How to Choose an SEO Company For Your Business

OK, you want more website traffic and sales, so now you need to know how to choose an SEO company that will deliver what you want. You have probably visited a few websites and read some information online — you might have even received some referrals but you are still stuck. Let’s be honest for a minute — there are a lot of bad SEO companies. In fact, there are more bad ones than good ones.

Every SEO company that you speak to is going to tell you that they can get your website ranked on top. Nobody is going to say, “Well, we are going to try but most likely your website will never see the light of day and you would be better taking your money and lighting it on fire.”

Any SEO company that you are thinking of hiring should be able to do the following with relative ease:

Perform a site structure audit and identify problems

An experienced SEO company will be able to determine whether or not a site has a SEO friendly URL’s, category and product pages that are correctly optimized, and a website structure that will gel good for SEO fairly quickly. If a company doesn’t even mention your website structure before putting a contract in front of your face you need to be very weary of their intentions as well as abilities.

Evaluate the on-page optimization

While on-page factors can be very confusing to a business owner, an experienced SEO company can quickly determine whether or not a website is properly optimized on the page level. Often times, and especially for small local businesses, on-page optimization can make the biggest impact on local search results.

Audit the current link profile

One of the first things a potential SEO company should do is review your link profile. In many situations a business hasn’t done any SEO in the past so the link profile is very thin. This gives an experienced agency a clean slate to work with, but there are also instances of businesses looking for a new SEO company and their previous company built nothing but low quality spammy links. 

Doing a link audit prior to engagement allows the agency to understand fully what they are walking into and it also allows them to give the customer realistic expectations. If there is a toxic link profile the bad links need to be dealt with prior to starting a new campaign. Never engage with a SEO firm that doesn’t perform a full link audit before even discussing moving forward.

Identify key changes that can be implemented quickly

After going through the website and diving into the link profile an experienced and knowledgeable SEO company should be able to identify actions that can be taken to make some significant improvements. This could be on-page optimization changes, restructuring some elements of the website, or even doing a link clean up and removal. It is important that you work with a company that can quickly identify changes.

Create a well thought out brand building campaign

SEO packages, mass link services, and other cookie cutter monthly packages are poison. These are clear signs that the company is outsourcing and placing your website in the hands of minimum wage workers. SEO requires a well thought out plan that revolves around building your brand through several online channels. This results in natural mentions, exposure, and link earning opportunities.

Show you measurable results in terms of traffic and conversions

Make sure that you establish what kind of reporting the company is going to provide you with. Forget ranking reports alone — that is virtually useless. You want to work with an agency that understands revenue and has an actionable plan to grow yours. Traffic analytics and conversion data show what is really going on in a campaign. Ranking for a few keywords is useless unless they are bringing in quality traffic that eventually converts into dollar signs.

It is important that you make sure the SEO company performs all of the work in-house. There are so many companies that simply outsource everything, putting the health of your website and your online brand image in the hands of someone working for a few hundred dollars a month. This is not a good position to be in and companies will not always tell you that they are indeed outsourcing.

A good indication that trouble is brewing is their lack of questions. If a SEO company is only asking you one question – “what is your credit card number?” — then you need to run far away and reevaluate.

With so many companies that pop up and disappear there are some things that you can look into that can help you decide. Check to see if they are an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau and see if there are any complaints filed against the company. A serious business will join the BBB, while a fly by night operation isn’t going to invest the time or money into becoming accredited.

Before hiring an SEO company you will want to speak with them a couple of times to make sure that you are comfortable engaging them. Join their newsletter and read their blog to see what kind of information they provide. We take great pride in the fact that we provide useful resources for business owners at no cost. Our eBook is downloaded hundreds of times every week and our blog has a large following as well. We send out weekly online marketing tips to our newsletter subscribers every week — this is something that costs us time and money, but we are happy to do it knowing that we are helping some businesses establish a digital footprint.

Source: http://goo.gl/CqYgvw