It’s no surprise that many businesses are searching for the best SEO agencies to handle their search engine optimization. About 80% of search users never scroll past the first page of results, and Google alone handles billions of queries for products, services and information each week.
A top SEO agency is, in some ways, like a perfect piece of fruit. When you go the grocery store, you try to get the fruit that is at the right stage of ripe, without soft spots or bruises. If you’re buying an exotic fruit, though, it can be difficult to know how to judge it. An avocado, after all, won’t taste good if it hasn’t softened. Yet a softened apple should be thrown out right away.
SEO is like an exotic fruit for many small businesses. These businesses want the best pick, but they have no idea what qualities actually make up a good SEO company. And if they judge SEO based on what’s good for other types of services, they might end up with the equivalent of a mushy apple.
What should small businesses be looking for in a top SEO agency? Here are three tips for picking the freshest offerings out there.
1. Check for Bruises
A company’s website can look, on the surface, professional and promising. But what happens when you turn it over? Check to see if your company has “bruises” by researching their past history. Does the Better Business Bureau give them a passing grade, or have they failed at resolving consumer disputes? Are other online reviews generally positive? Checking to make sure your company has a solid reputation can help you to avoid the rotten SEO companies.
2. How Long Have Their Services Been Sitting Out?
You wouldn’t want to buy apples after they’ve sat in the grocery store for a month, would you? In the same way, SEO can get stale and moldy if it’s not updated. Approaches that worked five years ago aren’t going to be as successful today because SEO is constantly changing in response to competition and search engine algorithms. Can your expert SEO company explain to you how they’ve switched up their tactics since the Google updates of Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird? If not, it might be time to look for a company with a fresher outlook on content creation and marketing.
3. Make Sure You Can Measure the Result
There’s a reason that grocery stores don’t arbitrarily assign prices to produce — instead, it’s always measured and priced by weight. Measuring results is important for knowing the value of your SEO as well. Although SEO builds up slowly, usually needing a few months to pick up steam, your internet marketing firm should still be able to provide you a data analysis on how their campaign is improving your website.
What do you look for in a top SEO agency? Let us know in the comments.
