How to choose a good SEO company

Choosing a good SEO company is not as easy as it looks.

There are literally thousands of SEO companies in Sydney wanting your business and finding the good ones that offer a premium, reliable and credible service is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Following are some tips to help you find the best SEO company that your marketing budget permits.

If you Google ‘SEO’ or ‘SEO companies Sydney’ you are going to find loads of options to choose from. This is really where the dilemma begins.

Most people only look at the home page results and herein lies the problem. On this page, there are (and I am not being biased here) only two to three companies that really know what they are doing. The rest are fly by nighters, startups or even freelancers that outsource all their work.

You might say well they are on page one so they must be doing something right and they must be OK, but this is far from the truth. This is because some of these agencies have implemented a couple of dodgy and non-Google compliant strategies to get to this position on page 1. It’s quite easy to do but you have to bear in mind that this is a short term strategy.

Their logic is to spam their website up to page 1, doing anything they can to get there and once they have obtained this position, they will proceed to fleece as many non suspecting businesses as they can. Most of the public is completely ignorant of the kind of games these fraudsters play and will easily fall prey to sweet-sounding promises of page 1 Google position.

These SEO companies are there for a short time, till the Googles Penguin algorithm notices them (then they disappear) and guess what….they will build a brand new website, build as many backlinks as they can and then have it ranking for a couple of months till it gets penalised again. These companies have got this down to a fine art form. It’s a continuous cyclical and very methodical process and spams your way to the top, rip as many people off as you possibly can, then do it all again.

How to find the best SEO agencies?

Following are a few golden rules you should follow in order to avoid falling for these ‘cowboys’ and help you find the best SEO company.

1) Make the phone call and go and visit them.

Do not do everything in the virtual space. Make sure they are real, that they exist and that you can have real human interaction with them. Freelancers tend to want to do things all over the phone, take your credit card details and the rest is history. Be really careful if you feel any type of pushback when you mention a meeting. If they want to have a Skype meeting that’s fine so long as you get a visual of the person you will be working with.

2) Ask them if they outsource their SEO or is it all done in house?

The last thing you want is your SEO done in a third world country by a complete stranger who has no accountability or no idea about your business. This is the worst thing that could happen to your business because your SEO needs to be done locally. SEO middle man who the work is often outsourced to, do everything on the cheap and you end up paying the price through poor results. Be aware that they might even tell you that they are not outsourcing their SEO when in fact they are. This is why you need to go to their office and physically suss the whole operation out.

3) Asking for testimonials is pointless, they are not going to give you any negative ones.

It is not much you can do about this I’m afraid, so again trust your gut instinct when you see them. If you smell a rat or something that seems odd or out of place or just not quite right then give them the flick.

4) You choose companies that have paid ads right up the top of the results, thinking that these are organic.

This is a huge mistake made by many businesses who think that because they are in the top 4 they are the best. These top 4 are pay per click Adwords and business pay in many cases excessive fees for these ads. Knowing the difference between paid and organic ads will make a huge difference in your decision in choosing a great SEO company. Remember the very top 4 listings are paid. The organic results begin just below these and these are the agencies you should be engaging with.

5) When you’re asking them SEO questions, see if they are pushing you into an SEO contract or offering some other scam like ‘ page 1 in 90 days or pay nothing’ or ‘ if we cant rank you in 6 months we will do the SEO for free’.

These are all total scams to fool you into dealing with them. This s a good sign that these guys are a bunch of amateurs looking to empty your wallet. In fact, I would have to say that this is really the main thing to be wary of. Any unrealistic promises, guarantees, or do-for-free work is what most people fall for – any whiff of this over the phone should be dealt with immediately – that is hang up!!

6) SEO in 2018 is all about a complete digital campaign.

Your agency must have a thorough understanding of all facets of the digital space and should be able to handle everything under one roof. This includes: website copywriting, content marketing, conversion rates, Adwords, website design, UX ( user experience), Google analytics as well as managing your social media marketing and in some cases your online reputation. SEO is no longer a case of simply building links and hoping for the best. It’s a lot more complicated than this and Google as the years roll on will tighten its ranking criteria and rank only those sites that can show a holistic approach to their digital marketing. Your future SEO agency should be well versed in all these areas if they are going to help you improve your online rankings.

7) Choose those SEO agencies that can prove that they have been able to achieve solid increases in traffic numbers and conversion rates for businesses.

The aim is to not only rank the site but also convert site visitors to customers. This is done by making sure that your web pages are designed to engage the customer. Therefore your SEO agency should have a solid background in web design and know-how to improve the customer experience. This is a critical factor and any good SEO agency should be monitoring consumer behaviour on your site and monitoring its performance through Google Analytics and always looking at ways of improving it.

There are many people now who feel that SEO is obsolete and is a thing of the past. So why should they bother looking for an SEO agency when they can do it themselves. Let’s take a look at what Matt Cutts from Google says about the relevance of ‘white hat’ SEO agencies. In short; SEO is not spam and they should be considered an integral part of your business.

As Matt Says: SEO is not spamming and SEO can be beneficial for your business, you simply have to find the right company.