You’re surely interested how you’ll be able to hire an SEO company that can exceed your company’s marketing key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are some practical tips and actionable insights that will help you achieve your goal.
To get you started, these are the things you should avoid when hiring an SEO company:
- Very long or short service agreements
Short service agreements encourage tactics that will likely damage your site’s long-term health. Meanwhile, long service agreements are mostly employed by companies who are never going to get you a result, no matter how long you give them.
You should instead look for service agreements lasting for around 6 months, which is enough time for you to see significant improvements regardless of where your site starts.
- Getting what’s cheap
Be wary of choosing an agency based on price alone. Choosing the cheapest option is often the most expensive option. Cheap rarely buys quality when it comes to SEO and can be catastrophic for your site.
- Ranking guarantees
No one can be sure of getting a number one ranking for your business, so don’t believe the SEO providers who are promising it. Ranking guarantees aren’t only unethical but also dangerous. Be wary of guarantees stating a high result in a short span of time, which can be too good to be true.
Now that you know what to avoid, here are the things you should look for in an SEO company:
- Proven results over a long period of time
The best way to know how a company has performed in the past is to talk with their current and former customers.
Ask them how their experience was, and what results were achieved. You should call several clients (instead of relying on the opinion of just one client) so you’ll be able to get an accurate assessment.
- Dedicated R&D team
Work with a company who has a dedicated resource and development (R&D) team. SEO is constantly changing and their job is to monitor changes in the algorithm and test various scenarios to maximise your results.
- Sizeable client base
A company with many clients has access to more data and learning than one with just a few clients. Make sure the company has the resources to handle a large volume of customers including people, processes, and infrastructure.
- Social proof, testimonials, reviews and case studies
You should choose a company whom you can trust and whose methods will get you to a good end result. Look at the bios and see if they have the experience to do the job well. Read their testimonials and investigate yourself if those clients have visibility and are really ranking well. Also, read the reviews from 3rd party sites including Yelp, Facebook, Google, etc. And if they have case studies, read them so that you’ll have an idea about how they work and if their process is something that you feel would be beneficial to your organisation.
- Updates and deliverables
The company should be able to give you a clear, transparent documentation of what they’re working on. Find out how they communicate progress. Do they answer emails within 24 hours? Do they use project management tools like asana or basecamp? Do they have an assigned dedicated account manager and a timeline and deliverables for transparency? What’s their plan and how do they execute it?
- Success measurement
The company should have a set method for measuring success. They have to be determined at the beginning of the SEO campaign and take baseline reports so you can hold them accountable for delivering results.
- Willingness to share
Look for a company that will train you and your team so that you can bring some of the core activities back in your organisation. This will ensure everything is done as cost-effectively as possible. As your team’s knowledge grows, they’ll ask better questions, give better support for your SEO and get better results.
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