So, you’ve got your own company and you want to market yourself better. Unfortunately, you don’t have the time or manpower to do all your marketing yourself So you hire an SEO agency to make your business show up higher in search engines.
It may all seem simple enough, but the truth is it’s very easy for these agencies to do it wrong. Here’s what to watch out for when hiring an SEO agency:
Track Record
There are a lot of scams out on the internet and unfortunately SEO agencies are no exception. The easiest way to weed out duds is to look for references and find out the agency measures. From organic traffic to conversion rates, make sure this agency is going to improve what you need, and has had real success.
Mass Article Submissions/Links
Some agencies will try to convince you that more people will visit your site if there are more direct links to it, so they promise to put your name out there in social media venues where a lot of people will see it. This results in poorly-written, cookie-cutter posts and comments in barely-relevant forums and blogs. You’ve seen them before; they go something like, “This article is very interesting but for readers who want to lose weight, new breakthrough at [URL]!” People can spot these instantly and will ignore them or label them for what they are: spam.
Generic Packages
If SEO was easy, everyone would have their businesses appear on Google’s first page of results. The truth is, there’s a lot of competition out there, but it depends on the industry. That is, if you want to work with keywords like “gluten-free pastries” for example, your competition will be different whether you’re informing people about pastries or selling them yourself. So when an agency offers “silver” or “gold” packages without even considering what your business is and what its specific needs are, steer clear.
Emphasizing Ranking
So your agency has finally made your webpage appear in the top results of all these great keywords. Good for you! You’re number one, or close to it! But does this actually bring in more customers and organic web traffic? Ask, and you may find out that nobody is actually searching for your keywords. Rankings are important, but not the end-all, be-all for SEO. You need to be ranked highly for traffic from real people, and not just bots.
Conclusions
Remember to go with your gut. Some agencies will say things like, “we’ve cracked a search engine’s algorithm” or “we’ve got someone working behind the scenes at Google.” If an agency seems to be making claims that are too good to be true, they probably are. Also, keep in mind that you usually get what you pay for. Low price deals are usually just spam, so find a trustworthy SEO agency in which you feel good about investing your money. After all, isn’t your business worth it?