How to Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency (E111)

John DohertyFounder of Credo Bio: John Doherty is the founder of Credo, which connect businesses with the right marketing provider from Credo's exclusive network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3,000 brands, including some of the world's most well-known, work with great marketing firms. Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – eCommerce Automation Links: https://editorninja.comhttps://www.getcredo.comhttps://twitter.com/dohertyjfhttps://twitter.com/getcredo Transcript: Charles:                        00:00                In this episode of the Business of eCommerce. I talked with John Doherty about how to hire an SEO agency. This is a business of eCommerce, episode one 11 welcome to the business of eCommerce to show the helps eCommerce retailers start, launch and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host, Charles Palleschi, and I'm here today with John Doherty. John is the founder of Creo where they connect businesses with the right marketing provider from cruise exclusive network. Since 2015 they've helped over 3000 brands work with great marketing firms. I asked John on the show today talk about what you should look for when you're hiring an SEO agency, so Hey John, how are you doing today? John:                            00:44                Good, Charles, how are you? Thanks for having me on. Charles:                        00:46                Yeah, great to have you on. Super interesting to talk about this side of SEO, right on working with a consultant and how to actually kind of do like the high level of when you should be doing it, if she should be doing it, and kind of all the strategy around that. I've talked to a bunch of guests in the show on kind of the tactical SEO, but this is kind of a different level, right? You kind of focus more on when to work with a consultant, how to work with them. Is that kind of what you guys focus on at credo? John:                            01:14                Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I actually come from the SEO world. I've been in SEO doing SEO for about a decade now for the last four years has been helping companies basically find the right firm to work with through credo. And so really I've kind of more from like being in the trenches, tactical, that sort of stuff. I can still do SEO quite well, but I find a lot more interesting on the business side. How do people do a good job of hiring for for SEO, for digital marketing? Really? you know, I've learned a lot of lessons over the years. You know, my background is I worked, I worked agency side couple agencies. I worked in house for a couple of years with Zillow and then I've also been a solo consultant and then seem 3,500 plus companies come through creative looking to hire. So I've talked to a lot of companies. John:                            01:53                I've seen a lot of companies sign with firms and in a lot of companies not signed with firms. I've seen companies signed with the wrong firms. And so it's a, you know, I've seen people hire the wrong type of, of firms so it consultants have an agency or vice versa. And so yeah, I learned, I learned a lot of lessons and it's something not a lot of people talk about. And I think it's something that we should be talking about more, especially in the digital space as we're growing companies. Because once you get beyond just you and you found product market fit or you're starting to get some traction with your eCommerce company then it's a, you know, basically the question becomes how do I scale it more? And doing that well is really, really hard. And as we were talking about offline, that like, you know, this stuff is really hard and so whatever I can do to help people do it better and give them kind of more signal in a very noisy world I love to do that. Charles:                        02:36                Yeah. Sq is one of those things too where if you're hiring some external,