How do we evaluate a good marketing company for SEO?

When hiring an SEO company I would look at the following:

1. Results: Ask for (before/after) ranking and traffic results from current and previous clients.
2. Testimonials: Can the client provide testimonials from other clients.
3. Rankings: Does the Agency site rank for any relevant terms such as "seo services"
3: Price: Don't bother with SEO companies that promise first page rankings for relevant keyword with a $1000 budget. You will be wasting your money. At the same time, evaluate ROI. Guesstimate the traffic volume that you could achieve by having a number of first page rankings for relevant keywords and match that up against the value of a conversion.
Here is an example on how to guesstimate the value of a keyword for your campaign:
Item Sold: Dog Collar
Price per collar: $15

Highly competitive - highly search volume keyword
Keyword Example: Dog
Estimated searcher per month on Google: 30.5 million
Estimated visits for pages ranking on first page ( ~13 %) = 3.9 million visits
Average conversion rate: 1%
Revenue: $585,000/month

Medium competitive – medium search volume keyword
Keyword Example: Dog collar
Estimated searcher per month on Google: 300,000
Estimated visits for pages ranking on first page ( ~13 %) = 39000 visits
Average conversion rate: 1%
Revenue: $5850/month

Low competitive – low search volume keyword
Keyword Example: Dog stories
Estimated searcher per month on Google: 30,000
Estimated visits for pages ranking on first page ( ~13 %) = 3900 visits
Average conversion rate: 1%
Revenue: $585/month

This is an excellent question that all companies should ask before they hire a company to do SEO.

I would highly recommend asking your friends and colleagues if they have ever used an SEO company. Word-of-mouth referral is usually optimum in finding a company that can do the job right. Unfortunately there are a lot of flaky companies out there, so getting a referral is the best way to go. If nobody can refer you to a specific company, then I would do the following to research any company you find online:

1) Once you have the company name, do an internet search on the company. Type in "company name" + "reviews" or "company name" + "feedback" and see if you can find sites where other people have written about their services. Their own site will only show glowing testimonials, but other business sites may have some more honest feedback.

2) Look up who the principals are of this company and also do some research on them. Don't forget to check places like LinkedIn where personal recommendations might be available. See if they have a marketing background or something along those lines that qualifies them to do SEO marketing.

Once you contact a company, besides experience history, I would ask for the following information:

1) Ask them what sort of measures they put into place to show the work that is accomplished, and how often these reports are sent. For example, if they are link building for you, do they keep a spread sheet of each link gained so you can review and spot check?

2) Also ask them what strategies they use to increase search engine results (link building, site optimization, social media marketing, competitor site analysis, etc).

3) What is your link building method?

4) Find out how much of the campaign involves changes to your website. Will they review and optimize your website or do you need to bring in your developer to do that?

5) Ask them if they have several case studies that show the results they produced.

6) Find out if they have ever gotten a site penalized from doing SEO that the search engines don’t approve of. I have seen sites with keyword stuffing and bulk spam inbound links, and Google will kick them out all together if Google believes they are cheating the system. Also ask them if they have a no-spam policy. It’s important that they have some guidelines around this.

7) Ask the company for references. While of course they're going to give you good references, talking to an actual customer you can get more specifics about the company's services. I'd ask the reference:
- How were the people to work with? Did they communicate well?
- How long have they worked with this SEO company? High turnover is a red light.
- How did they show you progress?
- Did they educate you about SEO, or did you have figure things out on your own. To me this is very important so the client can understand the services they are buying.
- What kind of change did you see in your Internet traffic?
Did they measure this change for you, or did you do it yourself?
- Are you glad you hired this company?

8) And the biggest, most important piece of advice when hiring an SEO company: If they guarantee anything, get out of there. SEO implementation is an amorphous and ambiguous beast. There are no guarantees of results, only probabilities.

Hope this is helpful.
Regards,
Bonnie

Feel free to shoot me an email (christian@tsavoagency.com) or visit our site:
DoneSEO

Word of mouth. The good guys don't need to advertise, most don't, and many will waitlist you. 99.999999% of the other SEO Consultants chasing new business are terrible.

Most SMB SEO doesn't require a consultant. Have your stakeholders do a little weekend reading ( http://www.seobook.com or http://www.seomoz.org are good places to start) and you're going to knock out most of the on-page compliance issues.

