Choose Your SEO Company Like you Choose your Spouse

by Divya Fernando - 7/27/2012 5900 Views

Choosing an SEO Company, pardon me, THE SEO Company for your business promotions on search engines can never be taken lightly. It is as important as any other marketing management employed on your business.

Choose Your SEO Company Like Your Choose Your Spouse.png

With SEO's, there is a simple rule of thumb - No One Size Fits All. So, if you are on a bride/groom-hunt(arranged marriages aren't history for us yet), you take care that there is perfect compatibility in the relationship, which is essentially long term.

In this analogy, your website is your life and you are in search for a good life partner (SEO Company) who will perfectly complement your life (website).Just like marital commitments is for life, SEO commitments are not to be taken for a temporary deal either. SEO is a gradual and consistent process of gathering online votes for your site in as natural a manner as can be (especially after our Google's beasty updates came into existence). So, what are the major attributes you look for in a perfect spouse?

Honesty (Read Transpareny of workflow)

What good is a company that is unable to reveal the processes that they would work with on the SEO part of your website. Always look for transparency of workflow amongst SEO's that brag about their services. Forget corresponding via emails, if they have a project management system that can be shared by you for complete openness in tracking YOUR projects, they earn brownie points for being - HONEST!

Good Looks (Read Results)

An SEO company may have a flashy and eye-catching website, or may have intriguing client testimonials or badges and certificates to show off, but if there is one thing that they could really show off to you is PROOF of RESULTS obtained. Not every business can show you real time results, but SEO's can obviously do so. So, why not demand for some results that would really make the SEO company - LOOK GOOD!

Trust (Read Background check)

Ask for references of previous clients who are easily accessible via phone or email. You are here to entrust your website's organic SEO future in the hands of a completely new company. There is no harm in undertaking a little background check that keeps you at peace and helps you develop a relationship of - TRUST!

Family (Read Employees)

SEO involves a myriad of functions like SEO writing, SEO submissions and overall SEO management of your website's organic promotion project. Unless, the company has a good amount of trained staff to work on your website's SEO, you can conveniently drop the idea of working with them. Either visit the SEO company, or view their linkedIN profile to see the number of employess (SEO experts) hired by the company. Make sure all the processes are manual as automated ones generate spam and are certainly not going to be spared by Google Penguin update. Choose the right SEO - FAMILY!

Healthy (Read White-hat)

An SEO Company may be ever as genuine and real as Lady Gaga's hair color, but if they have any streak of 'Black' on their 'Hat', they are a strict NO-NO! How do you know this? Well, you might have to go for some gut instincts to detect them or take it further with a trial and error. Checking the reputation of a site is not all that difficult if you are good enough on some cyber spying. Or simply just check their website and see if it looks - HEALTHY!

Independent (Read Projects done in-house)

It is better to employ an SEO company that gets all its job done in-house or atleast most of it. To cut costs, there are many unseemingly professional SEO's that outsource their work to third world nations to cut costs. It is found that you can easily trace whether or not the jobs by an SEO is done in-house by looking at the 'content quality' that they produce. If they have hired/outsourced SEOs from other countries at cheap rates, the content quality will obviously bring no good link juice to your site. So make sure your SEO is a company that is professionally - INDEPENDENT!

Watch out for SEO Companies that offer:

GUARANTEES -

In SEO you CANNOT offer GUARANTEES. Of course you could increase approval rates in quality submissions sites with exceptionally good content, but that's about it. It is all a matter of chance in SEO and that is the preferred "natural" or "organic" promotion you must aim for. Now for instance, on our website we offer page speed optimization service and guarantee a page loading speed of 90 and above. Hey, now that is okay, it is on site SEO and completely achievable. But when sites like these offer a guarantee on rankings, you need to get suspicious.

PAGE #1 RANKING -

I have said this a million times, to my customers and to my readers, page #1 rankings is like asking an assurance to win the presidential elections. There are so many factors and of course the count of votes that account for a successful political campaign and even then becoming a president is still unpredictable unless it actually happens. This is what happens in SEO, if you get page #1 rankings when all the ranking factors on your site works you know that your site deserves to be on page #1 of search engines. No SEO Company can ever predict a page #1 ranking for you BEFOREHAND! Also, a request to all those innocent webmasters, please stop expecting your SEO company to please you with such fake claims. Most often than not, demanding webmasters are responsible for the emergence of such SEO's.'

BLACK HAT SEO -

There are a few things in SEO that no outsourcing SEO company can help you with. In fact, there are a few things that no local SEO company can help with. Like for instance, writing customer reviews, getting hundreds of followers and fans on YOUR Business social media pages and so on. Please do not fall for SEO companies offering services that only works when they are naturally achieved.

UNREASONABLE RATES -

Watch out for SEOs that offer either too cheap quotes for a service that does not seem all that easy, or too huge a quote which is just PURE looting. How do you know this? Simple, compare similar sites for the rates that they offer. And if I were you, I would go for companies that offer the individual service costs on their website rather than wanting us to enter our information on contact forms to obtain SEO quote. I mean getting an SEO quote for a SEO package is understandable but let's say you just need to submit your company press release to press release directories. Why would you need a custom quote for that?

SUB-STANDARD COMMUNICATION -

This holds true for those SEO companies who can only be reached via telephone and chat. Well, this was a no brainer, the tougher it gets to get through your message to them, the more is the time and energy spent. Also, make sure you are not talking to just a single person. There are many single owner SEO's who are a one-stop-shop when it comes to communicating your project requirements. But by the time the project is executed you tend to realize not everything you said has been done. Human error is highly accentuated when there are multiple middlemen passing your message. So make sure you are able to speak directly to the staff that is executing various parts of your project, like writing and submissions and reporting. When the communication is done well enough the first time, you do not go over it again and again.

ASK NO QUESTIONS -

Some SEOs simply have some cookie-cutter work formats and refrain from asking questions to the customers. A good SEO will rack your brains out with a myriad of questions before executing the project. And why wouldn't they, they weren't around since the inception of the site, they thus deserve to know more about it. Do not get irritated by these questions, it is just a good sign that the SEO is concerned in perfecting their job before they start it rather than correcting the mistakes after everything's done.

Conclusion:

Landing at a genuine SEO Company depends on the questions you ask them, really. If you expect the Moon and the Stars from them, they will show you that. But if someone says "sorry we cannot promise you all those but we sure know what we do and if all the ranking factors work in your favor you will rank high eventually", that is the right SEO guy for you. There is no harm in educating yourself on some SEO factors and know-hows so that when you approach a company you do not seem like a client who can be fooled.

It is your website after all, you cannot leave it's SEO on auto-pilot and regret at a later stage that you should have involved yourself in the processes or supervised the various stages of SEO being executed on your site right at the beginining.

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SEO News

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SEO Company, Choosing SEO company, Best SEO Company, How to Choose the right SEO company, tips to ch

About Divya Fernando

I am Divi Fernando and I am an expert SEO author who is also into Business Development at Submitinme.com. I have loads of energy and I disperse it in varied tasks that involve writing, dancing, singing, strumming my guitar, drawing, photography, travel and adventure. I believe that 'You must take pleasure in what you do, or simply don't do it'. I take immense pleasure in my work as well as off-work activities and I'm always open to learn new things in life. My strengths are my positive attitude, confidence, innovative thinking and creativity. I also happen to talk too much about myself at times and never know where to stop. Thank goodness for the limited space, you must think .... more info