Many desperate sales people like to offer "free" audits to their prospective clients. It's a way for them to establish themselves as an authority without having to look at the actual rankings and performance of a campaign. Additionally, consultants may be affiliated with marketing agencies that pay them monthly stipends for their referrals. Most audits are designed to never give a perfect score, making them the ideal sales tool.
Why is this "free" audit problematic?
1. Its motive is to create fear / doubt in your current strategy so that they can sell you.
2. They often point out "strategies" that are not accurate
3. They often speak over your head, again... to sound smart and sell you things.
Why is this audit useless?
If you are ranking in top 3 for your main search terms, most marketing companies want to work with you. They'll want to take our stellar foundation and attempt to maintain the rankings we've helped you to establish. They also target our clients, knowing we're one of the only marketing agencies without 12 month, auto renewing contracts.
If you do receive an audit, please send it to us. We're happy to evaluate it and see if there's any information of value to be applied. If we disagree with the findings or the change will sacrifice the aesthetic or performance of your site, we may advise against change for the sake of a higher score.
What are some of the false / inaccurate claims they may make:
1. They may claim the site structure is not to their liking.
This one is interesting. If the site is ranking, then Google must have no issues with its structure. Also, a non-developer would have a very hard time confirming or denying this statement. It's also extremeley subjective. We have a tried and true method for website development for SEO. If they've said this to you, feel free to send us their report, and we can show you why any "red" scores on their "audit" are necessary for functionality and/or rankings.
2. They may claim content is "stolen"
We are very smart about how we conduct business. We have leveraged over a hundred pages of content (that we have written and have rights to leverage to give you an advantage on Google. Remember, rankings are the proof of our strategies effectiveness, not sales audits.
Some of these lovely sales people like to use words like "plagiarized" or "bootlegged". We could honestly sue them for this deceitful representation of our work, but we're too busy helping our clients beat out their clients on Google with real strategy (on site and off site SEO).
3. They may audit backlink quantity
SEO can always be stronger, which is why you invest monthly. The longer you invest, the stronger the rankings. Not all backlinks show up on reports.
The real way to gauge if your SEO is "working"
1. Watch progress of website stats. Set up a meeting with your internet marketing strategist on our team to review your dashboard to evaluate traffic and other stats that show progress.
2. Do a Google Search. Are you moving up? If yes, the SEO is working.
3. How are your new patient numbers? Are they increasing from patients who found you on Google?
4. It usually takes about 6 months to see a significant change in rankings and new patient numbers, but we love to see progress sooner.
How do we come up with SEO strategy?
We have ongoing strategy as well as a variety of strategies that systematically get executed. We're also constantly discovering and adding new strategy on a regular basis.
Is there anything we can do to boost rankings faster?
Yes, you can increase your number of Google reviews and consider sponsoring a widely distributed press release ($500) to accelerate results and show positive news about your business to your community.