How to Choose a Professional SEO Firm for Your Business

By Lisa @Lisapatb

We live in a digital age where marketing in its traditional form is simply not able to reach the required audience. Today, digital marketing is the most effective way to develop a business. The forecasts for the future say that the demand for it will only grow. Digital marketing is based on accurate data and its task is to promote business with the help of modern technologies. This could include mobile apps, videos, podcasts, and other multimedia tools, but the Internet is at the center of them. If you have your own business, then you have most likely heard about the benefits of a professional SEO firm.

At the same time, not all owners understand what exactly an SEO firm does and whether it is needed for successful development in general.

How to pick from the best professional SEO firms for your online business.

What Are Professional SEO Companies, and Why Does Your Business Need Them?

A professional SEO firm provides search engine optimization services for businesses to improve visibility on search. Organic search engine optimization is a complex process that aims to improve the position of a web resource in organic search results. This organic SEO attracts traffic for targeted queries.

Thanks to them, your website should become as attractive as possible. Not only for users but also for the search engines. The better the company performs organic optimization, the more likely you are to get on the first pages of search engines for key phrases and words that are related to your business.

By hiring a professional SEO company, you get several highly specialized specialists. These experts are in different areas of search engine optimization. They perform a wide range of services, including site audits and the development of individual solutions. It may even include some search marketing such as PPC to go along with the organic SEO.

Here are the main reasons to cooperate with such agencies:

Improved Search Rankings

With the help of modern SEO tools and thoughtful strategies, an SEO company can improve a web resource. Thus they make it as attractive as possible to the search engines.

The team will find the right keywords to attract the target audience and take care of the site architecture, which is important for search engines. You will want to have your search engine rankings go up in time.

Improving the Quality of Website Traffic

Ranking in search engines is not the end goal, the main thing is to improve the quality of incoming traffic. More organic and relevant traffic – more chances to get not only a user but a new client.

Why waste time and money on generating traffic just for the sake of website traffic? You want results from your SEO techniques. A professional SEO firm will bring you those targeted results over time.

Clear Measurable Results with SEO Services

Unlike marketing agencies, SEO companies can provide accurate analytical reports on the work done and its results every month. Therefore, SEO is very easy to track and measure at any stage of cooperation.

Thanks to this, you can always clearly understand how useful this cooperation is for your business. You will want to have your online presence shine with on-page optimization.

How to Select a Decent Professional SEO Firm for Your Project?

Choosing a professional SEO contractor is a pain most business owners go through. The main problem is a lot of incompetent performers, a delayed result that does not allow identifying a problem contractor at an early stage. Not only that but the lack of guarantees of results as such.

However, finding a professional SEO who understands the local SEO may be another important factor for your biz.

Here are some alarming moments that you should keep in mind when choosing a contractor:

No TOP-10 guarantees can be given

If an SEO company gives you a 100% guarantee to achieve TOP-1 or TOP-10 for a certain period, then this is a scammer! The results of search engines are not stable, the positions of sites can change by pressing the F5 button.

Furthermore, the report that you sent an hour ago may not be relevant for 20-30% of the positions.

The contractor promotes the site with 5-20 keywords

This could have been done a few years ago! Now, to achieve good results, you need to work systematically and comprehensively on the entire project.

It takes more than a few keywords to make SEO work today.

Moreover, this is already much more than 20 requests. You will need content silo’s now to ensure your content will rank well. Having content that is related and interlinked is important for your site’s structure and SEO efforts.

The contractor agrees to work with keywords that you have collected yourself

A competent performer will look at these requests and send you back the corrected list. Collecting semantics is a time-consuming process that requires expertise.

Requests must strictly correspond to the type of promoted pages, adequate evaluation, and common sense.  

For some requests, you can try to promote the site for a long time and in the end achieve nothing for many reasons. Furthermore, all this must be assessed by the SEO contractor.

The contractor does not give recommendations on changing the structure and functionality of the site

Any site requires technical improvements for successful promotion (changing the directory structure, adding commercial elements and functionality, changing boarding types, etc.)

Most often, if the contractor doesn’t have any suggestions for you in this regard, you should look for another professional SEO agency.

You receive only a search position report

To understand what is being done on the site and keep records of the SEO campaign, the contractor provides a report on the work performed and a thesis work plan for the next reporting period.

It is desirable to conduct all this in one of the project management systems (Bitrix24, Trello, etc.). Another report that the contractor must send is a report on traffic from search engines. And with it, excluding queries that contain the name of your site or brand.

The contractor has no experience in promoting sites of your type

Promoting your blog or a small company website is not the same as promoting large online stores, portals, or message boards.

When choosing an SEO firm, it is desirable to see their successful cases in similar topics and similar projects. Part of the promotion may be pay-per-click advertising to get the ball rolling for your online business.

SEO Is NOT Only About Texts and Links

About 5-7 years ago it was possible to write texts, buy links and wait for a profit. Now it’s not like that. Of course, link building is important, but it’s not the only factor today for ranking. When promoting, it is necessary to work a lot with the quality of sites, semantics, and structure.

Not only that but a lot of competitor analytics, and pay great attention to content, behavioral and commercial factors.

Keep in mind the above-mentioned criteria to hire a professional SEO firm for your project. Then, you must be patient as it can take 6-18 months to see results from the SEO efforts being paid off by your SEO company.

Your Turn

Finally, feel free to share your search engine results and experience with a professional SEO agency in the comments below.