Hotels.com SEO manager James Owen outlined a 5 step plan for working with and getting the most out of an SEO agency.

1. Preparation

Before you engage an agency, establish goals. Build authority in a certain area, drive more revenue?

Give your agency correct keywords and landing pages from the off. Benchmark before you begin, look at your own site’s rankings and those of your top 5 competitors. Make sure they understand historical SEO activity and what they can and can’t change on your site.

2. Setup phase, 0-2 months

Establish long and short term keyword targets.

3. Testing, 2-4 months

Find out agency’s strengths and weaknesses, social, online PR etc.

4. Fine tuning – 4-6 months

Once you have found out what an agency is good at, get them to do more of it.

5. Agency reporting

What’s your profit margin? How much have you spent? How much have you made? Over what period of time? Establish KPIs – CVR, orders, GBV, visits. Use a reporting suite such as Brightedge to help with this.