For any business that wants to be top of the marketing game in their sector - whether they are small and growing or large and established – SEO effectiveness is essential. SEO (search engine optimisation) is an online marketing technique where you optimise the relevance of your entire website and its content’s keywords to match what your customers are looking for.
According to how useful, compelling, relevant and effective your website is at meeting visitors’ needs, Google will place your website higher or lower in the search engine results. Ultimately, this means that the better your website is suited to your target customers’ needs and expectations, the higher you will rank – leading to more valuable leads seeing your website link, clicking and making a purchase or enquiry!
Taking into account how crucial SEO effectiveness is to your online sales process and profits, you must ensure that you are regularly testing and evaluating what you are doing. However, if you’re a small to medium-sized business with limited time and expertise, it’s a better idea to consider how to choose the right SEO agency and work with them to improve your SEO.
It might seem straightforward to choose an SEO agency, but is actually easier said than done. There are a number of SEO agencies who use deceptive advertising and make unrealistic promises to make money in the competitive world of online marketing. Clients can go away with little solid evidence of improvement in their search rankings, or none at all, and with a lot lighter pockets.
To avoid making the mistake of choosing an untrustworthy agency, the simple solution is: do your research. So search for a few agencies who have promising offers, then test their SEO services by finding out exactly who they are and how they work.
Ask these 4 key questions as key performance indicators when thinking about how to choose the right SEO agency for your business.
1. Do they make sense?
First of all, you shouldn’t trust agencies who make grand promises such as: “We guarantee first page rankings on Google”. This is an attention-grabbing but sweeping statement; a red flag that they don’t know what they are doing. Stay far away from any agency or individual who says they can guarantee first page results. Instead, choose an SEO agency who will explain exactly what they will do to help you, in clear, understandable English, with proof to back up their claims.
The role of an SEO agency is to handle your online presence for you, but it’s a good idea to have some understanding of the methods they will be applying, such as:
How they plan and conduct research to determine your targeted keywords – strategising with their clients and doing research first, before making plans.
The analysis of other aspects of your website e.g. graphic design, navigation, coding, incoming/outgoing links that could affect your search engine position.
The analysis of online competitors to advise you on their keyword optimisation, how they are performing and how you could learn from them or do better.
Using only white hat search techniques and a clear link strategy to promote additional site content.
Whether they will be doing SEO optimised website copywriting for you.
2. Are they keeping up with industry changes?
A credible SEO agency will keep up with Google’s continuous updates and algorithm changes. To ensure that only the most relevant, useful and quality websites at the top of their search rankings, Google continually evaluates and updates its algorithms. This means better advertising ROI for Google and a positive Internet experience for searchers.
Other key performance indicators are: understanding the importance of social media in all Internet marketing strategies, and how technology is changing how consumers search and buy online. Rather than buying as many links as possible, modern SEO demands the delivery of long-term value to searchers. This ranges from providing helpful additional resources, blog articles and newsletters, to writing in the correct tone for your visitors and having a clear USP (unique selling point).
If an SEO agency can show examples of whitepaper publications and guest articles, as well as conference presentations they have made, this is another positive sign of a credible agency keeping up-to-date in their industry.
3. Can they prove their effectiveness?
Check that you will get the most out of your money by getting opinions on the SEO agency’s service from previous clients, and finding out if they offer website analysis reports.
Ask friends and other connections on social media (particularly LinkedIn) whether they can make any recommendations. Think about what they would ask when thinking about how to choose the right SEO agency for them. Click on the top companies in Google ads and search results for key phrases like “reliable SEO companies”. Most likely, these companies will have invested a lot of money and effort to become well-matched for this keyphrase. Any testimonials on the website are also a valuable resource.
Ask them to do an SEO report for your website, to give you an impression of their capabilities and approach before you buy their service. Unlike many other digital marketing agencies, JDR Group provide a website SEO report for FREE.
4. Do they deliver the desired results?
This sounds like an obvious question, but when you are inexperienced and guided by the agency’s promises, it can be overlooked. Effective, quality SEO should take over 3 months to achieve return on investment, as it is a long-term marketing strategy. However, discuss the timescale with the agency before signing the contract, including how often you will be updated on their progress. Close, trustworthy communication at regular stages in the process is another key indicator of a high quality service.
Check what metrics will be used to measure performance, such as average visitor time on your website. You also want these visitors to be “highly qualified traffic” that is likely to increase your conversion rate, so ask the agency how they plan to attract the right kind of traffic. To help increase conversion rates, the agency should work with you to identify your specific search placement goals, opposed to bidding highly on the most competitive keywords.
