SEO, in other words, search engine optimization is an action that helps your business or organization’s website appear in the highest search results for users and to provide a good user experience for your customers. As your customers are looking for, you are also looking for services and products for you. In this section, we will provide you with a guide to choosing SEO company so you can understand and make a wise decision.
The reason we prescribe this guide is that choosing SEO company is quite simple. Type in the search engine “SEO”, click the results, paid or organic, compare and choose. Some businesses also think the following: If a company is the first result of the keyword SEO, they are professionals because they bypassed all competitors in the field they themselves offer the service.
We are sorry to disappoint you, but the thinking is incorrect. Did you know that SEO companies can also harm your business? You’ll be surprised to see that. We’ll explain this later, let’s move on.
Before choosing SEO company
Before we start talking, it is important that you get a background and first understand a few things before you start checking, comparing and choosing. You need to understand whether you really need to, and more details.
Do you need SEO?
If you expect to have very high results in many keywords in a short time, you can forget about it, especially when it comes to competitive areas.
SEO is the marketing action that SEO companies do to tailor your site and content to search engines, handle the entire issue of your website, solve problems, and create a user experience and enjoyable browsing experience.
Professional SEO companies will take care of the whole issue, understand who you are, what your business offers, what methods you use to distribute your products/services, and explain to you how SEO will contribute to the success of your business and sales.
SEO alone or choosing SEO company?
It all depends on your goal and the possibilities available to you today. While we have prepared for you a SEO guide – do it yourself, it does not mean you will not need outsourcing. SEO alone can fit small businesses when the competition is small and when your budget does not allow to choose an SEO company.
On the other hand, choosing SEO company (or, as we said, search engine optimization) is accompanied by quite a bit of money and usually on a monthly basis. Sometimes you can make the wrong choice, and the SEO company will do you more harm than good.
How long does SEO process take and when can I see results?
The process itself is a continuous process over months, which means that it is not right to think that it is a one-time service. Just like taking an accountant or lawyer for your business, you can only invite them for one job, such as signing a signature or opening a file in the local authorities. But you will also need ongoing accompaniment, such as signing agreements, meetings and protocols, approval of documents, financial statements and more. So you’ll need them in the form of a retainer, that is, regularly.
So in our field, you can order SEO services to perform one task, but if you need care and maintenance, high results and all that will translate into an increase in your revenue, you will have to choose a long-term SEO company.
In the topic when you can see results, it’s a subject in itself. It depends very much on what outcome you want to achieve? sounds interesting. Do you want to appear on the front page? In the first result? In one search word? In 10 keywords? Should customers leave details on your site? Call you? Getting to your local business?
We think that you understand them and therefore we’ll stop here. The Google search engine claims that in most cases it takes between 4 months and 1 year to see the implementation of the changes and only then see the potential benefit to your business.
What do SEO Companies Offer?
Just before deciding to search, you need to know how an SEO company can help you and what it actually offers you, here are a few points of providing services, of course not every company offers all the variety of services,
- Keyword Research.
- Link building.
- Handling site speed.
- User experience.
- Navigation.
- Link structure.
- Content writing (not all offer).
- And more.
During the choosing SEO company
When choosing SEO company you should know a number of things, such as: how to search, what to ask and what the company might ask you. This information will help you understand and compare later.
How to search for a good SEO company?
Yes, this question sounds a little strange. Some of you will immediately answer “Search Engine Surely”. But let’s just understand, when you’re looking for an attorney or an accountant, do you turn to search engines and the first ones you’ll find are the ones you’ve contacted? Will you choose a lawyer from one area to handle your case when your area is different?
Good enough with the questions, let’s understand how to look right.
- Your contacts – your friends, family, and the people you communicate with are the ones who can recommend you to companies they know personally with a service provided to them or others.
- Social networks – like consumers, businesses use these networks, it’s time to get into their business pages and see if they are active and advertising there. A professional company will make sure to operate in a social network, both for recruiting customers and for presenting their professionalism.
- Search engines – Using a search engine is possible when you know what you need, not all the SEO companies know how to provide service to all types of businesses. Promoting an e-commerce store is different from a simple blog promotion, and there are weaker companies in certain areas. Therefore it should be specific.
