If your business has online components (such as a website), then SEO is crucial to the continued success of your business. You may have the most expensive website in your industry, but without web traffic (visitors) to that website, it’s essentially worthless. It’s not just traffic you need, but targeted traffic. A good quality SEO service can provide relevant and consistent web traffic to your website(s). This guide will allow you, as a non-expert, to distinguish between good and bad SEO providers. There are plenty of both types, this guide should help you find the good ones.
SEO needs to be implemented in a way that is effective in achieving your SEO goals and providing that all important significant presence on the World Wide Web.
Quality SEO is a crucial investment when it comes to developing successful expansion and growth strategies.
Ineffective SEO implementation renders your SEO efforts totally ineffective and a waste of your money.
6 things to know and understand before hiring an SEO provider:
1) Hiring an SEO provider should be seen as an investment in your business. You should not view it as a business expense, but rather as a business strategy and an effective way to enhance your business presence within your business sector. Try not to start your search with the intention of “buying some SEO”. Hiring an SEO provider should be seen as hiring an employee who understands and cares about your business and your online goals.
2) The first page of Google (or any search engine) is everything. Few people go to the second page of the search results. Google is so good as a search engine that people swear by its ability to deliver the most relevant results on the first page. Think about how often you click through to the second page. This means that if your business isn’t on the first page, it’s almost as good as nowhere. The top positions on page one get the most clicks, which decrease as you move further down the page.
3) ‘Big’ keywords aren’t everything. It is better to be on the first page for a few smaller keywords, than to try to rank for larger keywords and not be on the first page. For example, an accounting firm in Preston might not rank for the highly competitive keyword ‘accountant’ (unless you have a lot of SEO budget and time to wait for rankings); but the same business could possibly rank high for the keyword ‘CPA Preston’. A good SEO provider should research keywords for which your business could realistically rank on the first page and also keywords that have enough search volume to make it worthwhile for your business to try to rank for.
4) SEO is all about beating the competition. Search engines do not guarantee that you will be on the first page of Google if you do certain things. In a nutshell, SEO works like this:
Search engines have their conventions; Websites that conform by giving search engines what they want will achieve higher search engine rankings. The only thing standing between you and the top of the search rankings is your competition. Not your actual business competitors, but your online competitors. The websites that currently have the top rankings in the search engines for your desired keywords are your online competition, and you need to beat them in those top rankings. Some keywords will be easy to rank for, others will be more difficult. It is only your online competition that dictates what will be the case for each individual keyword. A good SEO provider will research the competition for each of your keywords. Then, after the most effective keywords for your business sector have been identified, they should be implemented according to point number three above.
5) SEO on page and off page.
Search engine optimization is a complex and ever-evolving science, but in order to interview a potential SEO provider wisely, you need to understand that there are two main types of SEO.
On-page SEO relates to the factors on your website that affect your SEO (keywords, usability, page headers, outbound links, internal links, etc.).
Off-Page SEO are the factors that directly relate to matters outside of your website that affect website SEO, such as backlinks, citations, social sharing, etc.
SEO providers can work on your off-page SEO quite easily, but if you’re not willing to change your on-page SEO, based on their recommendations, you can’t blame them for your lack of results. A good SEO provider will review your website and report on its on-page SEO and how it can be improved. You should have your web designer make the adjustments. (Remember that he is the expert in this field)
6) An increase in search engine rankings is not necessarily an increase in leads and sales. All your SEO provider can do is get your website, videos, Google Places, articles, blog posts, etc. higher up in the search engine results. They cannot guarantee an increase in sales or leads, because that factor is determined by their own sales funnel. It’s not the SEO provider’s job to make sure that the extra web traffic you get turns into more leads or sales. Your website needs to convert those visitors with good marketing, which is a problem for your marketing consultant to address.
The key differences between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ SEO providers:
Good SEO Providers
Good SEO providers know and understand the points mentioned above. You can judge this by their answers to the questions provided later in my next article.
Good SEO providers want to build a solid foundation and SEO plan suitable for their business, with extensive initial keyword and market (competitor) research. They often insist on it, even if the prospect doesn’t see the need. Sometimes a good SEO provider will refuse to work with a client who doesn’t want the important legwork done, because they know that without it they likely won’t give the client the results they want. A good SEO provider will want to provide their client with results as their first priority. Often a client will say “but I already did the keyword research myself”. Many potential customers sit down for 5-10 minutes to type in all the keywords they think are relevant to their business, and then they think they’ve done all the keyword research it takes. The actual keyword research is a long research process.
Good SEO providers use responsible SEO methods like paying more attention to on-page SEO, ensuring quality backlinks, improving citations, helping social sharing, ensuring good user experience, etc.
bad SEO providers
Bad SEO providers will want to take their clients’ money as their first priority. They won’t do proper keyword and market research, but will say, for example, “what are your three keywords and URL that you want to rank for.” If this happens (as it often does), you can be sure that they are simply plugging your website into software to get irrelevant links on the Internet, using spam blog comments, link farms, and other means. In many cases, this approach is ineffective because the URL or domain may not match the keywords desired by the client. This can also damage reputation and ironically the long-term SEO and credibility of the website.
Bad SEO providers use poor quality SEO methods (sometimes called Black-hat methods). Using these methods can have an extremely detrimental effect on the way search engines perceive your website. This, in turn, can result in your website being (sandboxed). Needless to say, this is extremely undesirable, as damage like this is extremely difficult to reverse.
Make sure you get the SEO specialist who knows how to best highlight your business attributes and can draw attention to your products and services in a way that really makes your business stand out on the worldwide web.
