Most businesses know that they need SEO in order to rank well and get new clients but finding an ethical company that gets results isn’t an easy task. Unfortunately there are many SEO firms that can’t even rank their own sites, let alone yours. Here are a few things to look for when choosing a SEO company.
Run If They Guarantee Results
Some unscrupulous SEO companies or consultants will promise you the moon including #1 rankings just to get you onboard. The fact of the matter is that no one can guarantee results because search listings are dependant on Google’s algorithm which is constantly evolving. Search results can also vary depending on the searchers location, whether they are signed into Google and their search history. An honest SEO company should be able to explain that they can’t guarantee results but that good SEO should result in an increase in organic traffic.
Look For A Company That Cares About Your ROI
Rankings are great but the truth is that being listed #1 is not going to benefit you if you’re not getting a return on the amount of money invested in SEO. In order to estimate your ROI you’ll need to consider the LTV (lifetime value) of your customer. For example, if you have a law firm, one new customer could net you over six figures while someone selling novelty t-shirts may just earn $20 per sale. This is why “one package for all” pricing doesn’t work.
Your SEO firm should also be focused on helping you obtain more leads. Jacqueline Cao, owner of SEO Los Angeles firm Elevated Rankings says “Small changes such as moving the lead or contact form to the side bar, displaying your contact information more prominently, changing the color scheme or just improving your CTA’s may actually increase your conversions with the same amount of traffic. Some SEO companies may argue that this isn’t part of their job but the fact of the matter is that businesses only care about the bottom line. If SEO efforts aren’t getting you more business even if you’re listed on the first page then it isn’t going to be useful.”
How Much Traffic Will You Get?
SEO is only worth it for your business if you get enough traffic to get a good ROI. The traffic will depend highly on your targeted keywords. For example, if you’re in a tiny town and your main keyword plus city only shows a 30 search volume per month (this means that just 30 people searched for that keyword for the entire month) it may not be worth it. Some unethical companies get you listed for low competition keywords that are extremeley easy to rank for without you benefiting too much from it. You can research the search volume of keywords by using a paid tool like Ahref’s.
Avoid “Affordable SEO”
Avoid companies that charge bottom of the barrel prices such as $500 a month. Effective SEO takes a budget; someone who charges $500 isn’t going to have the budget to create high quality linkable assets for you or get the high quality link placements your site may need in order to rank well. Not to mention that many of these companies are based outside of the U.S but often use a virtual office mailing address and a Google Voice number in order to appear as a local business.
A legitimate company is going to have overhead costs not to mention pay taxes. $500 after taxes isn’t very much money and SEO companies charging this low amount depend on volume to hit their quota. This means they will spend more time trying to get new clients and cold calling people instead of focusing on the clients they have. In most cases it’s better to hire a firm with higher rates and fewer clients because you’ll get more attention.