Interviewing Shopify SEO Agencies: What to Ask Before Signing a Contract

Given the fierce competition in the world of e-commerce, it can be pretty hard to keep up with the latest trends and practices to keep your brand afloat. Many Shopify owners have turned to hiring Shopify SEO agencies to turn the tide, whether to help them boost their visibility or apply marketing strategies. These SEO specialists do the job by implementing effective SEO strategies for your store’s benefit. However, selecting which company to work with entails much research and evaluation.

Fortunately, today’s article is a short guide on questions you can ask to check and see if your prospective Shopify SEO company will be a good fit for your Shopify store and overall business goals. By asking these questions, you’ll better understand their experience and expertise, which can be used for your specific needs, empowering you to make informed decisions.

Assess their Expertise and Use of Strategy

Your Shopify account’s success lies in your service provider’s expertise. With that said, here are a few questions to ask to gauge their knowledge and assess their strategic approach:

“Can You Tell Us More About Your Experience Working with Shopify Stores? ”

Another way to phrase this question is to ask: “Can you enumerate your past success achieved working with Shopify clients or in similar industries? ”From the get-go, it’s important to know if they’ve worked with cases similar to yours and if they successfully delivered their promises on that. After all, prior experience with both Shopify and how they adapted to the changing algorithm is important when tailoring SEO strategies.

“What Is Your Approach to Using a Keyword Search for Shopify Stores? ”

Keyword search, from the name itself, refers to identifying high-quality and relevant terms that potential users look up to avail services or products similar to what they are researching. As your potential partner in managing your Shopify account, it’s important to ask Shopify SEO agencies what tools and strategies they applied to discover relevant search terms with high potential.

“What SEO Areas Will You Optimize My Shopify Account for?”

Not all SEO companies are built the same; business owners use many strategies, but that doesn’t mean they will also bear the same result for others, especially in different niches on Shopify. There are instances where Shopify SEO agencies endorse doing ABC for a solution that requires XYZ, which shows that their approach can yield different results. No matter what Shopify SEO agencies advertise on their websites, it’s important to ask them this upfront to confirm if their strategies will bear fruit in the areas you want to improve on.

“What Kind of Approach will You Use to Optimize my Products and Improve the Website’s Search Engine Visibility?”

It would be good to ask them for a solution to a common concern among many Shopify shop owners. As we’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot of competition, so business owners are keen on incorporating new SEO strategies so their sites rank higher than the others. Ask what strategies they’ve applied to their previous projects that have yielded great results and what elements they optimized that boosted their projects’ rankings.

“Do You Offer Technical SEO Audits for My Shopify Store? ”

Shopify has many built-in features that you can configure based on your needs. However, there are times that you may suffer from technical SEO issues, so ask your prospective Shopify SEO agencies if they encountered such issues and how they addressed them. This is a great way to reveal the factors that hinder the site’s ranking, such as mobile responsiveness or website speed issues.

“How Do You Know that Your SEO Strategies Are Successful and Effective?”

This is one more crucial question to ask when you’re employing SEO companies. At times like this, you should have your own key performance indicators (KPIs) that serve as the metric for success. Of course, people have different definitions of success, but ideally, you have your own, so if you ask them, you could identify what their metrics of success are. Some may prioritize organic traffic, while others are more in tune with leads and revenues. By asking this question, you can better understand what the agency considers an SEO success and see if it’s aligned with the success you have in mind. We emphasize the latter because, although there are a lot of Shopify SEO agencies that can adapt accordingly, it’s much better to collaborate with someone who has not only worked on a similar project before but also shares the same goals as you.

“What Is Your Metric of Success? How Do You Monitor the Progress of Your Implemented SEO Strategies? ”

It’s a given that whenever you apply solutions to a problem, both old and new, you should track its progress to see if they are effective or not. The same principle is applied to the SEO strategies adapted to your brand. Ask your prospective Shopify SEO agencies what kind of metrics they use since their approach must be driven by data. Ask if they use any industry-standard tools that will give you a transparent report on your site’s KPIs, be it organic traffic, keyword rankings, or conversion rates.

“What Is Your Long-Term SEO Approach to Achieving Sustainable Shopify Store Growth?”

The digital landscape of SEO is continuously changing, and it’s directly tied to the user’s ever-changing behavior. What works today may not work so well tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean you must keep changing your approach. Still, it’s important to know the core foundation of every SEO strategy so as not to get swayed by the trend that keeps changing daily. Your prospective SEO agency must have a clear vision of guaranteeing your store’s longevity while also adapting the necessary strategies to keep you ahead of the game, keep you in the top ranks, and boost your visibility regardless of the evolving algorithm.