The unfortunate truth is that many eCommerce SEO agencies get away with offering a level of service far below what they should be.
Whether this is from laziness or is downright condemnable is not for us to determine. All we can say is that you should get your money’s worth.
And that, at bare minimum, equates to more organic visibility and higher traffic – and in most cases, more organic conversions.
If you aren’t, here are a few ways to silently audit your BigCommerce SEO company to see whether or not they’re doing what they should be – notwithstanding the fact that all SEO processes do look slightly different from each other.
1. How clear is the reporting?
The first thing we need to look at is the reporting. There are all sorts of tools they could be using like SEMRush, GA4, and Google Search Console (GSC), along with proprietary dashboards.
All the same, after a year or so, you should be seeing increases in organic rankings for most if not all of your target keywords.
This will therefore correspond to better visibility (which can be easily corroborated through GSC), as well as higher traffic, (which can be checked through GA4) specifically for those search terms.
If you aren’t, it’s time to have a talk with your SEO company.
2. Have they optimized metadata?
After your SEO company has selected some target keywords, one of the easiest optimizations to make is to optimize metadata.
These are page titles, headers, and meta descriptions. It’s a relatively easy lift on most websites. All you’re doing really is adding keywords and short phrases to titles and headers.
This should be done basically right away, as soon as keyword research is complete and target keywords have been chosen. If not, you know the drill.
3. What about page copy?
After metadata has been optimized, next you need to turn your attention to the slightly longer form stuff. The copy that’s on your category and product pages.
This is a bigger lift, so you can give the agency a bit of leeway here, but all the same, the agency should be making a good effort to optimize this copy, if not draft entirely new copy.
Nonetheless, duplicate page copy or nonexistent page copy robs countless websites of better visibility and so this is one of the most important ranking factors that must be optimized.
4. Have they provided high-quality CMS pages, landing pages, press releases, or blogs?
Not all BigCommerce SEO companies include high-quality content production as a part of their process, but you should be skeptical of any that doesn’t.
This is simply because content is king. It is one of the most important ranking signals, and if importance can be assigned, the most important of them all.
Moreover, a website needs high-quality evergreen content to improve its visibility over the long-term.
This copy can be a FAQs page, some other CMS page, a series of blogs or buying guides, or even just reviews.
But make no mistake about it, you need effective, optimized copy if you want your website to rank competitively, especially in the long run.
5. What does PageSpeed Insights tell you?
Last but not least, check out what PageSpeed Insights tells you about one of the URLs your SEO agency claims to have optimized – provided the agency you hired does technical SEO as part of their scope.
PageSpeed Insights will score your website, or just a page, on a variety of technical metrics associated with speed. If your agency is doing tech work, you should see consistent improvements here over time.
If not, it might be time to start shopping around.
Time for a New BigCommerce SEO Company? Get Started Sooner Rather Than Later
If your BigCommerce SEO company isn’t customizing your SEO strategy according to some of the pointers mentioned here, you might find yourself in the market for a new one.
Consider 1DigitalⓇ Agency, whose BigCommerce SEO experts have been perfecting their process for over ten years and have helped propel innumerable clients ever higher in the search engine rankings.
Start with a visit to their website and go from there. You’ll like what you find.
