Is Your SEO Company Giving You the Worth of Money?

‘Where is the best place to hide a dead body? The second page of Google search results.’ This is a famous joke doing its rounds in the digital marketing community. And rightfully so! Unless you are genuinely desperate you will never venture into the second page of the Google search results and the third page is a realm Livingstone has never ventured into. So no matter how shipshape your website looks or how en vogue, if you don’t make it to the first 10 top-ranked results, you don’t exist to your potential followers.


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Why do you need the help of SEO Company?

You cannot set up a website today and expect people to know about you tomorrow. Promotion and marketing is not a day’s work. It takes more than enthusiasm to break the surface of the web and make your presence known. You will need the help of an SEO expert to make your dreams of making it big in the online market come true.

Some multiple companies and individuals claim themselves to be SEO specialists and experts. Today, anyone can proclaim themselves to be well versed with SEO techniques as long as they have a laptop and SEO tools. So you need to be very cautious while hiring genuine SEO experts for your company. It might be challenging at first, but we can help you out here.

Here’s a list of the 5 most important questions you need to be asking your SEO expert/company today.

1. What plans do they have to improve your website’s ranking?

SEO is not a one-time thing, and there is no one proven way to make SEO work for all companies. SEO strategies need to be highly customized for every website, depending on their target audience and their marketing goals. For example – any company with a geographical store or outlet needs to promote their content in such a way that drives more sales from their websites as well as land-based stores. In this case, the company should be able to provide guaranteed local SEO services to bump up your local listing. This is a more challenging task as compared to the general listing, and if this is the kind of service you want, you must make it clear to your service providers.

2. Are there are guarantees on the timeline and the results?

If your SEO consultant promises you results overnight, smile, wave and never return to them! SEO can take months to perfect for a company, and even one week is a utopic time frame for “fixing” a website’s SEO. However, a good SEO company should not take aeons to give you hands-on results as well. You need to sit, talk and chalk out plans according to an affordable timeline that will make your marketing goals more achievable.

3. Is there any way to track SEO progress?

If any company tells you that since SEO is intangible, there is no way you can track the progress of your website in terms of sales and traffic, feel free to call their bluff! Every legitimate SEO company should have progress tracking tools and analytical models that help them compare the marketing status of a client’s website. They can even compare and contrast a client website against competitor websites using such analytical tools. So unless your SEO Company promises you such transparent reports and analytics, you should not be getting into any kinds of transactions with them.

4. Do they have a list of all their past clients and even current ones?

Simplistically speaking, the client list will give you an idea of your candidate’s efficacy. While past clients will provide you with an idea of how they slowly progressed to reach the position they are in, the list of current clients can give you an idea of their present status of services. All references are potential gold mines as they can tell you exactly what to expect from your SEO consultants. This means you can bargain better and get better deals based on learned negotiating skills.

5. How transparent will they be with the changes they make to your website?

This is the most critical question you need to be asking your candidate(s) right now. SEO will require quite a few changes to be made to your website, especially if you are not enjoying bountiful traffic at the moment. From a change in website structure and content layout, it may even require significant changes in the core code of the website to make it more search engine friendly.

Your SEO Company may even need to add or remove a few elements from your original site to make it more user-friendly and robot friendly. From adding new HTML tags to your website content to modifying existing codes, every step should be discussed with you before implementation. This should either be done over Skype or Phone at regular intervals. And do not ask to request for written documentation for all changes made and the charges against them before you get into an official set up with your prospective candidate.

The most common retainers for SEO services can range from $251 to $500 a month. While this may seem expensive at the moment if you are starting, relying on verified services who have years’ worth experience is far better than standardizing procedures from scratch. You can even go for freelancers who charge hourly rates as they are both cheap and provide precise service. These consultants usually serve smaller businesses and startups and are more likely to charge far less per hour.