Major Points of the Article
You need to understand your SEO goals before choosing the best company for SEO.
Third-party opinions from referrals and past clients are more trustworthy sources than ‘Top 10 Lists’.
SEO results are never guaranteed, but your traffic growth potential is unlimited.
Limiting your SEO company options to your local area could be detrimental to your business’ ranking.
92% of all web users will click on a result on the first page of Google and to be on page 1, this is where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in. With so many companies claiming to be the greatest, choosing the best company to manage your SEO and boost your organic visibility can be a little tricky.
Naturally, you would prefer to work with a trustworthy SEO company that has a strong understanding of search engine optimisation to drive quality traffic to your website, generate leads and eventually sales. But how can you differentiate the dodgy companies that could potentially destroy your online presence from the good companies that will help drive customers to your website?
While there is no perfect formula for choosing the best SEO company or a curated list of the best companies that you can simply pick from, we can equip you with the knowledge you need to make an educated decision to choose the right SEO company for your business.
This article will provide you with tips for choosing the best company, three big mistakes to avoid, guidelines to help you confirm that the SEO company you have picked will understand your objectives while they fulfil your goals and align with your team.
Tips For Finding The Best Company For SEO
Weeding through thousands of SEO companies might make you feel overwhelmed, but here are three tips you should follow to find the best one.
1. Understand Exactly What You Want To Achieve
Before even starting the gruelling process of choosing the best company for SEO, you should sit down and think about what goals you would like to accomplish from SEO. However, simple goals can become meaningless or purposeless which makes them difficult to reach. Instead, ensure that your SEO objectives are SMART. That is, your goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound
For example, if your goal is to “increase organic traffic” you can make it a SMART goal by changing it to “increase organic traffic from Google to your website by +10% in six months”.
Or perhaps you want to “generate more leads from your website”. You can convert this into a SMART goal by rewriting it as “increase the conversion rate of website users submitting a Contact Us form to 2.5% in six months”.
This way, when you start working with an SEO company, you can use the SMART goals you created as performance indicators to see if the money you are investing is paying off.
P.S. It is totally okay if you are new to the world of SEO and not entirely sure what part of your SEO needs fixing. This is when you can talk to an SEO expert who will help you identify the problems with your online presence and devise and implement a tailored SEO strategy to solve them.
2. Look At How Their Content Is Performing
All companies want their website to rank well on Google, but this is particularly true for SEO agencies. SEO is an extremely competitive industry, and it takes skill to rank well. So if you do a quick Google search of SEO companies in your area, it is likely that those who appear on the first page are not just holding those positions by chance.
If the SEO company can rank well for their own website, you can feel more confident that they will be able to produce the same results for your business. It is the same for the reverse. A company that won’t put in the effort and have the expertise to rank high for their own website will lead you to question if they will be committed to helping your website rank well.
3. Ask For Referrals and Contact Previous/Current Clients
Don’t just rely on the SEO company’s own words or a ‘Top 10 Best SEO Firms’ list you found on the internet as these opinions can be biased and unreliable. This is because the companies that appear on lists like these often pay for a spot.
Instead, you should support their claims with word of mouth. You can do this by looking through their case studies and clientele and making a few calls to their previous or current clients to ask them about their experience working with the SEO company. If this information is not available on the company’s website, you can contact the SEO company and ask for a portfolio or client list.
Some questions you could ask previous clients include:
What do you like most about working with this SEO company?
What is something you think the company can improve on?
Was the company successful in helping you achieve your SEO goals?
Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing An SEO Company
As a business owner, you know how important it is to invest your money wisely. To avoid wasting money on a subpar SEO company that won’t increase your traffic, leads or sales, ensure that you don’t make the following mistakes.
Avoid Companies That Promise Guaranteed Results
Have you ever noticed a company advertising their SEO services for “as little as [X amount of dollars] with 100% guaranteed results in one month”? It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it probably is.
With SEO, there is never an accurate way to guarantee that the amount of money you invest will result in a specific number of clicks, sales or page ranking. This is because there is an abundance of different factors involved in the effectiveness of SEO.
One of these factors is the constant updating of search engine algorithms. While SEO experts have developed a better understanding of the way search engines work, search engines do not disclose their exact process for ranking websites. As a result, no one knows with 100% accuracy what will help their website to rank higher than others, but an SEO expert will get you there (or the closest).
Falling For A “Black Hat” SEO Agency
Black hat SEO techniques involve sneaky tricks or cheats used to rank higher in search engines like Google. While there once was a time when websites could get away with using these techniques, Google has since updated its search algorithms to detect and penalise websites that are using black hat SEO.
Examples of black hat techniques include:
Buying backlinks from link farms that are often low-quality and irrelevant to your website.
Spam comments with an intention for other websites to gain free backlinks under your blog posts.
Article spinning involves duplicating a pre-existing blog article and using software to paraphrase it into “new” content while avoiding plagiarism.
Being caught manipulating search engines using these unethical techniques is detrimental to your future rankings and companies who use them should be avoided at all costs.
Only Considering Local Companies
As it involves the internet the work can be done anywhere, so why limit your choice of SEO companies to your local area?
Let’s say you are the owner of a bakery, and your website is an extension of your brick-and-mortar store, located in a northern Brisbane suburb. As a result, you ideally want to target your SEO strategy only to people who live near the area and can purchase your baked goods. But this doesn’t mean you need to find a company that is based in northern Brisbane.
A good SEO company will understand the intricacies of local SEO and still be able to help you achieve your SEO goals despite being thousands of kilometres away. Plus, you can easily bridge the gap through video conferencing software such as Zoom, phone calls, or travelling on occasion to meet in person.
Furthermore, you don’t want the location to be your top priority in choosing the best company for SEO. Limiting your choices to your local area could mean settling for an inexperienced SEO company that is unable to achieve the results you desire. This could cost you from outperforming your local competition who is working with a more experienced SEO company in a different state.
How To Know If You Have Picked The Right SEO Company
Now that you have used the three tips and avoided the mistakes to find and separate the good companies from the not-so-good SEO companies, there are two key principles to verify that the company you picked is the right one.
Team Alignment
Essentially, the SEO company you choose to work with is an extension of your team, so you want to make sure their ethics, values and communication style aligns with yours. Before working with them, take the time to research the company, read the ‘About Us’ section on their website and ask past clients about the effectiveness of their communication. Does it sound like the two of you will make a great team? The more informed you are about the company, the better your decision will be.
Is It Worth It?
In understanding SEO you should also know that with the right agency, over time the potential traffic growth is unlimited. And, with more exposure/traffic comes more success for you and your business. So you should definitely include SEO within your marketing budget and not shy away from it.
Schedule An Initial Consultation
Think you’ve found the perfect SEO company for your business? It’s time to set up your first consultation. Many SEO companies will offer a free consultation and/or quote, which allows you to meet them and learn if they are the right fit for your business.
Remember those SMART goals you came up with earlier? This is your chance to discuss your SEO objectives with the company and determine if they are the right company to help you achieve them. But don’t just take a simple “yes” for an answer. Ask them questions that will help you guide your decision such as:
Can you outline the steps you would take to achieve [goal X]?
Have you been able to help another business in the past achieve a similar goal?
What experience do you have with our industry?
When executed well by a trustworthy company, SEO is a major form of long-lasting advertising that can benefit your business for years. If you are currently in the market for an SEO company in Australia or another region, you need to speak to one of our SEO experts, that specialises in psychographic and demographic targeting that will assist you in creating more traffic and sales.
