Article

Jubayer Hossain
Jubayer Hossain 20 February 2018

12 Important Points to Consider When Hiring an SEO Company

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the most essential form of online marketing in the modern era. Business promotion and reputation building largely depend on a successful SEO campaign. Building an in-house SEO team can be proved to be costly for most of the business. Therefore, they hire SEO companies for this purpose.

Hiring an SEO Agency is no different than hiring people for other services. You just need to ask the right question and thus verify if the company is suitable for your business. You must not hire just based on a promise to get you on top. You need to be sure on what you are going to spend money. Here are some critical factors you must check before you hire an SEO company or consultant.

Case Study:

First you need to assess why your website is not ranking well on search results. Ask the company for a full SEO audit and find out the drawbacks. Depending on your competitors, get an idea of the difficulty and competition to get among the top. It will also help you to evaluate your current position and keep the track of your progress.

Work Plans:

After the case study is done, you need to ask for the work plan to go ahead. A good SEO company will generate a suitable strategy and discuss with you briefly every step of the way. They will not keep anything hidden from you. If they do not want to discuss the details, you should not do business with them. They may harm your website with a behind the door strategy.

Search Engine Guidelines:

For a period, SEO companies have got away with sloppy SEO work. Now it's not the case. Search Engines have evolved with time to counter this problem and keep the culprits away. Google Panda and Penguin updates prevents spamming websites to appear anywhere on the search results. Bing and yahoo also have updated accordingly. So, if your consultant does not follow the search engine guidelines, your website is more likely to be penalized. It will cost you a lot in the long run. Make sure they follow the search engine guidelines for webmasters before handing your business over to them.

Changes in the website:

For an SEO campaign to work properly your website may need a lot of change in designs, content, navigations etc. First, be sure that they have the right person to handle the changes. You should also be made clear about the changes which are being made. At least, for the first few weeks you can sign off the changes to build up trust. If there is a major change necessary, ask your developer or ask the SEO company if they have the skillset for handling the issue. You don't want to jeopardize your business by handing your website to an amateur.

On Page Changes:

Content is the most important factor for search engine optimization. You need to ask if they are going to create new content or work with the old one. If they want to create new content, check their experience in creating quality content on different topics. You should also check the quality and the fluency of their language. Besides, ask them what on page changes are being made and why.

Local Search Result:

When people search for a keyword or business, Google shows a list of business of the surrounding area. Local SEO helps you to get among the top of search results for a certain area. Small business and local business can benefit a lot from local SEO. Getting organic results can be far difficult and time consuming. Besides, there is not a lot certainty. Therefore, you need to hire a SEO company with a lot of experience in local SEO.

Success Parameters:

A good ranking on search result does not always mean good traffic. You need to set the right parameter for tracking progress. Google and Bing analytics shows results appearance of your website for different searches and traffic from different websites. Along with getting good search result ask them how they are going to convert more traffic and bring potential customers.

Cost is one of the most important factor. You don't want to spend more than you are making. Therefore, you need to get quotes from different companies beside considering the above factors.

Regular communication is very important for tracking progress properly. You need to fix first how frequently you want to communicate and how you want to communicate. You can contact daily, weekly or monthly according to your preferences.

Ownership of content: You need to be sure that you own all the content and links generated during the SEO project. Even if the contract terminates early, you should have a proper agreement on that they will not make any changes after the termination of project.

No #1 Ranking: You will encounter a lot of companies those guarantee your number #1 SERPs. Without hesitation, run the other way. This is just a scam to lure you into trap. You might get number #1 position but there is no guarantee. SEO is a long-game and good SEO never stop after getting some clicks.

Targeted Keywords: This is the Most Common and Important Things Which Make Me Feels like I'm in 90s. It's Really Funny That Many SEO Agencies Still Offer Their Services by Targeting 5, 10 or so Keywords. SEOs to business owners must learn to adopt any new trends.

These are the most important factors to consider when you hire a SEO company. I hope this helps to make up your mind. Hire a real SEO company instead of a so called one and get the push you need to earn a better revenue from your business. Read another related article of mine here.

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