How Do I Find
The Best SEO Company?
not an SEO company is going to do a good job while working with you. Ideally, while interviewing SEO agencies, you end the conversation knowing:
The company has clients
who are winning with SEO.
The company has a proven track record of getting results with SEO.
The company uses ethical practices
to get SEO results.
My company will be safe
from scams and bad SEO.
In this article, we’ll cover the different questions to ask an SEO company before signing up for services, so that you can rest assured you’re working with a company that’s a perfect fit for you.
How do I Find a Good SEO Company?
The main thing to look out for is a proven track record of performance. This is something that you’ll find when asking for references to contact, case studies, and an outline of what the SEO company will do for you. Here are the questions to ask:
Do you have three references
we can contact?
Can you show us case studies of
successful SEO campaigns?
Again, BIG Marketing is fully transparent and will happily provide case studies where our clients have had a positive ROI and successful search engine rankings.
Case studies that prove an SEO campaign resulted in a return on investment above 12x are a great sign that the agency can produce the results that you’d like to achieve in an SEO campaign.
What does a successful SEO
campaign look like?
A successful SEO campaign either has a positive ROI or increased lead volume. In the case where you’re not comfortable sharing information about your company’s revenue, increased lead volume is the next best answer.
Traffic to your website is something that can be manipulated, and it doesn’t always equate to leads or revenue.
Increased positions in Google might look nice on a graph, but that also doesn’t always mean you’re getting more leads or revenue.
At BIG Marketing, our proposals include an estimated ROI based on facts, as well as a plan of how to achieve that ROI.
What does SEO reporting look like?
Many SEO companies will provide you with a dashboard to look at traffic (something that’s available to you without an SEO company). Others will provide you with a monthly report that shows where your company gained visibility in the Google search results.
However, we’ve found that most business owners like to know what exactly their SEO company is doing, and they like to receive that information in non-technical terms. This is what BIG Marketing provides, along with the positive visibility and information on what we will be doing in the following month.
Regardless, the importance of this question is that you find a company that provides the kind of reporting that you need.
How Do I Avoid a Bad SEO Company?
In order to avoid working with an SEO service that could harm your business, you’ll need to ask questions about their practices, the terms regarding service cancellation, and review the information in the SEO contract to confirm the details. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most important questions to ask when interviewing an SEO company.
Do I get to keep my website after discontinuing service?
Some SEO companies require you to use a website that they’ve built. This only becomes a problem when that SEO company also maintains ownership of the website or its content upon cancellation of service.
Other times, an SEO agency may give you the website after discontinuing service, but they’ll only send you the website files. This can be a major problem for business owners who don’t know how to launch a website on their own.
Am I required to use your web hosting?
Some SEO agencies will require you to use their web hosting services, resulting in the loss of your website after you cancel.
This isn’t always the case. You should always follow up with a question about your options regarding having your website transferred to another web hosting provider.
Am I required to use any call-forwarding numbers provided by your company?
Some SEO companies will have you use their phone numbers on your website and across the web. This might result in a sudden drop in calls when you cancel service. It can also hurt your SEO when you have to change all the numbers back.
Are you linking to my business with your own privately owned websites?
Private Blog Networks (PBNs) violate Google’s guidelines, and SEO companies using them have the ability to remove links that point to your website. Although it may not be common, there have been instances of SEO agencies that remove backlinks after services are discontinued.
Are you setting up any lead-gen websites?
This isn’t very common, but some agencies will set up lead generation websites with the purpose of generating leads for your business and keeping the assets (the websites) that they work on. The moment you stop paying for services, that agency can take those lead generation sites and work with a competitor of yours. Essentially, you’ve paid to build up assets (websites) owned by the SEO agency.
Do you send clicks or “real human traffic” to my website?
Something that’s become popular recently is what’s called a “click-through-rate” campaign (or CTR campaign).
The SEO agency essentially tries to trick Google into believing that your company is popular across the web by sending clicks or buying traffic to go to your site.
The results from this are typically fast and can make it appear that you’ve got a great SEO company working with you.
However, this violates Google’s guidelines, and it can also be extremely damaging if you stop or if Google catches on. In other words, more clicks to your website make it appear as though you’ve got a popular online brand, but the reverse is also true. If those clicks stop, it would appear that people no longer like your brand and that you must have done something wrong to lose all those clicks.
Will I keep all the SEO work that’s been done after discontinuing services?
Some SEO companies figure out ways to pull out all of the work they’ve done after you discontinue services. Make sure to find out what discontinuing services will look like for your business.
Does your strategy involve anything that violates Google’s guidelines?
This is a very general and all-encompassing question that might need some follow-up. If the agency you’re interviewing says that they don’t violate Google’s guidelines, it’s a good idea to ask what exactly they do.
If they beat around the bush with answers like “technically all SEO violates Google’s guidelines” or “we use ‘gray-hat SEO’”, there may be red flags.
Keep an ear out for words and phrases like “proprietary”, “undetectable”, or “impossible for Google to know”. If the company has ensured that their methods are kept a secret or that they’ve made sure Google can’t figure them out, there’s a good chance they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
Why Work With BIG Marketing?
Our company prides itself on building up businesses with white-hat SEO (ethical practices). We ensure that you keep all the work that we’ve done, and we provide full transparency in everything we do.
Every one of our proposals includes a deep dive into your current visibility, what your competitors are doing right, and how you can show up on top, with a positive return on investment.
We also provide references and case studies of our past work. By the end of our interview, we make sure that every question you have is answered so that you can rest assured that you’ve spoken to a good SEO company. Call us today to get a free Marketing Action Plan to illustrate how we’ll increase your leads and revenue.