After the deadline has been reached, you must have reports and hard evidence on Google Search to prove that your position in the rankings has reached its target – and that it is sustainable for the future growth of your business!
There are a number of factors to look at when analysing how successful your SEO is, a crucial one is the company you have chosen. You will no doubt be constantly inundated with offers from potential suitors, striving to get your business. It seems every SEO company wants to work with you, but do you want to work with them?
The first thing to understand is what they would actually do for you. SEO is such a broad subject, and businesses can be conned into thinking they’re getting something great for minimal investment. There are still hundreds of companies out there offering SEO, without any understanding of what Google is actually looking for.
Mainly though, the key driver for great SEO, is link building.
1. Link Building
There should be a plethora of channels where you can see your SEO company’s link building; great SEO should have regular streams of fresh content being added to your website and to your social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google +.
What is important to remember though, is that SEO done well takes time. SEO is about improving your organic or natural listings. There is nothing organic or natural about going from page 10 on Google to page 1 in just a few days! With fresh content being added regularly, search position increase should be gradual. An SEO program should be considered as a long term investment, and done for a minimum of 12 months.
Too often, people expect quick results, and are often promised quick results, but it is very rare that this can happen for the reason above. If you do get results quickly, it’s important to understand how they got there, as they would have probably used some underhand tactics to get there!
2. How do you know what they are doing?
There are usually two types of link building SEO companies. Good companies and lazy companies. The challenge that you face as a business owner is really understanding what they are doing and how they are building their links.
Good link building takes time, which we all know in business, is a commodity very few people possess! This is one of the reasons why you don’t do your SEO in house. However, have you considered how much time your SEO company will spend on your website?
The Internet has been a fantastic tool, but it has come at a price. We have, as a nation become incredibly lazy. Few people are prepared to work for things anymore. The retail industry has been hit, everything is done online now. Some of us can’t even be bothered to fire up a computer to look on the internet; we just sit and get our smart phones out!
That’s why there are so many businesses starting up in SEO. They see it as an easy option. Simply put, Google is a computer, and every computer that has ever been invented someone has tried to cheat it! Google is no different; SEO companies are building links to irrelevant sites, creating automatic links, churning out links using software that they’ve downloaded for free.
Good SEO companies take the time to create links manually, writing blogs, unique articles, not the same article reworded 100 times. Therefore to get where you need to be, can you really be getting great SEO for £50 a month? I highly doubt it, unless you are in a really niche industry like making bell ropes for churches, or something else extremely obscure!
3. How to assess their work
One of the first things to check when exploring how good your SEO company are, is to check the fundamental part of SEO, the ‘on-site’ optimisation. This is the text that Google reads to understand and decipher the relevance of your website. You may have heard terms like “meta tags” or “title tags” before, and these are fundamental to good SEO. However, who provided the keywords? Good SEO companies will conduct extensive keyword research into the best phrases to target for you as a business, which will help you generate the right type of traffic to your site to give you the best chance of getting enquiries or sales.
Poor SEO companies, on the other hand, make you provide them with the keywords to work with, and have no real care whether it makes you money or not, their primary goal is to get you to page one, they can do that very easily if they target phrases that very few, if any people actively search for.
4. Communication is Key
One problem the SEO industry has faced over the last few years is the communication side of things. Lots of business owners often end up frustrated as they struggle to get any information out of their SEO Company; they are constantly being passed from one person to another and never really understand what their SEO Company is actually doing for them.
Good SEO companies communicate on a regular basis, explaining the work that’s gone in to the last month, the improvements that have been made and the adjustments that need to be made to the campaign to make it as effective as possible. They should always be available, and if and when required, meet in person. At the same time constantly checking how it is working for you and your business. How many sales, what sort of enquiries, level of traffic, brand exposure are all topics that should be discussed by your SEO company.
This is the most important factor, as the best way to check whether your SEO company is doing the right things to your site, is to actually talk to them. All you have to hope is that they actually want to talk to you!
In conclusion, understanding how to choose the right SEO agency is a critical step in your business’s digital marketing journey. It’s not just about finding an agency; it’s about finding the right partner who understands your business, your customers, and your goals. Remember, a good SEO agency will make sense, keep up with industry changes, prove their effectiveness, and deliver the desired results. They will be transparent, ethical, and focused on your long-term success.
It can seem daunting, but with careful research and the right questions, you can find a partner who will help you achieve your online marketing goals and drive your business forward. If you’re interested in learning more about how to choose the right SEO agency, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to help you navigate the complexities of SEO and ensure that your business is positioned for success in the digital marketplace.