6 Questions to Ask Your Next Ecommerce SEO Agency

When on the hunt for an eCommerce SEO agency it may be difficult to know exactly how to compare each of them and identify the strengths and weaknesses.

Fortunately, we’ve been doing this a long time and have taken note of the good (and the not so good) questions, and answers, that we’ve heard in the past.

What do your current/past clients say about you & can we talk to some of your current clients?

This is the ideal opening question. A good agency will be able to confidently call upon its clients to give referrals, positive reviews and so on. We’re big believers of referrals and how they should make up a large portion of your lead generation.

If you get a couple of their clients’ feedback and hear wonderful reviews from them, then you know you’re onto a winner.

What have been your top 3 SEO case studies?

An agency can only be classed as “strong” if they’ve got the numbers behind them to prove it. By asking for 3 success stories/case studies, you’re getting them to prove their worth by matching the numbers to their reputation/ranking. This will also give you an idea of the kind of businesses they’re successful with, whether it’s more in fashion, childrenswear and so on – which can help you make your decision.

Describe your ideal client

A good client-agency relationship is based on mutual respect and trust. As a result, as important as it is for the client to appreciate what the agency is doing, it’s equally as important for the agency to enjoy working for the client to ensure maximum performance.

Therefore, by understanding their ideal client, who they enjoy working with and why – this enables you to see if the underlying relationship would work between the two of you.

How much do your SEO services cost?

If you’re searching for an agency then you should have a rough idea of the budget you’re willing to spend, but obviously to save yourself the time it’s always best to ask what the cost of the agencies SEO services are. If they have a minimum that is too much for you, then you won’t need to waste time pursuing them.

However, it is important that you first make clear what your ideal monthly budget is for SEO services and then ask what they cost. If your budget is too low for them, they can refer you to someone else. But this is usually a step sometimes missed and results in multiple calls until the client realises they can’t afford the agencies prices.

How do you maintain regular communication with your clients?

Communication is everything. Understanding how you’ll be communicated to throughout your relationship should be a key part of your decision-making process. If they say they’ll report to you once a month etc – big no!

You’re on the lookout for an agency that will show initiative, keep you updated, schedule in weekly calls etc. Listen to how they’ll communicate with you and factor that into your decision.

What is your reporting process like?

It’s essential for you to know that your results will be communicated to you regularly, and simply. Try and understand what the agencies reporting process is like, is it once a month, every quarter, a long email or a simple dashboard?

As you’ll have to report to your own boss/investors about the results and where the money for SEO is going, it’s critical you understand if you’ll receive the kind of reporting you need and want. If they don’t offer a particular metric in their reports, ask them. They should be more than happy to tailor to your needs.

 

Get in touch with us today if you want to find out more about working with statement.digital.

How to optimise the Yoast SEO tool in WordPress

Yoast SEO is the most commonly used SEO plugin for WordPress – and rightly so. If set up correctly, the plugin simplifies your SEO process and enables your content to be effectively optimised and indexed.

Our guide below aims to help you set up Yoast properly, and also show you how to use it most efficiently.

If you don’t yet have Yoast for WordPress, then go to “plugins” – “add new” – search “Yoast SEO” – install/activate it. If you do have Yoast, double check it’s updated to the latest version (easy win, then you can continue with the rest of this article)

Setting up your Yoast plugin

 

Features

 

SEO Analysis

Having this on will show you a bullet-point checklist of how well optimised your content is, with green/amber/red colours. It’s useful as a guide, however it’s very reliant on your “chosen keyword focus” which isn’t necessarily always the best – take with a pinch of salt, but have it on.
 

Readability analysis

This shows whether your sentences or paragraphs are too long, whether you’ve used a keyword too many times etc.

Ours is off, purely because we’ve not found it to be very useful and sometimes confusing the writing process. We wouldn’t recommend listening to this part of the tool as it’s not well suited for mobile readers and what the content may mean. Find out more about a mobile-first mindset by getting in touch with us today.

 

Cornerstone content

This is a “marker” for your most important content. This will then feature as a standalone option on your posts tab/page. You can use if you want to organise your most important content and content you want to analyse regularly etc, for easy access.

 

Text link counter

This shows the amount of internal links you’ve included in the content. This is good to know as you don’t want to go overboard, but you also want to make sure you’re including them.

We usually recommend to our clients to add 4 internal links for every 1000 words of content, although this varies by post and is just a rule of thumb. It’s more about internally linking as naturally as possible, but not overdoing it.

 

XML sitemaps

An automatically generated sitemap by Yoast really keeps things simple for you as the Webmaster. Instead of having to create a sitemap manually every now and then, Yoast automatically updates with new content and you can then choose to submit to Google, Bing & so on via your Webmaster tools.

 

Ryte integration

This detects whether your site is being indexed in search engines. Obviously, you can check this on Google Search Console – but having this added layer of functionality is not a bad thing.
 

Admin bar menu

This just adds a menu to the WordPress dashboard at the top should you want quick access to your Yoast plugin

 

How to optimise the Yoast plugin

First you need to do your keyword research for your chosen content topic.

Your chosen keywords should not be the topic or the title, but they should guide the content direction. For keyword research, we always use Semrush or SEOMonitor.
 

A brief overview of how to conduct keyword research

If you already have a chosen topic in mind, then this process is slightly easier. Just input your topic keyword into the search bar and check the search volume, as well as related keywords and phrase match keywords. This will expand your network of potential keywords.

If you don’t have a topic in mind yet, the best place is to start with competitors. Input a key competitors URL into the bar and have a look at keywords they rank for in the top 10. From this, you can gauge what performs well to an audience you may want to target, but also inspiration for content based on competitors rankings. Then, when you have a topic in mind, follow the first step above.

 

Back to optimising the Yoast plugin

Now, what you want to do is choose a specific keyword focus. For example, if we’re writing about Yoast, we’ll choose “yoast plugin” to be our chosen keyword. This will then form a base for your metadata.

You want to then write your title tag. Yoast will automatically place a “template” if you leave any of this unfinished, but it is recommended you manually fill out these sections moving forward. Our recommended title tag layout to clients is “Relevant Title & Keyword | Brand Name”. So for example, our title tag for this article is How To Optimise Your Yoast Plugin For WordPress | statement.digital.

You want to keep the length within the green bar, and also include your target keyword in the title tag.

Next, when you move on to write the meta description, you’ll again see there is a template already in there for you. You should once again complete this manually yourself.

Your meta description should be treated as both an “executive summary” of the content on the page, but also a “mini advert” to lure people in to your page. Here’s an example of our meta description for this article illustrating the above in practice:

You want to make sure that you include your target keyword in the meta description and keep it simple – don’t repeat things and don’t venture outside of the green bar.

For the slug, this will automatically be chosen based on the header of the article. If you choose to change this, make sure to do this before you publish the article. Keep it short, sweet and relevant – and where possible, include the target keyword again.

Should you need to amend the slug after you’ve published the post, you need to properly implement a 301 redirect – we’ll save this for a separate article!
 

Should I purchase premium Yoast or not?

Honestly, I’ve used the premium package before but didn’t see much more in the way of benefits for the cost. I’ve been told there are benefits for usability, but even when I worked at an online magazine churning out multiple articles a day, there was no need for it and we saw results regardless!

If you’re looking for simply an SEO companion to help you with your metadata and content structure, don’t spend money on Yoast. We now always just use the free, non-premium version of the tool.

If you’re after something more in-depth, and you want to use Yoast as your primary indexation tool and you use it many times a day, then perhaps I would recommend you look into paid version of the tool.

 

If you enjoyed the above article, make sure to read our guide on how to improve your social media as a business.