When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, it’s imperative that your agency be constantly working to increase your rankings. It’s not enough to get some keywords to rank well and then take their foot off the gas. It’s a never ending process to increase the ranking of additional keywords, and maintain the ones who have achieved the coveted page one status.

Here are some questions to ask to determine if it’s time to look for a new agency to help with your local SEO.

1. How often is your marketing agency writing and submitting blogs for your approval? If you’re just getting a blog once every couple of months that’s not enough. The more content the better, but at the very least, the agency should be writing one article of original content to use as a blog on your website each month to add to your SEO.
2. Is your agency writing different blogs of original content that are at least 300 – 400 words in length to submit to reputable directories and other locations in order to garner backlinks? Is the keyword density correct? This is a crucial part of the SEO algorithm.
3. How often are they checking your plug-ins and links for errors? If you’ve linked to an article in a blog and the link is no longer working it’s reflected in your evaluation. Likewise if you have a plug in that’s become outdated or isn’t working correctly. Either can easily happen if it’s a function you don’t use a lot, or if links aren’t reviewed on at least a monthly basis.
4. How fast is the site loading and how well is it working overall? Functionality is another important factor for local SEO that a good marketing agency should be evaluating on a regular basis. If something has changed on the site like a new video added to a prime position, it could be slowing down the loading time. A.B.C. – always be checking.
5. Is your website perfectly mobile compatible? Is it easy to navigate in that format when people are viewing it on their phones? Not only can you be penalized in your SEO efforts if not; your local agency is causing you to lose a lot of potential customers because so many are accessing websites on their phone now – upwards of 60% in most cases.
6. Is your marketing agency charged with local SEO taking advantage of all opportunities? They should constantly be evaluating keywords of competitors and bringing you new ideas for keywords and long-tail keywords. They should also be submitting your information to all available online directories (more than 80) to add to your local SEO, not to mention ensuring you have accurate, consistent information available when people search.

If the answer to any of these is “no”, they may be getting complacent, have someone assigned who’s too busy or not paying attention, or worse, have outsourced it without you knowing. Use these questions as a basis for a hard discussion before you let more money slip through your fingers by not having a website that’s working as hard as possible for you.