Hiring an SEO company or agency to improve your search engine ranking is not a decision to be taken lightly. You need to do extensive research and get proposals from a few different agencies before making a decision. You also need to ask some questions about what strategies they will be working on and if something doesn’t sound right to you, it’s good to find another agency.
Here are five main points to consider before hiring an SEO agency:
- Request a list of your past and current clients: A reputable SEO company should be open to sharing a list of their former clients. These references can help you gauge how effective they are and you will know that the person did the specific job on the SEO campaigns. Also, your clients may not give you specific analysis, but they should be able to tell you if they saw a positive impact on your rankings and gain audience.
- How will it improve my search engine ranking? Stay away from SEO agencies that don’t discuss their methods in detail. They should explain all the strategies they are going to employ to increase your website’s ranking, as well as estimate how long it might actually take to achieve the SEO goals you agreed to.
- Do you adhere to the search engine’s web master guidelines? Do you want a consultant who strictly adheres to Google’s webmaster practices? If a candidate doesn’t follow those guidelines, her website could be exiled to a very low search engine ranking or, worse yet, Google can ban her from search results altogether.
- Are you guaranteeing good results? Any SEO agency cannot guarantee a no. 1 position or any position in search engine results in a few weeks. SEO algorithms and strategies change frequently and the SEO company needs to keep up with all those changes. While they give you an example of what they have accomplished for their other client, it is not certain that you will get the same position. If an agency is guaranteeing you results, look for another company.
- How is the SEO campaign measured? To measure the success of SEO efforts, you need to track how much traffic is being sent to your website and where it is coming from. Consultants must be able to use Google Analytics to track website improvement.
Be sure to ask how often they will provide you with these analytics and how they use this data to continually improve their ranking and traffic, both. So, if you are also looking to hire an SEO company, make sure you follow all the points mentioned above to find the right one.