s a plan that they can work with, then you can proceed.

It helps if they can show you a detailed breakdown of how they believe your money can be best spent. If the way they plan on allocating funds makes sense to you, then it’s indicative that you’re on the same wavelength.

If you’re not sure if what they’re proposing sounds viable then you might want to use someone else. Alternatively, you might give them one opportunity to run a campaign for you, and if things don’t work out, then you can try a different agency.

Content Creation

There are few more vital SEO aspects of your site than your content, Orange County, and if you want an agency that can create some new blogs for you, sales pages, or anything else, be sure that they’re strong in this area. It goes beyond content creation. The best SEO companies are the ones that can also analyze what content is already working so that they can craft more of the same.

It follows that your SEO company should know how to read the analytics reports and use the features on the various hosting and search engine platforms. They should be able to see how many visitors are spending X amount of time on your pages, and then which of those visitors are converting.

Your SEO company should also know how to improve your existing content if it isn’t getting the attention that you want. That might mean something as simple as adding keywords, or they might even need to do extensive rewrites if they decide that’s what’s best.

Create a Content Path

Your Orange County SEO company should know how to create a digital content path that is simple and easy for your visitors to follow, but at the same time it should keep them on the site for as long as possible.

That’s a tricky prospect. It’s a combination of making the content so scintillating that the people want to read more, while also avoiding distracting them from what it is that you most want them to do, which is usually buying something.

The best SEO companies know how to strike a balance between making the content path that each visitor should take obvious, while also making sure that once they arrive at the end of it, they pull out their wallets. Ask the candidates for prior examples of optimization campaigns to ascertain if the one you’ve selected can do the job you’re asking of them. You can ask for references if you’re still not convinced.

Courses for Upselling

Your Orange County SEO company should also be able to set up a system on your website whereby you are offering a free course, service, or product, and then you’ll make your money through upselling.

If you don’t have something like that already, anticipate having a conversation with the agency about what it is that you can offer for free or at a discounted rate that will give your customers a taste of your wares and will leave them wanting more. Upselling is how a lot of companies make their money which offer more services and fewer physical products.

If the Orange County SEO company that you are considering seem like credible experts in each of these five areas, then you may have found a match for your needs. There are always going to be other services that you need from them, and those are going to depend on the size of your company, where you are in terms of market share, and what sort of a reputation you’ve already established. If you ask about these five areas first, though, you’ll always have a solid foundation on which to build.

Don’t forget to seek out an agency that specializes in the right size company. It will save you a lot of time if you’ve disqualified some SEO agencies that only work with major conglomerates if you have a mom-and-pop startup with a tiny website and just a couple of physical locations.