Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to your business’s success. Unfortunately, it also requires a vast amount of time and effort to get it right. If you give your SEO the attention it needs to take off, you may not have much time left to manage all the other areas of your business.
That’s why a lot of businesses choose to simply partner with a professional SEO company instead of trying to do all the work on their own. But picking the right company is a challenge in and of itself. You might not be sure what to look for in an SEO company. Thankfully, we’re here to help clarify that.
On this page, we’ll go over several features to look for when choosing an SEO company, as well as some things to avoid. Keep reading to find out more!
What to look for in an SEO company: 5 SEO green flags
When you’re choosing an SEO company, there are five main areas that you’ll want to consider. Those areas are:
Read on for more info about each of those SEO green flags!
1. Affordability
Even if you feel unsure of what makes a good SEO company, you probably at least know the first requirement: Affordability. Needless to say, if an SEO company is outside of your budget, it’s not one you should work with. You can’t very well pay more money than you have available.
For that reason, it’s important to nail down your budget before you start shopping around. That way, you can immediately eliminate any companies that cost too much.
2. Experience
Another important quality in any SEO company is experience. If an SEO company was founded just last year, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will do a bad job — but do you really want to take the chance? It’s better to find an agency that has years (or even decades) of experience with SEO.
The longer an agency has been in business, the more chances they’ve had to see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO campaigns. They’ve been through enough ups and downs to learn what it takes to build a stellar campaign, so they’ll be able to earn you more revenue.
3. Customization
Every business has unique needs for their marketing. So, if you let an external agency handle your SEO, you want to make sure they’ll account for those needs by customizing their SEO strategy for you. You don’t want to partner with an agency that uses the same cookie-cutter strategy for all their clients.
When an SEO company takes the time to sit down with you and learn about your brand and audience so they can build a campaign around them, you know they’re a good option. Customization is very important for any SEO campaign.
4. Services offered
All SEO companies will try to help you rank higher in search results, but there are a lot of different ways to do that. So, the question is, which specific SEO services does each company offer? That’s a question you’ll want to look into when you research SEO agencies.
If you have any specific SEO tactics in mind that you want to use, you can look for an agency that offers those. But even if there’s no particular tactic you’re looking for, you’ll still want to prioritize agencies that offer a variety of different services. That gives you more options for getting the traffic you want.
5. Reviews and testimonials
Finally, it’s a very good idea to check out some reviews and testimonials for the SEO companies you consider working with. Every company you look at will try to make themselves look good, but client reviews are where you’ll get the truest picture of what they’re like to work with.
Obviously, a company with consistently poor reviews is not worth partnering with. But if you find a company that has glowing reviews from clients who say they drove a lot of revenue, that’s a sure sign that they can do the same for you.
What to avoid when choosing an SEO company
Now that we’ve gone over some of the biggest SEO green flags, let’s talk about a few red flags. These are some of the main things to steer clear of when looking for an SEO company:
Keep reading for more info about each one!
1. Guaranteed results
You might be surprised to see this listed as a red flag. If a company is so confident in its abilities that it can guarantee you a particular amount of traffic or revenue, isn’t that a great thing? Well, no. The truth is, SEO isn’t something anyone has total control over. Even if you do everything right, you’re still at the mercy of Google’s algorithm.
That means that if an agency guarantees results, they’re lying to you — which doesn’t set a great precedent for what the rest of your relationship with them would be like. It’s better to find an SEO company that’s more honest and realistic about what they can do for you, while still being optimistic.
2. Suspiciously low prices
When we covered what to look for in an SEO company, the first thing we talked about was affordability. So, that means you should choose the least expensive agency you can find, right? Actually, no. You obviously want something within your budget, but don’t go too cheap.
When it comes to SEO, you get what you pay for. So, if you partner with an agency whose prices are way below everyone else’s, there’s a good chance the quality of their services will be equally low.
3. Black-hat SEO
Black-hat SEO refers to any SEO tactics that resort to unethical methods to obtain traffic. One example of black-hat SEO is when a company buys links instead of earning them organically. Another is keyword stuffing, where someone shoves a keyword into a page as many times as they possibly can to hijack rankings.
Aside from behind unethical, black-hat SEO is bad because it simply doesn’t work very well. Google has updated its algorithms a lot over the years specifically to render black-hat tactics ineffective, so an agency that uses these tactics is both dishonest and way behind the times.
Learn firsthand what makes a good SEO company with SEO.com
Now you know what to look for in an SEO company, but there’s still the task of finding one that matches all those criteria. Thankfully, you don’t have to look too far. SEO.com is one of the leading SEO agencies out there, embodying all the SEO green flags on this list (and none of the red flags).
When you partner with us for our SEO services, you’ll be able to drive a lot more traffic to your website and turn that traffic into revenue for your business. Plus, if you need help with other marketing strategies beyond SEO, you won’t have to go elsewhere — we’re a full-service digital marketing agency, so we offer a variety of services.
Interested in partnering with us? Contact us online to get started today!
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