When your site fails to rank well despite of all your individual SEO efforts, you might want to consider hiring the services of a SEO company. However, there are many SEO companies that are unreliable. You can lower the risk of hiring a dubious SEO company if you know what to look for. When you have a significant understanding of SEO, you can judge whether a company’s goals are realistic and their promises credible.
The following are some things to consider when selecting a SEO company.
1. Do they promise a #1 ranking?
If they promise this, then there is reason to question their competency. When it comes to search engines, a #1 ranking is never guaranteed. This is the case even for keywords that are not very competitive.
2. Ask business partners and friends for recommendations
Word of mouth recommendation is vital for establishing a company’s credibility.
3. Inquire in forums
There are numerous credible webmaster forums where you can get recommendations for SEO companies. However, keep in mind that not all people who post in forums are honest. Therefore, their positive or negative views need to be taken with a pinch of salt. You will not always get reliable information from forums.
4. Google the company
If the company has a reputation as a scam, you are likely to get information about this online. However, absence of negative publicity doesn’t automatically imply that the firm is credible, nor do negative opinions don’t necessarily imply that it is a scam.
5. Ask for samples of previously optimized sites
The best proof of a company’s competence is happy customers. Ask the SEO Company to show you references from clients and examples of previously optimized sites. If your request is declined on the basis of confidentiality, then the credibility of the company is questionable.
6. Find out the page rank of their website
If the company is not able to optimize their own website to achieve a good PR (over 4), hiring them is not advisable.
7. Automated submissions
If the company uses automated submissions, avoid them like the plague. Search engines can ban your site for using automated submissions.
8. Black hat SEO tactics
If the company uses black hat SEO tactics, don’t have anything to do with them.
9. Source of back links
Back links are crucial for success in SEO. However, if they come from sites such as link farms, they can be very harmful. Make sure the SEO company only gets links from credible sites.
10. How much are they charging?
Just because a company charges much does not guarantee a better SEO job. On the other hand, you need to be cautious of companies who charge peanuts for their services.
Guest article written by: ZK is the co-founder of Internet Marketing Blog where accomplished writers and bloggers share their tips, strategies and stories. Follow him on Twitter at @webtrafficroi.
Inquiring in forums and checking their page rank is a good move in choosing the right SEO Company. Also, it’s advisable to contact them and ask for their link building strategy and let them elaborate it for you. In this way, you can verify if the company is legit or a scam.
Some essential points, Usually people ignore them and hence they loose their valuable money and don’t get any result. So it’s important to check background of the company before offering them your site for SEO.
It’s really important to check the credibility of the company before outsourcing your crucial SEO work, It’s always beneficial to hire a company which has vast knowledge in SEO and you can easily check it by seeing their previous work.
It’s pretty risky choosing a SEO company these days if you don’t know anything about SEO. You should always ask for references and samples of previous work. Black-Hat techniques are a big no-no.
You should only judge an SEO company by:
How many real-world years of experience they have
The amount of case studies they have and proof that their process works
How many years they have been in business
If they are VAT registered (i.e. not a one man band).
The PR of their website doesn’t matter because they may not generate their clients mostly through the search engines anyway.
In my opinion, checking the seo company’s google search result ranking is an ideal way to choose the best among them. If they can’t even rank well in SERPs, how can they guarantee high quality seo for us?
Your tips are good and I agree with all ou have said. It is a must to look into these aspects when you need internet marketign service for your business.
Instead of hiring someone,you should first need to do the job yourself and see how the things work out. If you can do the jobs good but it takes time then hire someone.
You can’t hire someone to do a job that you don’t have any idea about because you won’t know what to ask.
It’s risky to rely on just any SEO company right now. That’s why people should check the results of one particular company and ask as many questions as they can before resorting to SEO services.
I agree with most of what been said here, though SEO company website have to get PR4 and above, that is just not true, cause thats also links back to saying just seek SEO in Google, and number one in the is the best, so pick them.
It is hard for small business owner who has great hope of success for their business through hiring Seo Company. Above points are excellent guide for all who is looking for reliable company which can give good result.
We can find the best SEO company if we can see these traits listed, as you can see, there are many SEO companies around the world because online business is in demand. so before hiring and searching an company check their qualification if they have pass the requirement you expected.
Thank you for your sharing, these are all valuable information.Yes, The best proof of a company’s competence is happy customers, but I think that different customer has different needs. So we have to remember this kind of SEO suitable to others’s company may not is suitable for your company.
nice seo tips surely there are some that we’ll like to implement in our work
You need to do a lot of due diligence to choose a SEO company.
It can sink your website by doing black hat techniques, and also scam your money.
I think before choosing any kind of company for any kind of online stuffs and specially for projects like SEO it is really important to do a good amount of research about the reliability of the company. We must look at their past works as well as the methods they use since many companies use black hat method which is not viable. Also it is important to NOT choose any one who guarantees #1 ranking in a matter of months because it is not possible to do so and specially for competitive keywords.
Very Nice Post. I am agree with you guy. In my opinion you should follow these points to choose an SEO company.
How long have they been in business?
Can you talk to some of their clients?
How transparent are they about what they are going to do for you?
Are they doing keyword research?
Are they checking your competitors?
Are they recommending site architecture changes?
SEO is one of the best way to reach your users and choosing of a proper seo company among many seo companies is very difficult task.
When googling the company, I suggest taking it another step farther and adding the keyword behind the company’s name “scam”
You would be surprised how many companies get the first few pages clean and have dirty deeds hidden deep within.
Specifying SCAM in the search when googling a company will provide a totally new set of search results, results you may be happy you discovered.
Hi,
Thanks for sharing such kind of post. I was searching for a SEO company then found this post. You have Explained all tips. The main tip which searching seo company their site and portfolio if there site have authority they can boost yours too.