How to Choose The Best SEO Company

Here’s the SEO Marketplace guide to choosing the best SEO company for your needs. If you’re reading this and haven’t received your free SEO quotes from professional SEO companies yet, fill out the form on the right! Otherwise, read on:

1. The obvious: look at testimonials, case studies, and previous client results.

You should be able to see this information in their company profile. When you’re viewing a quote, click the ‘View Profile’ link next to the company name. If they haven’t filled out their profile, just ask them.

Obviously, look for positive testimonials. If you can find the necessary contact details, you could even contact the writer of each testimonial to discuss their experience with the service provider.

If you can’t see any case studies, testimonials, or client results, ask for any previous success stories that they have.

2. Do you need more than just SEO?

Are you also interested in other internet marketing services, such as PPC management, web design, web development, content creation/copywriting?

Most of the companies in The SEO Marketplace do more than just SEO. If you need other services done, just ask. Once you have received a quote from a company, you have a messaging area where you can interview the company. Ask if they provide the services that you need, and if so, to update their quote to reflect the extra services.

Look for companies that take a holistic approach – a variety of SEO tactics, design, copy, etc.

3. Be wary of any company that guarantees a certain ranking result.

Real, reliable, and up-to-date SEOs know that Google is a tricky monster and there is no way to guarantee a specific position in the search engine results.

This criterion is a little trickier than it seems – companies that make an absolute guarantee (for example, ‘We’ll rank you in position #1, guaranteed!’) should be avoided at all costs. However, reputable SEO companies do have a sense of confidence about their work and they might guarantee improvement or possibly a less-specific ranking result (e.g. ‘in the top 20’ or ‘75% of your keywords on the first page’).

If you want a guarantee of any kind, a guarantee in increased traffic is a better one to look for. Why? Traffic is the end goal – SEO is just the means. An increase in traffic is where you’re going to find the ROI that you’re looking for.

4. Find out about their reporting – how often and how much of their work will be reported.

Any good SEO company should keep you updated on the progress of your SEO campaign and the work that they have done. Ideally, you’ll be kept updated on all of their work.

5. Ask about the latest Google updates

Google pushes out many small updates, to the tune of 300+ every year, and about 5-10 big updates every year (and increasing!). Since Google is constantly updating and changing their ranking algorithms, it’s crucial that you work with a company that stays on top of all of these updates. SEO techniques that worked well 2 years ago might not still work well today, so it’s very important that SEO companies stay up to date on the latest search engine changes and updates.

You can see a reputable reference page here of the latest Google updates so that you’ll be able to intelligently judge the response that you’ll get after asking this question

6. Make sure you’re on the same page with regards to your goals.

Do you already know that you want monthly link building, content creation, and on-site optimization? Or do you just want more traffic to your site and don’t know much about SEO yet?

In either case, make sure your goals are clear and that your service provider understands them. If you’re more like the second case above (not too sure about SEO, just know that you want more traffic and higher rankings), then you might need a little more communication with the service providers to make sure you’re on the same page.

However, don’t resist a slight change in your SEO or marketing plan that your service provider company might suggest – they should know more about the search engines than you and might have additional tactics that could deliver you more traffic. Be open to their suggestions about changes that you could make to your goals/plan that might bring in better results.

7. Is there going to be any link building done?

If so, make sure that any links that will be created will be permanent. Otherwise, the service provider can remove the links once you stop using their services and you’ll likely drop in the rankings.

Also, make sure that the links are of high quality. This topic is too detailed to jump into here, but here’s a quick primer.

That’s it! Go out and pick the SEO company that will take you to the top of the rankings… you have all the steps here!

If you haven’t requested your free SEO quotes from top companies (the first step!), scroll to the top of this page and fill out the form to get started.