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Tips for Hiring A Search Engine Optimization Company

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Search engine optimization is something has become increasingly vital to any online business becoming successful. Google search rankings play a large role in terms of determining the success and failure of an online business.

Organic CTR distribution chart pages 1-3 2014

Studies have shown that people who perform searches on Google rarely click on sites beyond the first page. Therefore, it should be the goal of every online business owner to get their site listed at least in the top 10.

Unfortunately, this can often be a difficult task to achieve. This is especially true if the site is involved in an industry with a large amount of competition. Search engine optimization is a method of getting a website to appear higher in the search rankings.

Here are some tips for hiring a search engine optimization company.

1. Do they have a solid track record?

Do not spend your money or waste your time hiring a company that does not have a stellar record of success in this industry. You need to be sure the company you hire has the skills needed to get your site listed at or near the top of the search rankings. Anything less than that will be insufficient.

Ask to see what the company has done for their clients in the past. This is the only fair way to judge them. Talk to some of their past clients. Are they happy with the results they received? Are they satisfied with their current position in the search results?

Talking to other online business owners who have worked with a particular company will give you some valuable insight into whether or not they have the skills required.

Look for results pages like these from Ducktoes Computer Services showing where their clients rank in both organic and paid search results. Compare the results shown with the current results for the same search.

Ask the SEO agency to send you reports or case studies to evaluate or to screen share and show you live results they have attained. This is the best method for determining whether an SEO can get results.

2. Only Hire an Experienced SEO

The big companies are not always their best bet. In many cases, you end up paying a lot for minimal results. You might be better off hiring a smaller agency or a brilliant individual to handle your search engine optimization duties.

There are many SEOs who have taken training with the brightest minds who have years or even decades of experience. Give them a shot and you might be surprised by the results.

Larger agencies can have an advantage in that the SEO strategist has experienced researchers and interns to handle some of the most time-consuming chores. But individuals and small agencies may also have collaborators, so don’t assume they can’t accomplish just as much for you.

3. Do Not Expect Instant Results

It takes time to improve organic search engine positions. Many of the tools only update every 30 days. Attracting incoming links requires creating evergreen pillar content and getting it shared across social networks where writers can see it and link to it.

Any SEO agency that promises they can get you ranking in a month is lying to you OR using black hat methods that will get you a lot of traffic quickly, but result in your site being penalized or even de-indexed.

Hiring A Search Engine Optimization Company

If your company matters to you, be careful who you hire to do SEO for your business. Make sure they are white hat and not using personal blog networks, spamming forums or blog comments, or doing anything else that will cause you more harm than good.

Many sites never recover from bad SEO. They end up starting over, abandoning their existing URL and content, registering a new domain, and losing all their branding and incoming links.

Google even recently warned that for repeat violations, recovery is not an option. If you don’t want that to happen to you, make sure you hire only the best.

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Dana Davis

Dana Davis focuses on small business and the use of gifts to show appreciation in relationships. She researches gifts of all kinds and especially personalized and engraved executive gifts for ExecGiftsBlog.com.
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Comments

  1. Hi,
    This is very valuable post. It will help us to get a good agency for SEO services also help us to save our money from frought. Thanks for sharing this nice post.

    Reply

  2. Thanks for explaining that you should be sure to get a white hat SEO company. I can imagine that SEO is really important to build your business’s relevance and branding. Getting a professional would ensure that a website would be boosted through the ranks.

    Reply

  4. I think its important to double check if the SEO agency is able to rank their own site in the first place. If they can’t do that then how will they rank yours?

    And undoubtedly the days of instant ranking results are behind us, and with good reason.

    I’d also like to note that the numerical stats you point out at the start of the article are supported by the fact that 75% of searchers will enter another term if they do not find something on page one.

    Reply

  6. Hii,

    Thank you for posting such an informative post!
    I like your post very much because many people get confused while hiring SEO company. Google Updates are the main factor consider in SEO and most of the people are not aware of the same.
    Morris Edwards would love you to read ..Connect MailChimp Forms To WordPress In 5 StepsMy Profile

    Reply

  7. Hey, great share……

    I agree that finding a reputable SEO partner can be tricky, especially if you’ve never worked with one before and searching the Internet for “SEO company” will return thousands of results, both local and faraway companies. In such scenario, it becomes even more difficult to pick the right one. I am sure your tips and ideas are definitely going to be very useful for people like me who are a novice in the business.

    Thanks for sharing this post. Keep sharing more…
    Cheers!!

    Reply

    • Hi Leo,

      There are far too many unqualified people doing highly risky things who claim to be SEOs. Sadly, it is possible to destroy an online business with a mistake and not ever recover from it.

      The search monopoly means any online business can lose most of their organic traffic overnight. Anyone who wants to survive needs to focus on building relationships with buyers so they don’t have to rely on search to generate sales.
      Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Do Not Let Your Images Blow Up Your BlogMy Profile

      Reply

  9. I often feel frustrated when Client asks for a guarantee of #1 rankings of specific keywords in Google search results. As being SEO analyst, I work for client website’s technical strength plus overall authority so website gets momentum in search results for diversity of search terms. I do not want them to focus on just single keyword or a set of keywords.

    Different search terms (which do have positive co-relation with client’s business theme) can drive lead and client opportunity for them.

    Clients should focus on steady growth and that’s why selection of legitimate SEO agency is an important decision.

    Reply

  13. Hey Bud!

    This is such an amazing article for those who want to rank their sites higher.The SEO analyst can make as well as break a business.It is really important to go for the right one.You have put up great tips on hiring an seo companies.Thanks for sharing your valuable experience.

