If you’re choosing a Search Marketing agency, prepare yourself with some important questions.

1* How long have you been in business? -This can be an important issue, especially considering there are consultants with little experience who just decide to put up a shingle and call themselves search marketers. Newer agencies can be a good choice, depending upon their experience, education and the results they have provided for their customers.

2* What kind of results do you provide for your clients? Show me the money;) If an SEO can’t show you quantifiable results and share references, that could be a red flag that they’re enormously inexperienced.

3* Will you share case studies with me? Same as last question but requires a little more detail. Ask for improvements to lead generation, revenue and other site goals.

4* How do you measure your success? If your SEO only measures success with rankings, run. Success needs to be measured with attachment to revenue and/or site goals. Personalized search also makes it hard to call an exact position (what may show as #2 for me might show as #5 for someone else. Make sure your goals are quantifiable and relevant to your bottom line.

5* Do you have clients in my industry? This can be hard, having an SEO who verticalizes in a particular industry can be powerful. Just make sure there’s no conflict and you won’t be competing against a current client.

6* How do you report site changes and other strategy implementation? There’s not one single silver bullet. Good SEO requires a lot of work on a lot of fronts. However, it’s important that your SEO share changes they make whether it’s content, linking or other search strategies.

7* Do you know how to implement local search? Don’t use an sledge hammer when a pin hammer will work. Local search can be enormously effective if that’s your business focus. It may be more cost effective and just as powerful to focus on a local search strategy.

8* What SEO strategies do you implement? There’s more than one way to skin a cat and there are many techniques employed for SEO. However, information architecture, content and linking are fundamental. A great linking strategy won’t do you as much good if you haven’t done keyword research.

9* How can I communicate with you? You should have an account manager or point of contact you can reach at any (reasonable) time. We use a project management tool that allows our customers to view status of all projects relevant to their site so they can monitor progress.

10* How do I know when we’re done? Again, create quantifiable goals. Nothing is more frustrating for an SEO or a client than hearing, are we there yet? and not having an answer. Learn more about choosing a Search Marketing agency.