Inheriting/Changing SEO Consultants

[gord]

You may know this situation. Join a company, inherit a load of suppliers, unsure on the performance or cost-effectiveness, too busy day to day to a) find out and b) do something. Especially when that supplier is an SEO consultancy.

We use a consultancy for some reporting and performing the off-site side of our SEO. We've just built a new site and now is the time to review, with a view to switch. But a couple of questions stick in my mind:

Will we lose rankings? I have no information on obligations from our current supplier, but undoubtedly they'll remove us from their blogging schemes et al. The relationship is good so I can talk to them about these issues, but they aren't going to like my proposals.

Will the new supplier be any better? If anyone has any advice when changing SEO consultants or suggestions for a new supplier it would be much appreciated. UK based, preferably South, reputable with performance I can measure and no "guaranteed top of Googles!2££$11".

Cheers.

 

[Dark_Injection]

Will you lose your rankings? Maybe. But right now we all might since Googles changes the other day. You will probably lose some PR, however they have probably set a lot of links and other small things on the net that are unchangeable. They are there and will stay, so you will hold onto some of these factors.

The new supplier could be better yes. Depends who you choose.

As to as SEO person in England, I dont know.

 

[rwm24]

I work as an SEO. 2 1/2 years experience working in an agency and now i've gone freelance. I'm not trying to get your business, I just want to answer your questions.

Will we lose rankings?
Unlikely. Revoke their access to your website before you cancel the contract so they can't change anything on site (just in case). The on-site SEO is a major part of it, if it's spammy

They will have a lot of trouble trying to remove links they built for you, depending on how they built them of course. At the agency we didn't do anything when people cancelled, just stopped the reports going to them.

Will the new supplier be any better?
Hard to say. Stick with big names that come up highly for "SEO", "SEO Consultants", "SEO Services"... that kinda thing. Make sure they have case studies, testimonials etc.

There is not 1 single way to do things in SEO, different companies may take slightly different approaches. You may find the new company finds a lot of issues with the on-site stuff, or backlinks the previous company has been building. This was extremely common at the agency. I'd often look over a site and it's backlinks while my colleague was on the phone to the client. If the on-site SEO was keyword stuffed/spammy we may take it on and just fix the issues but if they had tons of low-quality backlinks it was often too much work to rectify it and they stood a high chance of being hit by either the Google Panda or Google Penguin update.

If you have any more questions just let me know.