Looking to improve the quality and volume of traffic to your website, or have other goals for your website? Working with an experienced firm that specializes in SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, can help. There are several ‘pop up’ SEO firms or individuals that can make promises, but can’t deliver. Thankfully there are also experienced firms and individuals that know how to help a site rank to meet the site owners goals. Not everyone knows what to look for when hiring SEO services. If you know a little about SEO or nothing at all, here are five tips to help you hire the right firm for your SEO needs and traffic goals.
1. Multi-dimensional SEO
An effective and experienced SEO firm or individual should be able review and create a websites SEO plan with the kno
wledge and experience of using these three SEO tactics:
- On-page optimization: The use of different elements on a web site like targeted keywords and html tags
- Off-page optimization: Link building is an example
- Technical: A websites structure determines the ease of search engines to index content and crawl a site
Some SEO’s are great at on-page optimization, but they aren’t skilled at off-page or can’t analyze and improve a websites structure. A one-dimensional SEO firm or individual can leave your site missing out on valuable traffic and conversions. Working with someone that can create an SEO strategy with all three tactics in mind will maximize a sites success.
2. Track record of SEO success
Just like hiring an employee, a general contractor, or website designer, you should check references of SEO firms and individuals before hiring them. Request at least three current references and ask them how the company helped them succeed, what they were like to work with, and if they would recommend them for your needs and goal. Because anyone can call themselves an SEO, you want to make sure you’re hiring someone that can actually do what they say they can do, and aren’t giving lip service. Also, ask for examples of SEO work the firm or individual has done, including reports showing an increase in search engine traffic. Do a couple of searches on Google or Bing about the website examples to see if you can find the site examples in the search result positions being claimed.
3. Communication is key
SEO experts often work with different departments like marketing, IT, sales, customer service and management. Because of the variety of personalities in each department, the SEO firm or individual needs to be able to effectively communicate and work with different members and personality styles from each team. Often an SEO needs to be able to clearly explain a change or update to a website in ways that non-SEOs can understand. Being able to clearly communicate with the c-suite team as well as IT team will make the entire process better for everyone.
4. Ranking promises and guarantees
As a general rule of thumb, any SEO that can promise #1 ranking on page 1 for search terms, is a sure sign the SEO is fake and you should run! Because of regular changing algorithms and constant changes in search behavior, there are no promises or guarantees with internet ranking. It takes a lot of effort and time to achieve high rankings, and to maintain high rankings. Although some SEO’s can get your site to rank high for a couple of days from black-hat (don’t follow search engine rules) techniques, they can actually damage your rankings in the long run. SEO is not a one-and-done effort with no promises or guarantees. However, an experienced SEO firm will be able to set clear and realistic expectations using search engine approved techniques and strategies.
5. Can tell you how they can improve a sites search engine rankings
Don’t work with an SEO consultant that won’t freely discuss, articulate or explain what methods they would use to increase search engine rankings. A good proposal should include a technical review or audit of your website pointing problems things like error pages and broken links that can be lowering rankings. An SEO should also be able to articulate and address on-page and off-page optimization techniques and strategies.
Effective SEO involves hundreds of elements that go into the big picture of a websites success, and it takes experience to know what will be effective for different sites and to reach goals. Every website requires different SEO strategies and tactics to succeed. If you’re looking for an experienced SEO agency, contact DoubleDome Web Technologies. We’ve provided effective SEO services for our clients for more than 14 years and have a long list of references and success stories.
