SEO Services Company – Can You Trust Them?
If you are somewhat new to the SEO world and you have been given the task of finding an SEO services company to hire to help your business might leave you with some investigative work to do. There are many, many SEO companies out there claiming they are the best and if you are trying to isolate the right SEO services company to partner with there are some things you should know before you make your final decision.
Don’t Base Your Entire Decision On Price
This theory can go in both directions. With many things in life if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Do you really think you are going to effectively market your business and beat out your competition on $49.95 per/month? Chances are no. This doesn’t mean that you have to go and spend $2,000 per/month either. Be realistic on what it takes to market a business online. There are distribution costs associated with some efforts, time to write articles and press releases along with the time and energy to constantly put together an ongoing SEO strategy that is going to help you grow
your business online the right way.
Research The SEO Services Company
Do a little bit of research on the companies you are thinking about working with. Find out everything about them. Search their company names online and see what you come up with. Take a look and see if other companies have done any write ups on them or what type of information is lurking in the search results for their company name. If there is nothing in the search results scratch them off your list.
Don’t Make Your Decision on Whether the SEO Website Ranks
If you search for “SEO” and you don’t see them on page 1 don’t rule them out as a company just yet. There are only ten parking spaces on the first page of Google and they can’t fit thousands of companies into this space. You have some SEO companies that have had their websites for ten plus years so it will be difficult to move them out of the way in the search results. Plus keep in mind that in our industry “most” SEO companies know exactly what they are doing so we have to compete against an industry that practices what they preach.
How Many Employees Does the SEO Services Company Have?
Think about it for a minute, if they have 40 or 50 employees chances are they have many business processes in place along with policies and protocols that are iron clad. Chances are you will hear “Sorry that is just policy” at some point during your SEO campaign. If you go with a firm that has 10 or 15 people you might have a bit more flexibility with pricing and special requests that the large firms won’t even budge on. I’m not saying every large company that offers SEO is bad to work with but you have to watch out for everything out there.
Not Every Hosting Company and Web Designer Knows SEO
Just because your hosting company or web designer claims they know how to do SEO, that doesn’t mean that they actually do. A hosting company’s primary focus was to host websites and along the way they realized that if they open an SEO division they can become slightly more profitable. Same goes with web designers and developers. Just because the recession came along and they slapped up an SEO page on their website does not mean they are trained to execute it properly.
Make Sure the SEO Services Company Speaks English
Would you really want someone who barely speaks English working on the marketing for your company? Since search engine optimization is an effort that really encompasses the art of language you need someone that completely 100% understand the language and also things like industry slang that could be a very important keyword in your vertical or niche. Someone doing search engine optimization on the other side of the world that barley speaks English is not going to get that part of the task right and you will not be running at full steam when the job is done – that is not an opinion that is reality.
Take the time to really analyze the SEO company you are going to work with before you do so you can avoid any shotty work or getting burned along the way.
10 Responses to “SEO Services Company – Can You Trust Them?”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
“if they have 40 or 50 employees chances are they have many business processes in place along with policies and protocols that are iron clad. Chances are you will hear “Sorry that is just policy” at some point during your SEO campaign. If you go with a firm that has 10 or 15 people you might have a bit more flexibility with pricing and special requests that the large firms won’t even budge on.”
I work at an SEO / SEM company with 150+ employees and the best practices we employ are tailored to each client, client resources and client need. Doubtful I’ve ever said to a client
“sorry that is just policy.”
Agree that flexibility with special requests is something to consider, but that is more a factor of bandwidth than size of company… the fact that a company has 15 overworked employees, or 150 working at 85% often means we can be *more* flexible.
Although you qualify with “I’m not saying every large company that offers SEO is bad to work with but you have to watch out for everything out there.” you’ve already planted a seed that “big is bad”, whereby I would counter with “does the company you engage have bandwidth, experience and expertise to service you and deliver results above and beyond your expectations.” In this case the small shop scenario can fail.
I’m not saying you’re not correct or you’re 100% incorrect in either scenario, I just believe a broad brush tars the good guys (like my company) too.
One last point, in the interests of full disclosure… does Brick Marketing have between 10-15 employees?
Hi Grant,
Thanks very much for reading and taking time out of your busy day to provide your thoughts to our readers
To answer, your question my reference point is, I have been a client of an SEO firm as Director of Internet Marketing, worked at a large (300 person+ SEM firm) and yes, my SEO services company, Brick Marketing is within the 10-15 person range…thanks again for the comment!
I don’t have a lot of employees, but we have an office and a proven track record with our clients. SEO is one of the easiest things to check regarding reputation.
I disagree a little bit regarding not checking where they rank. Utilizing a tool like SEMrush, you can check their domain and see if they rank for any #1 terms. Any good SEO firm should have some challenging keywords that they rank on. I wouldn’t use one if they didn’t.
Hi Douglas,
Thanks for the comment!
Rankings are important but are not the only method to select an white hat and ethical SEO services company…
How do you get a good reputation of being a good SEO company if you are just starting out? Sounds like a bit of a boys club to start out with…I was thinking of offering a free 1 page SEO audit or does this cheapen my service?
Hi Ruth,
Thanks for reading and your comment!
I do think to a certain perspective the SEO industry is an old boys club. I have been in the internet marketing industry for 12 years and have offered SEO services professionally through my company, Brick Marketing for the past 5 years and I can tell you that it is really tough building a business because of many factors (not necessarily the “old boys club” thing).
That said, I would figure out what type of clients you are looking to take on first before you start offering free anything. Also sometimes it can cheapen your service, but also you may find (talking from experience now), that many companies take you up on your free SEO audit just to get free information with no intention of ever really hiring you…
But offering a free on site SEO analysis in person (maybe at an event) is much more powerful as I have found people tend to not waste your time as much in person as they might over then phone.
Anyway, best of luck building your SEO services business and I hope this helps
Take Care,
Nick
The point discussed by “Grant” is very true. The employee factor for prices manipulation is might be okay but judging the company on basis of 10 to 15+ or 100 to 150+ employee is not really a logical factor. We have several examples which show that small business websites are going excellent by SEO practices of big companies as well as many big portal websites are successfully gaining excellent Google reputation handled by small SEO firms.
Hi Techmodi,
Thanks for reading and sharing your opinion.
I think to a certain extent it is for small and mid sized type clients looking for an SEO services provider. This based on my experience working for and with large SEO companies and also building my own smaller SEO firm…
Anyway, thanks again,
Nick
Nick,
Trying to sell SEO is likened to selling “snake oil” now-a-days. Really instead of selling your product you should be going into client meeting to find out what they want. Usually “more customers” or “more leads” is the real answer. Then it is a simple once you find out the value of a customer/lead. You charge a percentage of that value for each one and you decide how to drive them. Be it with SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing or Social Marketing. As the leads go up the income goes up.
Hi Beau,
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
It is really tough these days as an SEO services company but if you have a solid track record and client results to back up your credibility then you should be able to compete.
Thanks again & Take care,
Nick