If your website isn’t showing up on the first page of search results, your potential customers might not even find your existence on the web. It’s critical to rank higher on the SERPs of Google, Bing or Yahoo because an increased online visibility of your website drives more traffic and boosts visits which can lead to higher sales and increased brand awareness.
Debunking Some Common Myths About SEO Agencies
First, let’s demystify some common misconceptions about SEO agencies. If you’re assuming any of the following points while looking out an SEO service provider, question your presumptions:
“The company has a nice website, they’d be best to work with.”
Just ask yourself, would you hire someone because he speaks well, looks good or has worked for many companies.
A nice looking website may not surely be a good SEO firm. If you’re looking to hire a company who can take care of both, your website’s design and SEO, then yes, you should probably consider how good their own site looks. But, if you’re searching for the top-notch SEO services, even some of the top SEO firms may have crippling website designs.
The company employs a hundred heads and generates million dollars, they know well what they’re doing.”
Bigger is not always better. Yes, a firm may be good at something, but it might not have anything to do with SEO. They might be big because they understand, how to form great partnerships, a skill which may not translate into SEO success for their clients.
The best SEO firm for you might not be much bigger, maybe you find a guy working in a basement as a right SEO partner. Or, it may be indeed an international SEO agency with 400 employees. Don’t write off either one of them, select a firm practicing white hat SEO services.
Why Should You Have A Right SEO Partner?
Search Engine Optimization contributes to the probability that search engine robots consider your website content pretty useful to warrant its top placement in search results. But, if you lack the time or the technical expertise to implement an SEO marketing strategy, it makes sense to hire a reliable and experienced SEO service provider.
Hiring the best SEO services can take you to the path of producing thousands of dollars per month, but a bad SEO can drastically slump up your website’s existing traffic.
So, outsourcing the right SEO firm can be pretty creepy…
Hiring an appropriate and competent SEO partner is not a simple task. While hunting for a great SEO firm, the first thing you need to do is evaluating your website’s SEO needs. Then, you need to look beyond the superficial to choose a firm using the right criteria to make a positive impact on your business.
Here’s how to do it…
Ready, Let’s start…
5 Tips To Choose A Right SEO Partner
1.Evaluate Your SEO Needs – Website Analysis
Decide the SEO activities you need for your website. This includes researching and finding out the gaps and opportunities for your website, evaluating your online competitors, the areas where your site lags behind such as researching keywords ranking high in your niche and many more prospects….
Further, deciding whether you need link removal, one-time SEO audit or ongoing SEO, reputation management, content marketing, PPC management, Retargeting or one of the other SEO services offered by the firms frequently.
Do you look toward growing the sales by 25% over next 12 months, or increase leads by 50% over the coming 6 months? Is your goal higher rankings? Or, you just need someone to work on your SEO activities to accomplish an activity from your to-do list.
Having goals in your mind will help you measure the success of your partnership with an SEO firm. And, let that goal be the center of communication between you and your SEO partner. If you’re unable to track the performance of your SEO efforts, you’ve less chances to be successful with them.
2.Consult Multiple SEO Agencies – SEO Consulting
Once you’ve figured out what you want, discuss with your SEO partner, in person, by phone or email, ask them to help you plan out the things you need to do. Most SEO firms in the industry offer a free consultation as they know that by doing so, they have more chances to impress you and win your business. At the same time, you’ll also be able to find out whether you like the firm and the people you’ll be probably working with. By the end of this phase, which may take some days for the SEO firm to research on your site and the industry, you’ll receive a proposal with the SEO services you need and the pricing for them.
What next?
Now, unless you’re in a time crunch or you loved the previous firm better, do the same thing for two to three firms to compare with. Attention! Keep it secret, don’t advertise that you’re talking to other firms too. This can reduce the competency of the SEO firms.
3.Ask them about their past experiences and portfolio – Case Study
The ultimate thing you want your SEO company to do is “Help you get your job done ” and the best way for an SEO providers to prove this is by showing how they’ve helped their past clients get their job done. You want to see the reviews, case studies, testimonials and their work portfolio. Ask them to show the SEO strategies and campaigns, implementing which they’ve successfully brought the businesses to next level. Moreover, checkout the keywords for which they’ve got the rankings on the first page of Google search results.
Further, follow up by asking them for their active clients and for how long they’ve been working with their active clients. This will give an idea about the consistency in their work.
A good SEO team or consultant is worth their weight in gold. They alone can grow your business by 10-20% per month on a consistent basis, year after year.
4.Understand The SEO Proposal – Result Oriented Approach
An SEO agency outlines the recommended approach towards their SEO services and skills and a cost breakdown in the proposal. Checkout if the proposal has atleast these key elements:
- Content marketing strategy
- Link building strategy with focus on quality, not quantity
- Keyword targeting
- Social media optimization
- Tracking the performance
- Reporting methods and how often they’ll report
Finally, the proposal should leave you feel confident that the firm has perfectly listened to your business needs and cares about getting you the desired results.
5.Reporting On Their SEO Activities and Progress – Measuring Performance
SEO firms should be diligent about any changes they make on your website. If something goes wrong, you should know exactly what caused it.
Moreover, the SEO companies do report about their SEO activities and the results driven through those activities periodically. A monthly report would be pretty standard, but if you prefer a different reporting frequency, most of the SEOs will accommodate to you.
All monthly SEO reports must include the following things:
Summary of SEO activities – this should include new links that came into site, content creation, details about email outreach campaigns etc.
Organic Search traffic Analysis- increase in search traffic is the most important progress marker. A report shows the current month’s traffic and the percentage of increase from the previous month.
Keywords Search rankings – if you have targeted any main keywords, the report should reflect a quick update about them.
Tracking Conversions – The ultimate goal – higher the conversion, higher the ROI. How many search visitors converted to customers or entered in your sales funnel.
A proper reporting will help you know, what you should expect from the SEO company if you hire them. Discussing your expectations clearly with them will help minimize frustrations on both the sides in future.
Conclusion
Remember, SEO is a long term investment. Your SEO technician should be eager to stay updated about your business happenings and share certain confidences.
It’s going to take months before great results, or lack of results, become apparent. However, setting up clear goals, bidding for multiple firms, comparing various SEO services and finding out the predictors of future – that’s how you ensure you’ll hire a right SEO firm.
Sanket Patel
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- 5 Sure-fire Tips To Help You Choose The Right SEO Agency - September 6, 2016