Despite the title giving us a golden opportunity to blow our own trumpet here, we’re going to keep this informative. The SEO market is a certainly busy and many business owners will be familiar with cold calls or mailers from agencies looking to supply their services. But what should really look for when choosing a SEO company?

Previous Work – SEO Case Studies

Whether the potential company has case studies listed on their website or not, it’s worth asking them. And don’t just ask for a list of rankings achieved. Ask for one or two clients you can call up and speak to personally. Speaking to a couple of businesses who have experienced the service of any SEO company is a great way to get an insight into the services you could benefit from too. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of the businesses you call, not only about their results, but the quality of communication and service they receive too.

Beware the ‘One Size Fits All’

If a SEO company can quote you a set price before looking at your site or even enquiring as to an idea of your keywords, the service isn’t bespoke, that’s for sure. And with SEO, the variation in competition from industry to industry can be absolutely massive. Any prices quoted should only be quoted after extensive research into your keywords and into the search engine optimisation activity of your competitors.

Number One in a WEEK!?

Nobody can guarantee you any rankings in Google. What a SEO company can do is to show you previous examples of sites they have worked on and assure you that the same principles and expertise will be applied to your website. But Google (and the other search engines) are, at the end of the day, third party search engines that SEO companies have no influence on whatsoever. Promises of this nature should sound alarm bells.

Transparency

It’s unlikely that a SEO company will write down all their methods step by step. They’d be out of a job if they did. But you should expect a degree of transparency from any SEO company. You should have a good idea of what is being done both on-page (to your website itself) and off page (in terms of acquiring links back to your site from other sites). A good SEO company should be comfortable enlightening you on the strategy.

Choosing a SEO company is a massive decision… so don’t be afraid to ask any questions and for explanations of anything in plain (non-techie) English!