If you are looking for a good SEO agency and having trouble making up your mind, here are some questions and guidelines to help you choose.

Question: How long have you been doing SEO and how many clients do you have?
Answer: Ideally, a good SEO agency has been doing business for at least a couple of years and has enough clients that can put you in touch with 2-3 current clients to act as referrals. If the agency you are interviewing refuses to provide references and contact information, you should be nervous.

Question: Do you guarantee first page ranking on Google?

Answer: A good SEO agency will not guarantee you Google ranking on the first page. There are so many factors that influence ranking in search results that a good SEO firm will focus more on discussing on-page optimization, keyword research, link building strategies, and your business goals, in instead of making great offers and / or guarantees. If a company guarantees you that it will place you in the top three results within a certain period of time, you should run away.

Question: What kind of link building strategies do you use?

Answer: This question is a bit more difficult, but it should include things like guest blogging, website widgets or badges, manual directory submissions. If the answer involves automated link building (that is, 10,000 site links for $ 199) or anything that seems dishonest or violates Google’s guidelines, you should run away.

Question: Are you researching the strength of the sites you will be using for your link building strategies?

Answer: The answer must be yes and they must be able to explain not only how strong the domain is, but how strong the page is to be linked.
Question: Can you clearly explain your keyword research techniques and what tools you use?

Answer: This answer could involve any number of free and paid SEO tools from companies like Google free website and domain, SEOMoz.org, SeoBook.com, and it should include Google Keywords Tool and Google Webmaster Tools, to name a few.

Question: Do you provide research on our competitors? What websites link to them? What anchor text do those links use? The overall robustness of your website compared to ours?
Answer: These are all very crucial pieces of SEO effectively. A good SEO agency will incorporate thorough competitive research into their plan for your business.

Question: What kind of analysis or reports do you provide?

Answer: A good SEO company will provide you with comprehensive reports on things like your target keyword search results, the sites that are now linked to your site, the keywords that are used in the search to find your site, etc.

Question: Do you make us sign a long-term contract?

Answer: There are so many different ways SEO companies charge for their services that this answer could vary drastically. The most important thing to consider is whether you trust the company you are interviewing or if you feel like they are trying to push you into a sale (and a long-term contract).