What to Look For in a

Competent SEO Company

SEO is an industry that is always on the move. What workstoday might not work tomorrow, and it may not have been aneffective strategy yesterday. Techniques change. Toolsevolve. Rules build upon rules. If you’re going to outsourceyour SEO to a third party, you’re going to need to make sureyou’re hiring the most competent company available. Don’tsettle for any company within your budget; pick one thatknows what they’re doing.Before getting into positive qualities to look for, firstfamiliarize yourself with some warning signs of poorcompanies. If you see a company exhibiting one of these signs,scratch them off your list.

Any guarantee other than a satisfaction money-back guarantee. The worst of these isthe “guaranteed #1 position in Google Search” promise, which is impossible tolive up to.• Unsolicited offers from the SEO company arriving in your inbox. If they need toresort to untargeted mass mail, they aren’t pleasing their customers and thus can’tattract them legitimately. That, or they’re just phishing for your information.• Using “submitting your site to search engines” as a selling point. Search enginesdon’t need to be notified that your site exists if you’re doing SEO properly.• Mass directory submission. Directories aren’t a valid SEO technique today, so anycompany that still promotes the method is doing something wrong.• A lack of transparency. SEO isn’t exactly a secret; Google publishes a huge amountof information about it every year, and there are hundreds of websites dedicated tothe topic. An SEO company with something to hide is afraid of what you’ll find out.• No referrals, past or present clients. A good SEO company should have satisfiedcustomers who are willing to vouch for their services.

Providing a Content Creation Service

A huge part of modern-day SEO is content marketing, and contentmarketing means creating quality content for your site. You can do thisyourself, of course, but a good SEO company is going to handle it withtheir own in-house or contracted writers. If you’re looking at an SEOcompany and they want to leave the content to you, shrug and move on.Seriously, creating optimized content is the largest part of current SEO. Itdoesn’t take a lot of time or effort to optimize and automate titles anddescriptions, work on incoming links, clean up past mistakes andstreamline code. That can almost entirely be accomplished in a few shortsessions. The ongoing part of SEO is all in the content marketing.

A History and Reputation

A History and Reputation

This was partially covered above, under the negative heading of the lack ofreferrals and past clients. When you consider hiring an SEO firm, you need totake a look around and figure out their reputation. See, when an SEOcompany fails, the damage takes a long time to clean up. When an SEOcompany fails and their clients recover, those clients tend to go on the warpathcampaigning against the company. If you run a search for the companyyou’re considering, and you discover that they have an ongoing negativereputation, you need to remove their name from your list.When you create a list of companies to investigate, one of the first thing youshould do is search for reviews. Read more negative reviews thanpositive. Some negative reviews will be tied to client mistakes or to pricing,and those you can safely ignore. Others will warn you of black hat techniquesand other problems which should keep you away.

Willingness to Communicate and Explain

An SEO company should be willing and able to explain complex SEO conceptsin a way that satisfies your curiosity and reassures you of the knowledge andexperience of the company in question. They shouldn’t disregard yourquestions with any form of “you don’t need to know” or talking down to you.Communication should begin early. This is why many SEO companies will offerfree consultations. This will involve them scanning over your site – withoutrequiring admin access at all, so don’t give out your information – and creatinga list of SEO bullet points. They should list both what you’re doing wrong andwhat you’re doing right.From there, communication should continue. Establish weekly or monthlyprogress reports, touching base to make sure your goals are aligned and thatyou’re both satisfied with the arrangement.

Professional Ethics and a Focus on White

Hat Techniques

A lot can go wrong over the course of implementing SEO. At any point, yourcompany may turn to a black hat technique that will bring in favorableresults for a short time, before coming back to bite you.To help forestall this possibility, you should ask pointed questions of yourpotential company. Here are a few questions you can try, though a goodcompany may call you out on the black hat techniques and explain theiralternatives before you can finish.

A Concrete Timeline for

Consultations and Improvements

SEO takes time. There’s no two ways about it. You can getimmediate results with PPC, but the moment you stop paying forsuch a campaign, the benefit disappears. You can achieve fabulouslong-term results with organic SEO, but it takes time for thoseresults to build.A good SEO company will have a timeline to achieve thesegoals. They will never say “you’ll be ranked number 1 in Google bysix months from now.” That’s a guarantee they can’t hold up. Theymay, however, say something like “we will have a website redesignready in three weeks.” Deadlines and timelines are important so youcan hold them accountable if they miss them.

SEO can be very expensive. As a general rule, if a company istoo cheap to be true, you should probably assume their serviceswill be low-quality at best. On the other hand, more expensivedoes not always mean better. After a certain point, anexpensive SEO company is probably catering to extremelyhigh-end clients. Some will charge more than their services areworth, just because people will pay when they don’t know anybetter.

The Right Price

A contract that lasts longer than 30 days is asking fortrouble. A contract that lasts longer than 60 days is a hugewarning sign. Make sure, as well, that ownership of your siteand your content all remains under your company, and not theSEO company. The last thing you need is to hire a companyonly to find that they take ownership of your content. Alwaysread any contract before you sign, of course. Otherwise, younever know what can come back to bite you.

A Short Contract

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