There’s many in the industry who claim to be SEO experts but the only way to find out for sure is to ask tough questions about their business. You will find that when an SEO company is trustworthy they won’t oversell their service. Instead they will try to educate you on how their service works and help you understand whether or not it is a good fit for your company. On today’s episode of The HVAC Marketing Podcast, owners Nolen and John explain the process of identifying a legitimate marketing company for SEO services. Are You a Specialty SEO Company? A good question to ask for HVAC contractors is whether or not the SEO company specializes in a specific niche. For example, HVAC Webmasters specializes in marketing for HVAC contractors. While a specialty doesn’t always equate to a high quality marketing company, it is certainly a point in their favor. Experience promoting similar businesses is a clear advantage over those who have only represented other kinds of industries. You might also ask if the specialize in a certain “type” of SEO which is normally a red flag. Do You Provide Original Content? A website without content cannot maximize its SEO. But some contractors mistakenly believe their site already has content. While there may be text on the pages, it is often copied from other sources and rendered null and void by Google. You can check if your page content is scraped by visiting Copyscape. You can have a lot of content and not have any rankings. After all, why would Google want to show the same content as another page that is more well established and more relevant? Also, ask them if they have writes on-staff. Catching Them in a Lie The best thing you can do as an HVAC contractor is catch an SEO expert in a lie. They might not be transparent about their billing process and use black box billing to forward your SEO payments towards pay per click marketing. While it might get you calls early, it will not sustain itself over time because the money you paid for SEO is a monthly fee. If you notice that your SEO suddenly stopped working, you’ve been worked. Ask them upfront how their billing process works and weather they use SEO money for other tasks.