How to Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency (E111)

John DohertyFounder of Credo

Bio:

John Doherty is the founder of Credo, which connect businesses with the right marketing provider from Credo's exclusive network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3,000 brands, including some of the world's most well-known, work with great marketing firms.

Sponsors:

Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation

Links:

https://editorninja.comhttps://www.getcredo.comhttps://twitter.com/dohertyjfhttps://twitter.com/getcredo

Transcript:

Charles:                        00:00                In
this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with John Doherty about how
to hire an SEO agency. This is a business of eCommerce, episode one 11 welcome
to the business of eCommerce to show the helps eCommerce retailers start,
launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi, and
I'm here today with John Doherty. John is the founder of Creo where they
connect businesses with the right marketing provider from cruise exclusive
network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3000 brands work with great marketing
firms. I asked John on the show today talk about what you should look for when
you're hiring an SEO agency, so Hey John, how are you doing today?

John:                            00:44                Good,
Charles, how are you? Thanks for having me on.

Charles:                        00:46                Yeah,
great to have you on. Super interesting to talk about this side of SEO, right
on working with a consultant and how to actually kind of do like the high level
of when you should be doing it, if she should be doing it, and kind of all the
strategy around that. I've talked to a bunch of guests in the show on kind of
the tactical SEO, but this is kind of a different level, right? You kind of
focus more on when to work with a consultant, how to work with them. Is that
kind of what you guys focus on at credo?

John:                            01:14                Yeah,
yeah, exactly. So I actually come from the SEO world. I've been in SEO doing
SEO for about a decade now for the last four years has been helping companies
basically find the right firm to work with through credo. And so really I've
kind of more from like being in the trenches, tactical, that sort of stuff. I
can still do SEO quite well, but I find a lot more interesting on the business
side. How do people do a good job of hiring for for SEO, for digital marketing?
Really? you know, I've learned a lot of lessons over the years. You know, my
background is I worked, I worked agency side couple agencies. I worked in house
for a couple of years with Zillow and then I've also been a solo consultant and
then seem 3,500 plus companies come through creative looking to hire. So I've
talked to a lot of companies.

John:                            01:53                I've
seen a lot of companies sign with firms and in a lot of companies not signed
with firms. I've seen companies signed with the wrong firms. And so it's a, you
know, I've seen people hire the wrong type of, of firms so it consultants have
an agency or vice versa. And so yeah, I learned, I learned a lot of lessons and
it's something not a lot of people talk about. And I think it's something that
we should be talking about more, especially in the digital space as we're
growing companies. Because once you get beyond just you and you found product
market fit or you're starting to get some traction with your eCommerce company
then it's a, you know, basically the question becomes how do I scale it more?
And doing that well is really, really hard. And as we were talking about
offline, that like, you know, this stuff is really hard and so whatever I can
do to help people do it better and give them kind of more signal in a very
noisy world I love to do that.

Charles:                        02:36                Yeah.
Sq is one of those things too where if you're hiring some external,