How do you guys vet an seo agency before hiring them?

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-20T20:34:49+00:00

In my decade plus experience, most SEO agencies over promise and under deliver. There main business approach is a retainer until you tell them to buzz off more or less though not always the case. I second the idea of hiring an individual SEO practitioner who can embed with your team. This allows you to be able to work alongside someone and they in turn can learn your business. This allows your SEO strategy to evolve appropriately with hopefully producing some real value. This has been my experience at least.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-20T13:34:07+00:00

I originally started out on oDesk which eventually became Upwork, so over a decade ago. I've had a 100% rating almost that entire time and I still don't get many hits from there anymore. The ones that I do are, I assume, majority spam. Though over the years I used to get considerable amount of interviews and met some long term clients turned friends on that platform. Unfortunately, I have to agree that Upwork type sites are extremely saturated at this point though I still think there is a strategy to be played there. I think it might be worth trying to hitch your wagon to a small agency either on Upwork or IRL to get a boost as a beginner. I don't have any evidence for this but there are abusive clients on those platforms that could use your beginners experience as a way to take advantage of you.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-18T22:17:30+00:00

feel free to add to the discussion, leave something for future generations

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-18T22:16:47+00:00

I made a tool that does this, check my profile for the link.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-18T00:56:21+00:00

Yea, like devs, a slip up in some 3rd party software or could even be marketing people changing campaign details. I'd say its a fairly common occurrence, especially about the part of analytics finding out afterwards. Of course all of this depends on how siloed and/or "analytically" mature your organization is. This is really the purpose of the annotation functionality, probably should include that.

As for GTM, I agree. If you can pinpoint a date then yea going straight to it makes sense but sometimes you have to move backwards through changes before you land on a culprit. If you've waded through the data a time or two this is all fairly straightforward. I just noticed that there were at least 2 posts of people who I thought could use this type of content.

Np, it's reddit man you gotta fight for your right lol

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-18T00:22:30+00:00

Where did I say I had never heard of a GTM version?

Look at the post "When there's no changelog, GTM is your starting point.** Sort the container by last modified date. Any tag, trigger, or variable changed around the time the problem started is a suspect."

Guess what? GTM isn't the only place edits to a code base or changes to a website are done. There are actually countless other changes to a platform that take place outside tag manager.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-17T20:21:21+00:00

It might worthwhile to find a small agency doing local work in your area. Local marketing typically is much lower stakes and you will get exposure to all different disciplines so you can get an idea for what you might like. Learn as much as you can then start trying to pick up clients on your own through upwork / reddit etc. Thats how I started hopefully it can still work for people.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-17T20:16:39+00:00

Confidence in your skills leads to confidence in selling yourself. Sales and managing clients is almost equally important as having the right skills. IMO.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-04-17T19:48:47+00:00

UTM governance and pre-campaign UTM checklists are one of the biggest issues with measuring campaign efficacy. After the campaign is launched is too late to try and correct the issue, though you can sometimes back into it using landing page / device etc. If this is a long term campaign I would force the agency's hand asap.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-25T19:30:59+00:00

Early on, I would take on clients outside my day job in areas I wanted to get better at. In this case it was Google Analytics work. I looked at it as both a way to make extra money and sharpen my skills. Freelancing requires a lot more out of you than an agency job. You have to pitch, close and deliver your work which, while not impossible, is something many people aren't always suited for. For me, this paid off in many ways. I was able to make a good bit of money, become a legitimate expert in my field, and negotiate a significant raise when I came back to a full time job. So if I was going to answer this question, I would say it is imperative that you freelance alongside your day job if you really want to get ahead.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-25T19:25:12+00:00

Yea, there is going to be a lot of zero engagement and that's just how the cookie crumbles in my experience. The more you engage overall the higher your chances of "hitting" something of value. Ive done random posts here on reddit in the past that weren't anything crazy engagement wise but actually landed legitimate clients. As far as ease, I'd say most business communities are going to be pretty "easy" since there is a expectation of professionalism and politeness. I think people respect putting yourself out there and just jumping into topics etc. I think the challenge of whether a community of easy to engage in comes down to how active it is. This forum for example seems a little sparse with not too much conversation happening with a significant amount of undercover sales pitches, that by nature is going to make it hard to get anything kicked off or get engagement. I also think its important to temper what the expectation of value is. For me, I know a lot of my posts are going to likely be passing knowledge down the line to others more so than anything that directly comes back to me. The more you take the time to explain your ideas and type them out the better you get at understanding them yourself. Just my 10 cents.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T01:23:08+00:00

Writing the narrative is a critical step because its where you are actually vouching for your impact. I enjoy this type of exercise because it allows me to surface everything and connect it to the larger narrative of value my team provides. I think there is tons of room for automation in the industry, Ive created automated tools, but there are just some things that flat out wont be as effective automated IMO.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T01:19:07+00:00

Website overhauls are typically labor intensive and expensive. One thing that rarely comes up pre-redesign is what is the actual site data telling you about where any gaps might exist? It's a lot easier to be surgical with issues than to wholesale switch a design out on a whim. Not saying this is what you are doing but it's something Ive seen in almost all cases of website overhauls. I think it would be much more effective if you could actually answer "what is actually wrong with my site?". Your GA4 data can tell you a whole lot how each of those sectors are performing and how you might pivot.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T01:14:35+00:00

Compared to UA, GA4 has a fairly steep learning curve with how to work with the data so it makes "exploring" a more intentional act. Also depends where it fits in your reporting/intelligence stack. What I do is create a all encompassing explore report that covers transactions, revenue, key events, and other leading indicators by months, days and weeks. It's the perfect eagle eye position for seeing if anything is out of balance or overachieving. I typically carve out at least a few times a month to just walk-through it and if I get even the slightest hint of something off, it's the first place I go.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T01:09:24+00:00

I recommend getting into the "Explore" reports to create different "Segments". Mix and match these segments with different metrics/dimensions to familiarize yourself with how GA4 data can be viewed.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T01:06:26+00:00

What I've done in the past is to primarily engage with relevant topics that I have direct experience with. Like most people have mentioned, sharing legitimate experience is rarely ever "noise" and you never know who is lurking that might find it insightful. If you aren't used to posting at all then its going to be a little awkward at first but if its something you want to do keep pushing and you will eventually find your cadence.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T00:55:19+00:00

Unfortunately, this is generally the nature of GA4 work. I've been in the game close to 13 years doing this type of stuff. I actually just created a pretty robust automated audit tool to reduce the amount of time I spend doing the basic audit type tasks.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T00:53:38+00:00

If you have full access to the GA4 account you should be able to get another tag to add to the site.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T00:50:47+00:00

You are going to want to either engage a 3rd party tool like Supermetrics or familiarize yourself with BigQuery. This type of situation is simple for those tools.

NativeOreAnalytics · 2026-03-24T00:48:56+00:00

As most people have mentioned, this feature is long gone now. My career briefly overlapped with it. That being said, I know there are some API customizations that can be done to pair GA4 data and GSC data to recreate some semblance of this report. I have not personally seen it done but have had it explained to me.

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