How To Choose a Good SEO Company

It seems these days anyone who knows how to build a website has a SEO company or is offering “so-called” SEO services. There is a good chance that if you own a business or have a website you have been contacted, in way or another, by someone who say’s they can get you to the first page of Google.  If you have received this kind of solicitation from a cheap SEO company, its likely they will say that if you just give them a couple hundred bucks you can see page one next week.  Does any of this sound familiar? Today we will discuss how to prevent business owners from hiring a scam SEO company.

O.K. so who’s telling the truth?  How do you know you which SEO company to choose that is best for your business?

Today we’ll be talking about some tell tail signs that as a business owner, you should be looking for and asking yourself when choosing a company to do your Search Engine Optimization.  The more you know in advance the better the opportunity of selecting a good search marketing company that will provide true value to your online presence.

Are They Ranking Themselves for Their own products and Services?

Any company that claims they are an internet marketing company, provide SEO services or promote other companies online had better be able to show your company that they can do it for themselves and their customers.  Go ahead, Google some popular terms like “ecommerce seo company” or “ecommerce ppc management company” and you will find us at the top, this is because we specialize in eComerce SEO and PPC management.

If you are working with a marketing company that you are suspecting of not doing the best job here is what you should do. Type in their services to Google because this is what they claim they will be doing for you.  If they offer SEO services in Fort Lauderdale or Miami then type in “Fort Luderdale SEO Company” or “Miami SEO Company”.  Did they appear page one?  Page two maybe?  If you not able to find them within the first few pages of the search engines there is a pretty good chance you are either dealing with a very new company or a fraud.  Secondly, do they have a list of customers that they can provide to you that they are doing business with?  What is that organizations top couple of Keywords?  If they themselves are ranking for their own products/services and they are able to show a couple of customers that are getting good rankings you’re on a good path to choosing a reputable SEO Company.

Are they Google Products Certified?

It’s very important to understand where your business currently exists online.  Google is always trying to improve upon the user experience a consumer has when using their products.  So doesn’t it make sense that you’d work with an organization who has a Google Analytics and Adwords Certified staff?

If you’re dealing with a professional SEO company they’ll utilize the tools Google provides and educate your business with the graphs and charts provided from these tools. They’ll set a baseline, analyze your market/competition, diagnose your current web condition and provide some type of game plan for your campaign.  A Good way to get a feel for if a company has certification is they’ll ask for “read only” access to your Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools.  These items are very important to identify the most popular pages to work on, who you’re currently linking with or queries that are already bring you exposure.  If they are not asking for these valuable metrics it’s a good chance you’re dealing with somebody who has a cookie cutter process for their customers.

Did Your Marketing Company Provide You With A Coherent SEO Strategy?

Most Good SEO companies will always lay out a plan of attack after they have analyzed your competition, how you’re communicating with the net and the available business in your market. From start to finish you’ll know where you currently stand with reports either showing you keyword positioning or the most popular pages of the website like below. A professional SEO company understands that search marketing is very robust and that it takes a data driven mentality to succeed. With tools like Ahrefs (the most popular back link analysis tool) and SEMrush (the most popular search marketing competitor analysis tool)  you can literally identify what your competitors are doing and how they got to the position they are in. If your marketing company does not provide you with action items, short term and long term goals then it’s likely you are working with an inadequate team at best. Below is an example of what a competitor analysis looks like from Semrush.com (a site that we are a featured guest blogger on just like Ahrefs!).

You Have The Right to Know What You Are Paying For!

Also, if you’re working with a professional PPC Management Company or SEO service provider, they’ll document what it takes to make things happen so you can see what is you’re paying for and why.  Plus, they’ll use the tools to identify where to start and line what needs to be done for the project to be a success.  There is never any guess work.  There is always a work load that is needed to get you the results your business is looking for.

Is The Price Too Good to be True?

We’ve all heard or said to ourselves once before if it sounds too good to be true it normally is. Therefore, if some SEO company is offering you an extensive SEO strategy that will build authority to your website for the long term at $200 to $500/mth there’s something wrong there. You ever heard of the saying, “you get what you pay for”?  J

Let’s go back to the SEO basics and take a look at what is realistically involved and then apply it to what you’d charge your customers.  If you have a good SEO company they’ll need to develop content, code content, Link internally/Externally, build your social media presence, analyze your traffic data, tweak your content strategy according to the data and market content to get the social signals Google will recognize for your work to be authoritative.(Just to mention a few items)  Content development alone for the multiple Categories of any given website would take a minimum of 15 to 20 hours of work.  On top of that, you’ll need another 10 to 15 to code all of the content properly, another 10 to 15 to broadcast and get your social signals.  Right there we are talking about 50 hours of work.  Would you change your customer $200 to $500 for 50 hours of your time?   SEO professionals don’t come cheap.  Just consider if you were to go into a doctor’s office have them look at your ailment, spend 2 to 3 hours with them and then offer the clinic $10?  They’d probably look at you like you like you were a little strange, wouldn’t you agree?  Nevertheless, it’s the same in every professional field.

Conclusion

For these exact reasons is why I believe our Industry is tarnished somewhat.  To many times, business owners are approached by non-certified companies who can’t rank their own website, have no strategy, scam the business owner for a thousand or couple thousand bucks over 6 months and leave them exactly where they started six months ago.  I’d hope you would adhere to the following warnings within this article when looking for a good SEO company that will get your business the true results your Business Deserves.

About The Author

Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com

Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.