    Regards
    Alison J Stark
    Alison J. Stark would love you to read ..Yer, this 10 things in lifeMy Profile

    Reply

  14. Hey Dana,

    What an amazing post!!

    Thanks a lot for sharing the tips for choosing the best seo company that can be beneficial for our online business. It takes a lot of dedication to have a good online business . Selecting a good ecommerce software package is also among the one of the many steps needed to make the process of getting an online company on its feet.

    Cheers!!

    Reply

  15. I didn’t realize how important SEO was for a business to have until coming across this. I have heard however that to have really good SEO it is best to hire it out to professionals, so I really appreciate this information on how to find the best company to hire. I like the tip you give of looking for a company that has had plenty of experience, even if that doesn’t mean hiring a big company. I will be sure to look more into SEO for my company after reading this.

    Reply

  16. HI/Hello…! This post really absolutely appreciated…

    You hit all my favorite talking point, this is great thank you for sharing this to us.

    Reply

  17. I have just branched out as a SEO consultant and even though the title of the post mentions the companies I feel that the tips are relevant to the individual freelancer aswell. How should one seo company display their portfolio of ranking because I am yet to see one that actually shows a graph of some sort where they all show the actuall screen grab of the site but we don’t know if its ranking on google or not and what keywords no one knows.

    Reply

  18. Thanks to you, your blog is so informative and useful for us. We are looking for a SEO company as we provide Hotmail tech support services and need to promote our site in search engine. This blog guide me regarding this. Nice to read it.

    Reply

  19. you can’t imagine how useful this information for me i just started my new website in art and i need to build traffic.
    it’s really hard to find SEO company in a low budget and i can’t predict if its not a scam.
    Thank you for sharing this.

    Reply

  22. This is all fact. And I would say only trusted and verified seo companies, we have spend lots of money and time with previous SEO company without any results. My advise, please verify week after week and request reports of their work.

    Reply

    • Dear Alex,

      please send your website URL we are send you free analytic report of your website and tell you exact time for your keywords come in first page of google search engine.

      Reply

  23. Hi DanaGood points. I want to warn about using services such as fiver to promote your SEO.In the beginning it may be very tempting, the cost is low and the promises are high, but-this something that could lead you site been penalize quickly. link building and other seo effortscan and should be white hat (even so they all claim it’s white hat…). there are no easy short cuts,fast high authority links coming from private PBN – are not the right way neither tons of low chip backlinks.Choose carefully! have a nice day.
    James sun would love you to read ..30 White Hat Creative Link Building TechniquesMy Profile

    Reply

  24. Hi Dana!That is a informative article. Thanks for sharing your views on hiring a seo company. This will be helpful for business owners. on how to hire an seo company.looking forward to read your more articles. Thanks for sharing your views on hiring a seo company.

    Reply

  25. Honestly, it is very difficult to find right SEO company if you are on a tight budget. It is often better to evaluate company and their so called claims.

    Many of the seo company posts fake reviews, testimonials and ranking. You never know whether they are truly genuine or not. I have had a really bad experience in the past. It is essential to have basic SEO knowledge so you can evaluate other SEO company.
    Dev would love you to read ..Canasta Rules – How to Play Canasta Card Game?My Profile

    Reply

    • Hi Dev,

      Yes, there are vastly more bad SEOs than competent and many of the competent are black hat. Any business that has a decent budget (typically $5000+/mo) should get referrals and then do due diligence to ensure they know what that SEO will actually be doing.

      It is better to do no SEO than to do dangerous SEO because penalties can often lead to having to abandon a URL and start over. It isn’t as simple as reversing what was done.
      Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Continued Learning Processes Enable Your Mind to SoarMy Profile

      Reply

  26. I appreciate everything you have added to my knowledge base. Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer.

    Reply

  30. Yes I agree your article. You wrote great information, when client searching SEO company. As per your 3 points every clients expect that they will get quick ranking of website but you are explaining this point in right way, Great work.

    Reply

  31. I have some bad quality experience with some reputed seo agency. They build bad quality links by various seo software so that whole process marks into blackhat to search engine. Now I’m looking for a professional optimizer on different marketplaces like upwork & elance who can secure me first page at search engine.
    Thanks Dana for sharing tips on hiring seo company though my suggestion is to hire personal professional optimizer not any agency or company. Great job by sharing it!
    Regards-
    Helen.
    Apps On Red would love you to read ..How Small Businesses Can Benefit From Having A Mobile AppMy Profile

    Reply

  32. Thanks for the amazing tips. I think the most important thing is finding a good SEO company.
    There are a lot of SEO companies out there and it is a pit that most of them don’t know what they are doing.

    Reply

  34. SEO cannot be understood in months, it takes a long time to understand it. There are many things that are updated every 3- 4 months by search engines. A thorugh understanding is required in it.

    Reply

  37. I started teaching myself SEO many years ago, and my main website is at the point where if i create a new page with the correct h1 tags I can rank on google for pretty much any word, obviously for big keywords it is like page 3-4 but any medium to long tail keywords first page is no trouble.

    Whereas working for a few companies and talking to there own SEO departments, and they just dont seem to get anywhere, even with a dedicated team. Many seem to just give up and move to Social traffic which is actually making it easier in SEO as others just give up.

    Reply

  38. Thanks for the post! I just recently branched into owning my own business a few years ago and what you have said in your blog is absolutely true. Who you hire to do your SEO for can make or break your business. You are giving them the responsibility to advertise your personal business in a positive manner. I am sure other people will find this post as helpful as I did!

    Reply

  40. That is a informative article. Thanks for sharing your views on hiring a seo company. This will be helpful for business owners.

    Reply

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