Nearly every Southern California business owner knows the feeling of sitting down with a potential digital marketing partner, only to have the conversation overtaken by an avalanche of industry jargon within the first five minutes. Some digital marketing providers love to talk about things like ‘semantic density’, ‘crawl budgets’, and ‘metadata’.
Unfortunately, it is easy for local business owners to be swept away by slick presentations promising a ton of new keyword impressions in a few short months. But impressions alone do not pay the bills. Especially in a region like San Diego, business owners need conversions.
If you are a business owner looking for a marketing or SEO agency in San Diego, don’t settle for jargon-laden presentations and unverifiable statistics. You need to be able to trust any future San Diego digital marketing partner you hire. To make sure you can, ask these five strategic questions and then pay attention to the answers:
1. How do you distinguish between vanity metrics and actual revenue leads?
Pixsan is an SEO agency in San Diego specializing in local business support. They say the baseline for any digital marketing discussion is measurable results. There is no point in paying for services that do not produce something. With that in mind, the first question is how an agency distinguishes between vanity metrics and genuine local revenue leads.
For example, non-local data is irrelevant to San Diego businesses that thrive on a local customer base. So ask a potential marketing provider how they filter out that data. They should be able to demonstrate the metrics they rely on to ensure strong local results.
Read More: How We Create Custom SEO Strategies for Different Industries
2.What is your framework for tracking conversion attribution?
Next up, you really need to know how your San Diego SEO provider will track conversions. Do not settle for a generic answer like, “we track conversions through Google.” Instead, ask them to demonstrate how they track inbound traffic – whether that traffic comes from online sources or telephone inquiries. You need to know whether their marketing efforts are converting into genuine customer interactions.
3. How will you optimize my Google Business Profile?
The Google Business Profile is arguably the most important tool in the local search box. Require any potential digital marketing partner to demonstrate its knowledge of this tool and a successful track record of leveraging it on behalf of other San Diego businesses. If an agency hasn’t mastered the Google Business Profile, it is not going to be very helpful in extending your local reach.
4. What is your content strategy for reaching a San Diego audience?
This next question applies more to website content than under-the-hood SEO. A cookie-cutter model of content creation isn’t going to work if most of your customers live in the San Diego area. You need to know how a future SEO company will target specific regions like Pacific Beach, Del Mar, Escondido, and even downtown San Diego. Content must be specific to each community audience.
5. What is your communication and accountability cadence?
Finally, I am assuming you want a San Diego SEO agency and digital marketing partner that believes in transparency and open communication. So ask about the communication and accountability cadence. Does a potential marketing partner communicate by sending out an automated report every thirty days, a report with no explanation? If so, run.
Read More: How to Choose the Right SEO Service for Your Business?
Your search for an SEO agency in San Diego should lead you to a number of potential partners willing to do right by you and your business. You will not find those partners if you don’t ask difficult questions. Hopefully, you now have a starting point for your search.