How to Choose the Best SEO Company?

The first action is to run a quick background check. Check the company’s website and social media pages. See if you are satisfied and are confident enough to proceed with them. The SEO company you decide to go with should be able to understand your pain point and offer solutions that would benefit your business.
 

Read their Homepage and Service page 

Go through the company’s website. Are you impressed with the first scroll? Get to know about the company and its motive. Visit the services page and learn about the SEO process. Do they give solutions to your problems? Try finding answers to the questions you have regarding the Search Engine Optimization(SEO) service or any digital marketing services you are about to opt for. Their SEO service page will speak about the problems and the solutions, without bragging about the company. It should be convincing enough to trust and work with them.

Scan Social media 

Going through the social media pages gives you a fair idea about the SEO Agency to shortlist the best. The most active platforms people use are Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, GMB, LinkedIn and TikTok. Google My Business(GMB) is used to register the business and route visitors to the physical location. It doesn’t stop there, GMB is used to rate & review a business. The reason we discuss GMB more is that naming a business place has become more spamy these days. To rank in the map pack, few companies are changing their actual business name and stuffing it with industry & location keywords to rank better, which is totally unethical. Google would never encourage such bad practices. It is good to verify on the SEO Agency’s Business name. This will help you dodge the spammers.

“A big NO to the company that has spammy titles in GMB. This is not a good sign of ethics or proper SEO practice. Be cautious and Stay Away.”

A company’s portfolio displays the best output of the team. Explore the agency’s case studies and objectives they have worked for. This gives you a clear idea about the extent to which the company can work to achieve the desired results.

Does the company rank in SERPs? 

How did you get to know about the company? If through Google search, they are ranking already and can do things for you as well. If not, check if the chosen company ranks for the user intent search terms of the service you are looking for. You can read the quality from their effective usage of Title and URL in the search result. They should rank in Google’s SERP for quality keywords and search queries.

Do they have proven results?

One cannot guarantee the SEO results, you can trust the SEO agency that has proven results for their clients. The experience of the experts will help you take your business to the next level and find out ways to get you in front of your Target Audience. Go through the portfolio of SEO company and sign up with the best!

What does their case study look like?

Anyone can do SEO nowadays. What more important is performing a result generating SEO. Case studies help us know more about how a company has worked for its clients and overcome difficulties to achieve their objectives. The objectives may be driving traffic, getting broader exposure, etc. Make sure to run a quick check if their clients rank for high intent keywords that generate leads and gives a good ROI, end of the day “profit matters”.

In this phase of filtration, we are going to listen to other people who have already partnered with the company for their betterment. Read reviews and testimonials of the SEO agency to get a customer perspective. Analyze the positives and negatives of the company and the experience people had with the team. Filter the company with the best, positive reviews and happy customers.

 Are they delighted or just satisfied? 

“Trust” in a brand is built by its customers. Listen to the words of the clients of the SEO agency you chose to work with. Read the company’s reviews and ratings to know how happy its customers are and how likely they would refer them in their business circle. A happy customer will always recommend the company and share their positive experience. If there are negative reviews or low ratings, try to find the reason behind it. Not all times businesses get real reviews. Sometimes, the unethical competitors leave low ratings and reviews to bring them down. In such cases, the real business would have replied or taken corrective measures.

Will they continue working with the company in the long term?

Even if a customer doesn’t have a long term relationship in mind while signing up for a service, he/she might end up sticking to the agency that offers quality service or products for future requirements. This perspective applies not only to SEO agencies but to any kind of business. So you can get to know from the testimonial, a happy customer gives to the digital agency, how delighted they are to work with the team. There are tons of SEO agencies out there offering SEO services in all ranges of quality and pricing. Choose wisely!

By this stage, you will have only a few companies on your list. Visit the company and interact with the team in person. A face to face meeting always brings clarity and does wonder. Ask the company a few questions about the team and the process they employ to solve your problems.

How to find a bad SEO agency ?

An SEO company should not direct you to achieve goals quickly. Keep in mind that “SEO is not an instant result generator”. The minimum duration to get the result can take up to 4 to 6 months. There will be testing, improvements, and iterations going on in the SEO process to get fruitful results. It is a long term process. If an SEO company suggests you things like stuffing keywords in your web content or buying links or any black hat SEO practices, better stay away! These practices are prone to Google penalty and you will end up losing your business reputation.

How to find a good SEO agency ?

A good SEO agency will try to understand your brand, industry and business goals in the initial discussion. They will show genuine interest in the growth of your business, suggest the areas of improvement, and corrective measures to accomplish your goals.

Here are few questions A good SEO company will ask:

• Explain how is your product or service unique and is valuable to customers?
• How do peop le find your website currently?
  How do you generate revenue?
• What are the other channels you are currently focusing on? It may be Paid Campaigns (ads) or Social Media Marketing.

Based on your answers a good SEO company will draft an outline that explains how can “search engine” help your business grow? If you are convinced and wish to know more go ahead with an SEO audit. Maybe you will have to pay for the audit, but this helps you choose the best SEO agency. You can give a restricted view of Google Analytics for the company to assess.

An SEO Audit should propose

• The Issue
• Areas of Improvements
• Cost of Investment
• The Business Impact

A Technical SEO report should discuss

• Web Content – Is the web content obsolete or not dense enough for the search engines to find or not engaging or the existence of any duplicate content?
• Navigation – Is the navigation good enough for visitors to take a look around your website?
• Internal linking – The web pages may not be interlinked for the visitor to provide valuable information and is out of visibility.
• Responsive(Mobile Friendly)
• Crawlability
• URL Parameters
• Server Connectivity
• Search query – A search query can be categorized as branded and unbranded
  • Branded Query – a person searching for your brand. The ways to improve the user experience for these terms are discussed.
  • Unbranded Query – the name of your service/product is searched, where the search result lists you and your competitors. In this section, a good SEO company will tell you what to improve and will show you the reason your competitors rank well and ways to outrank them.

If you like the way the issues are prioritized and the solution they offer to boost your business, then proceed with the process.

Cost is one of the deciding factors. There are SEO companies offering services for a price less than the average value. Though they might seem cost-effective, their results stand nowhere near what you expect. Before starting off the service, set a definite budget. Anything around $500 to $1500 per month should work to get you solid results. This might vary based on your company’s spending capacity and SEO requirements.

Why should you avoid cheap SEO companies?

The companies offering low-cost SEO services will attract customers by 2 factors. One, the cost and second, is the guaranteed results they promise to achieve. When you sign up with such SEO companies without proper knowledge, they might either run out of budget or get lost in the middle of the SEO process. So, this results in a bad experience and some people tend to drop the idea of Search Engine Optimization or Digital Marketing and hold back not to burn their fingers again. To avoid all these circumstances, you can spend on proper SEO agency even though the charge is on the higher side.

Are you signing up with a skilled team?

Check if the person in contact with you is skilled enough to resolve your queries. They should sound trustworthy and give you the confidence to sign up with the company and be able to clarify your doubts then and there. Find out what is the response rate for your queries and do you get a single point contact? Because there might be several resources working parallel on various projects and it might be tedious if you don’t get one point contact. You will end up explaining your request again and again. And remember, performance comes with the price. So, invest well in a skilled team to get good results.

Google’s Maile Ohye shares “How to Hire a SEO“