A good number of businesses have fallen victim to the tricks of cunning service providers when it comes to search engine optimization. This can cause you to think twice about working with these companies. However, once you know what you need to avoid and what you should do, finding the right company will be much easier. The purpose of this post is to educate you on the different mistakes you need to avoid when hiring a SEO company.
Not asking for references
More often than not, people do not take the time to consider the opinions of a company’s recent clients. They simply judge the book by its cover. One thing you need to understand is that just because a company looks great does not mean its services will also be great. Regardless of how great their promises and services are, you have to think twice before hiring. One way of doing this is by asking for a list of their current and past clients.
A reputable SEO company will be willing to share a brief list of their current and past clients with you. These references will help you gauge the effectiveness of the service provider as well as verify what they claim to do for you. Although the references will not give you specific analytics, they will surely help you determine if the candidate is the right one to work with or not. You have to contact at least three of the references given to you. Get to know what they think about the service provider and whether they would be willing to do business with the service provider again. The best thing about talking with references is that they will give you the much-needed peace of mind knowing your business needs will be in the right hands.
Failing to understand how the company works
Another mistake you must never make is that of assuming what the company will do for you. Prior to bringing the company on board, you need to spend some time with the service provider trying to understand what the service will entail. How will they improve your search engine rankings? This is the most important question you need to ask at this point.
The companies you need to avoid are those that are unwilling to discuss their methods in detail. If they keep deflecting or avoiding your questions, there is a good chance they will mess things up. A good company should be willing to explain the strategies it will use to drive up your search engine rankings and also give a realistic estimate of how long it will take to achieve those SEO goals.
This simply means that the candidate should give you a detailed proposal. The proposal should include the initial technical review of your website to remove any problems that may be affecting your ranking in a bad way. The proposal should also include an on-page optimization strategy that shows how they will make your website SEO-friendly. If the service provider only gives you scanty details on what he will do for you, you should definitely walk away before you end up in a trap.
Falling for companies that provide guarantees
The question you need to ask your SEO company is this; can you guarantee the website will achieve No. 1 ranking on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing? If the answer he gives you is yes, then you should be warned. The truth is no service provider can give guarantees when it comes to search engine optimization. Only cunning service providers will give you guarantees. This is done to make you trust them before they change their story later on.
You must consider guarantees a red flag. This is because there are so many things that are considered before ranking is determined. What’s more is that these factors keep on changing. It is impossible to make guarantees. The best the service provider can do is to show you how they will help improve your ranking. They should also give proof of success by showing you websites whose ranking they helped improve.
Hiring companies that don’t do local search engine optimization
Appearing in the local search engine results is the most important thing for your business. This is because your customers are local. You need to ensure that they are able to find you with ease. Therefore, the SEO company you hire should have experience improving local search results. This is the only way you will be able to attract nearby customers. Only hire an expert who has expertise in local search engine optimization techniques.
The best thing about optimizing your website for local SEO is that it will appear when customers nearby search for keywords which are relevant to your business. For this to happen, your consultant needs to add your business’ city and state to the website’s title tags as well as Meta descriptions. He should also get your website listed on Google, Bing and Yahoo’s local listings. These are online directories of businesses that cater to the specific geographical areas.
Not considering result tracking
If your service provider will not measure the success of your search engine optimization campaigns, you should probably walk away. To gauge the success of your efforts, you need to track how much traffic visiting your site and where it is really coming from. This means the SEO consultant needs to be experienced in Google analytics to track improvements in your website’s search engine rankings. If he cannot track results, then he is most definitely not the best person to have on your team.
A lot goes into hiring an SEO company. The above points will help you get started on the right foot. Other things you must consider are the communication that the company has with its clients and the service fees. It is also important to know what happens once the work is done. Will the service provider come back to help with any SEO needs you may have later on?
Katherine Norris is a freelance content writer. She has great knowledge in the field of SEO. In her free time, she loves to share her knowledge with her friends and colleagues. For more information about Katherine Norris, please visit the site.The post Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring an SEO Company appeared first on SiteProNews.
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