ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR HIRING AND MANAGING SEO AGENCY IN SINGAPORE

1. ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR HIRING AND MANAGING SEO AGENCY IN SINGAPORE SINGAPORE In a world where over 90% of online experiences start with a search engine, showing up on the front page of Google can be the deciding factor between a business that’s going to thrive and one that may get bankrupt.

2. In the changing landscape of marketing and promotion, SEO has become a core element of any serious business whether big, small or medium. According to  A Report by Hays in Singapore Digital marketing is the number one sought-after skill in Singapore both by B2B and B2C companies.  So many businesses from around the world are coming to Singapore and competition is continuously rising.

3. As most companies outsource their SEO work to a SEO agency in Singapore, it’s seen that a large percentage of them are left dissatisfied by their Singapore SEO agency. Hiring right SEO agency in Singapore and effectively managing it is an art not many businesses know, which is why they end up getting trapped in marketing gimmicks and shell out marketing budget only to see dismal results and heaps of dissatisfaction.

4. Whether you are looking to first time hire an SEO agency in Singapore or you have  had certain  disappointing experiences, this is  the guide which if you follow you’ll be able to hire a perfect SEO agency in Singapore that will be aligned with your business goals, produce tangible results, provide extensive reports and help your business to grow multi-folds.

5. Following are the steps you need to keep in mind while hiring and managing SEO agency in Singapore.

6. Step 1 – Determine your goals and expectations: Before you go for hunting that perfect SEO connoisseur, it’s imperative that you have clearly thought, identified and determined the goals and expectations of the SEO campaign that you’re willing to hire an agency for.

7. Consider answering the following questions to yourself/your team: • Who do you want to market your product and services? (be as specific as possible) • What would be the characteristics of your most ideal customer? • What is the biggest pain point of your customers that your product/service solves? • What do you expect a campaign to accomplish (leads, traffic, sales, branding, blog readership or something else)? • If possible, an estimate of number of leads/traffic/sales every month you expect (realistically keeping your budget and bandwidth in mind)

8. Brainstorm and carefully determine the answer to above questions because what you determine at this step is going to write the future of your business, branding, and marketing. As target customer identification that lacks details lacks effectiveness, ensure that none of your answers that you find at this step are too broad.  Instead, be as specific as possible. 

9. Step 2 – Determine your budget When it comes to marketing, even if you get millions of a budget its never going to be enough. Many businesses, however, have this miss conception that the budget should be decided only after talking to SEO agencies in Singapore based on what their packages and service offerings are. In reality, in SEO, you get what you pay for. 

10. This means that if you are expecting too much and Have a disproportionately low budget, all that’s going to happen is endless searching and disappointment. However, it’s also true that certain SEO firms charge really outrageous pricing that is not usually affordable no matter what portfolio, track record and promises they show. In this situation, you might end up hiring a low-quality cheap priced service provider who would make promises that are too good to be true.

11. I often advise my clients to tell their budget range and I then help them understand what all is realistically possible in that range. This while at one hand gives peace of mind to both clients as well as a service provider; I’ve noticed that the conversation, in this case, happens more about client’s actual business than merely the price.

12. First, determine if there are things you can do in-house and what items you absolutely need to outsource. For example, if you have a content developer that inexpensively provides high quality, search engine optimized content, you can let him continue and it’ll bring the budget down as you won’t need to pay expensive copywriters in that case.

13. Step 3 – Write a detailed requirement specification document: SEO firms that really care about their work and deliver outstanding results are usually picky who they want to work with. Unless you’re after a hungry, desperate SEO agency in Singapore that’ll get ready to take your money no matter what, you can’t really get a right firm if you do not have right requirement specifications written.

14. As a matter of fact, the quality of your requirement specification document tells agencies how serious and interested you are for your business. For instance, people who put together un-detailed and difficult to understand specification send a direct indication that they are not serious about their business and this is how they are taken by SEO agencies.  In fact, the kind of requirement specification you have has a direct correlation with the kind of SEO agencies you’ll eventually land into.

15. Make sure to include following essential elements in your requirement specification document: A short description of your business including its core products and services Website of your business Geographical area (s) where your business operates Who is your most ideal target customer? Who are your top 5 competitors that are providing almost similar services/product to yours and are ranking on google?

16. What do you expect from the campaign (leads, traffic, sales, branding, blog readership or something else)? This can be more than one if applicable. • Is there any number you can tell that you expected I.E. 1000 visitors a month, 50 leads a month ETC? • What is your budget range? • Describe if any SEO work on your website has been done before and what is the outcome of the same

17. Step 4 – Right people, right questions: There is literally no shortage of SEO agencies in Singapore, but its all about the right SEO agency you need to get your business ranked faster and better. This, however, is the most challenging task. As you start searching right SEO agency in Singapore, you would come across to so many agencies claiming themselves the best and you might very likely get inundated.

18. The process of hiring right SEO agency should happen in 2rounds.

19. Round 1- filtering and shortlisting: • Tell all the basic yet important details about your goals and expectations and observe how do they respond. Do they ask more to-the-point questions or they say “Yes” immediately? Often the ones that immediately say yes without asking and understanding more are only looking to somehow take away your money and are very likely not primarily  interested in your business success • Carefully observe their response rate. Do they reply in several hours every time? Do they take long before answering your questions or they are prompt in responding?

20. What better way there’s than to see previous work examples of the agency and determine the kind of results they have achieved. Take time to see the websites of their past clients and observe how have they been marketed. If those were marketed in the way you’d like to get marketed as well, that’s a great sign

21. Round 2- talk to real people: Real work can only be done by real people. Once you filtered and shortlisted SEO agencies in Singapore that matches your first-round expectations, this is the time to engage in conversation with real people and understand their approach, seriousness, and professionalism.

22. Understand their prices and packages along with all the promises that they’re making. Stay away if the promises being made sound too good to be true • Determine whether the offer you’re being given aligns with your goals, expectations and budget estimation • Connect with individuals that are responsible for communication and observe the knowledge they have about what you’re looking for

23. Step 5 – Negotiation and finalization: If you did the due diligence as described above, you would reach the stage where you need to finalize the contract terms in order to get started. If the price is not finalized yet, politely ask if there is any discount available. Do not, however, make discount the only priority when finalizing the best SEO agency in Singapore

24. Step 6 – Managing the relationship and achieving expected results: Once the contract is finalized and work is started, remember that it’s not an end of your job. Hiring SEO agency in Singapore is similar to hiring an employee, with who you need to actively engage, share information and keep a fruitful relationship if you need expected results.

25. Sign NDA before you start sharing sensitive and confidential information about your products and services. This would help you comfortably sharing the details that are helpful for the campaign’s success • Share all the important details with your SEO agency including your exact KPIs, past performance on those numbers, efforts made in past,  different channels you currently use for acquisition, past hurdles and successes, and what senior management is expecting. If possible,  share profit data as well.  it can be very helpful too.

26. Have bi-weekly calls with your agency representatives. When working with multiple clients, it’s only natural for agency members to feel more involved with the client they are in regular communication with. It doesn’t need to be long, but 30 minutes every other week is critical to keep things smoothly on track, in addition to regular monthly calls.

27. This is the brief guideline for hiring and managing SEO agency in Singapore. For more information you can visit: http://metabizverse.com/ultimate-guide-hiring-managing-seo-agency-singapore/