- Directory Sites / Business – Directory sites provide business search in all kinds of industries, this is a place for website promotion (SEO) companies.
- Local Search / Maps – A good local search for nearby businesses or businesses in a particular geographic area.
- Other Websites – When browsing websites, check the bottom of the site, whether there is credit for a website builder or SEO.
Questions you should ask
In order to understand whether the company is right for you and whether it is professional, you should ask them some important questions.
- Can you get examples of work and success stories?
- Do you follow Google’s guidelines?
- What experience do you have in my country/city?
- What results are you testing? What are the times and goals?
- How do you measure success? And how failure?
- How long have you worked in the field?
- Who is my contact? And what is his availability to me?
- What about the reports and communications with me? Will I get detailed information about the service?
- What is important to you in SEO?
- What do you need from me to give your best?
- What do you know about the industry of my business?
- What other services do you offer beyond promoting websites?
- What is your pricing method? How do I ensure that the benefit is higher than the cost?
- Can you work with the code that my website is built on?
Questions that companies should ask you
Professional companies will ask you these questions.
- How is your service, content, or business unique and different from your competitors?
- Who are your target audience and customers?
- How do customers find you or your website?
- How do you sell your products/services?
- How can searching the internet help you?
- What other channels are you using? paid advertising? Social Networks? Offline?
- Who are your competitors? What are they doing well online and offline?
Who and what can influence the decision-making?
- Existing customers – Ask existing customers important questions, including how the company helped them, what was done and what was not implemented, whether there is a return on investment and more.
- Contacts – the contacts you will ask not only for a recommendation but also as a help from past experience or familiarity with the business.
- Availability – How available the company will be when you need them.
- Reports – How can you check what the company is doing?
- Pricing – According to what the service pricing.
- Consulting – Can you get additional advice, bank hours and more.
- Additional/complementary services – Does the company also provide social media marketing services, sponsored advertising and more.
What should you avoid when choosing an SEO company?
- Price is too cheap – remember, you can not get professional service, quality, with high availability and cheap price. While you are interested in paying less, but when you hear about a cheap price, turn on a red light.
- Lack of transparency – when you feel that SEO does not tell you important details that may affect your choice.
- Bad promotion techniques – companies that tell you to buy links, or something else that might sound unnatural to you, beware of it. This can result in your site being penalized by the search engine.
- Ensuring that you will be the first result – cannot be guaranteed.
- Not distinguishing between organic and sponsored search results – a company that will show you a high result on the funded side.
How will the manner of communication be conducted?
Check how the relationship between you and an SEO company will be maintained. Make sure that the agreement includes all their obligations with you and that you have discussed all the issues so that there will be no misunderstandings at a later stage.
After selecting an SEO company
Once you’ve chosen an SEO company, it’s time to figure out what to do and how to proceed later. You may get information about what to do before, but it was important for us to know what to do even after getting started.
Provide all the information they need
A professional SEO company will need access to your website to provide you with services. You must provide them access:
- Site management system – for adding content and handling code.
- Hosting – to edit the code and other details.
- Domain management – Sometimes there is a need the control panel and management of your domain.
Request for immediate and periodic reports
It’s important to ask the SEO company for immediate and periodic reports so you can understand what’s happening with your site. Instant reports may be reports when there is a radical change in your site for better or worse. Periodic reports are monthly reports or a different time period for which you can see keyword placements, links, entrances, and more.
These reports will help you understand whether the SEO company does its job as it should or not, whether there is a significant impact from the moment of contact with the company and more.
Measuring ROI
ROI is a measure of return on investment, it shows how much the investment would pay for you. One of the most important issues for senior managers is to measure this measure so that they are sure that the choice was correct. A positive ROI, ie greater than 0 means that the investment was worthwhile. A negative ROI, less than 0 means that the investment was not worthwhile.
ROI is measured as follows: Net income from an investment divided by investment cost. In other words, income as a result of investment minus expenses as a result of the investment, then it should be divided into expenses as a result of the investment.
For example, if the site promotion cost is $3,000 per month, and the income from the investment is $2,500 in the first month and $5,000 in the second month,
- The ROI in the first month is (2500-3000) / 3000 = -17%
- And in the second month: (5000-3000) / 3000 = 67%
- And at the end of two months, the ROI is = 25%
