The SEO industry is full of so-called SEO experts!
If there is one industry that has a lot of shady characters then it is, unfortunately, SEO, the reason for this is most probably that there is no governing body and you don’t need a license to offer SEO services.
This means that anyone can say they are an SEO specialist and start charging people for their services, for this reason, it attracts people looking for a quick profit without having any real knowledge of SEO.
If mistakes are made with your SEO then your organic traffic (the number of people visiting your website) can drop like a stone.
An SEO consultant can be a perfect addition to any company’s marketing team. They’re there to offer their knowledge and expertise to guide you and your team to success online.
Consultants usually have to work with your in-house developers and designers to get the job done as consultants usually work alone and as the name suggests they are there to consult and nothing more.
An SEO agency, or SEO company/SEO firm, is a company that can offer you everything you need under one roof, they offer their SEO expertise but also often have website designers and developers in their team as well as SEO copywriters and technical SEO specialists.
This will depend on what other experts you have on your team already, if you have designers and developers but just need the SEO knowledge then an SEO consultant will most likely be the best choice.
As a small business owner, you may not have access to other experts then I would speak to an SEO agency as they will be able to offer you everything you need for a successful SEO campaign.
One more small piece of advice would be not to just source specialists freelancers to work with a consultant as you will probably find in most cases this will make his job harder, not easier.
It’s not always the case that an SEO agency will charge more than a consultant so do your research where the price is concerned.
Online reviews are harder to fake than ones that are on a company’s website, check Google and other search engines, Facebook, and other quality websites like Yell and other review sites. Look out for genuine-sounding reviews that are recent.
It’s no good going off reviews from years ago, you need to know what that company it like now if you are going to work together.
You can learn a lot about someone when you meet them, after all, you will be working together so you want to make sure that you get along and it feels comfortable. There is nothing worse than having to work with anyone that just isn’t a good fit for you personally.
Ask for references from other clients and check with them to see if they have been recommended. You can learn a lot from talking to some of their other customers and asking them directly if they would use them again.
Ask them to give you examples of successful work they have completed for clients and what they did to achieve this.
Ask them about the history of the company, usually, older companies will have more experience, but sometimes newer companies who use the latest SEO techniques may be a better option.
A good aspect of a quality SEO company should be that they have a member of staff who can specialise in SEO Copywriting.
If they do not, then this probably means that you should look into finding a different company that does operate under such a strategy.
I don’t want to go into all these subjects in too much detail here as this is about choosing SEO agencies to work with, google algorithms are complex and you will most likely need a combination of the below services to rank higher and gain better search results.
Never choose an SEO company that has chosen the dark side of SEO! By this, I mean deceptive and manipulative techniques that could get your website banned from search engines.
Most SEO companies will ask you to sign at least a 6-month contract when starting a campaign, SEO is not fast so all companies will need enough time to improve your search traffic.
Avoid excessively long contracts as some SEO agencies ask you to sign up for years in advance and this is not a good move.
If they don’t get you the right results within 6 months you can change to another agency, without difficulty, until you find the best SEO company for you.
If you haven’t heard of black hat SEO practices before then do some research before making your final decision.
Black hat SEO is the practice of cheating the system and going against Google guidelines, you can read the guidelines from google here
A bad SEO company can even get you a google penalty and ruin your website altogether, losing all of your rankings and organic traffic for good.
Google and the other search engines have guidelines to work to and anyone found trying to cheat the system can get a penalty meaning their search results and traffic will drop.
You should check around at prices and not choose the cheapest options, these are often the companies who are gaming the system because quality SEO takes a lot of time and patience to undertake.
Make a list 3 to 4 well-researched SEO companies and then shortlist them by reviews, cost, and your gut instinct.
An SEO consultant or SEO agency can charge anywhere from a few hundred pounds per month to a few thousand, it’s important to remember that more expensive does not always mean better!
You may not understand everything they say they will do for you but the best SEO companies will always be happy to discuss how they intend to increase your search rankings and organic traffic.
Most SEO agencies use Google Analytics and this means you can also monitor the progress of your website in the Google search results.
Its important for them to assess your SEO needs and to set out clear SEO goals for you, because if they don’t then how do you know how well they are doing?
Once they have audited your website they will make sure you are both on the same page when it comes to what happens next.
A good SEO company will explain what they intend to do next to start improving your website’s SEO, never just let an SEO agency or consultant start work without explaining how they intend to increase your website traffic and search engine results pages.
Ultimately this is your website and your livelihood! Make sure you are happy to proceed and the best SEO company will be more than happy to take time out to explain exactly what will happen at all stages of the SEO process.
We hope this guide has helped you to choose the best SEO agency for your website, and the outcome is good SEO by a good team with more traffic from google search and, of course, more customers for your business.