90% (and that may be conservative) of SEO is linkbuilding. Sticking to that number 90% of linkbuilders are crap, 5% provide marketplace value, and the remaining 5% that are really proficient are likely building sites in competitive markets for themselves.

Having been in this business for nearly a decade at the highest level, there are maybe 3 firms who take clientwork that I'd recommend. They can provide you A-game with some integrity and a highly-professional engagement:

webuildpages.com
acsseo.com
seomoz.org

Buyer beware on just about everything else.

What Brian said.

I would also add that any SEO consultant you talk to needs to speak the language of business, focusing on achieving sales / leads and the prospective ROI that SEO can achieve in doing these things. Anyone who talks to you about the metrics of SEO instead of the metrics of business should be avoided at all costs.

Also, remember that many people think that SEO is the cure-all for a poor performing website...when in actuality, the business might (also) need help with web design, site architecture, copywriting, social media, etc.

If the SEO agency is working on a monthly retainer, ensure you know exactly what they are doing for that money. Too many agencies spin stories about 'building links', 'submitting articles', 'tweaking Meta data' and so on - but are actually doing nothing at all. If it's not clear what they are doing for their money, then likely as not, they are doing nothing to earn it. By the time you twig this, the project may be three, six or even twelve months old, and you have wasted a lot of money, for very little result.

Classic question and very open to opinion. You don't buy bread from a butcher and you don't get your pants hemmed at a bakery, you want to find a company that has a proven track record with verifiable credentials for your task. And that said, all things are not equal. Some seo firms are great at social media, some are bad. Some are great at PPC management, some lousy. Some good at organic, some not.

Like Elena's comments, certificates may be an indication of committment but not a seal of quality. Nor does ones own site ranking potential have anything to do with the quality of work for a client. A select few of our clients have literally 1,000's of page one Google results. We know it, they know it and their traffic knows it, but we don't preach it.

Your question: Do they offer seo to a competitor product or service? If they do, run away. If we have a client selling green widgets and you come along and want to rank high for green widgets, me taking your money is stealing from one of you.

2) Verifiable results. Can they give you case studies and live examples of rankings today?

3) Goals. What are your and does this company provide you with the path to get there. This may be the toughest of all questions. I dislike social media marketing and don't do well with it. If you wanted to build a buzz marketing campaign, we'd turn you down. If you just wanted PPC, we'd turn you down too. Not because we dislike it, PPC marketing (in our opinion) is a tepping stone to results and not a be-all sword. If you wanted organic traffic, ranking, links and the like, we're your firm.

Bottom line, you want to go from NY to LA and asking what's the best way to get there. It depends on you, NOT me. Understanding the product, the company, what your measure of success is will determine the right company for you. Better said, if you want to be #1 on Google and we build a successful buzz campaign regardless of sales or leads, we lost and you'll feel ripped off.

Wow, thank you for your incredible responses guys. I will definitely look into some of those books you guys recommended and I'll check out some of those websites you provided. Your insight is greatly appreciated and I'll be sure to contact you guys if I have any questions. Thanks again for your help and insight.

Lynn

It depends on what you're trying to achieve........

There are various aspects to consider, such as:

1) A badly built site, or a site with key content in Flash will be much harder to SEO (if not impossible)

2) A small site is easy to do, whereas a large site (thousand/millions of pages) is significantly harder and most companies can't do it properly (whatever they may claim!!)

3) To do it properly, using natural language techniques means the site and content must be built to present the data to a search engine in the correct way - as well as being easy for humans to read!

Most marketing agencies approach the process from a purely human perspective, without considering what the search engine is actually seeing, which may be very different!

For a large site, with '00,000s or even millions of pages, you need to look at the whole site through the eyes of a search engine and have the data spidered and analysed by professionals, so that you can then optimise the site ensuring it is easily readable by Google, etc. Very few, if any, Marketing Agencies are capable of doing this!

In short, if you have a standard corporate site with a few dozen pages, then a marketing agency is probably adequate, unless you operate in a highly competitive marketplace. If, however, you want to get it done properly, then you need to analyse the site and your approach in a completely different way.

Our biggest site has 15million pages and achieves top-place rankings for some of the most competitive terms on the web...... we didn't achieve this with a bit of link-building!

It is usually necessary to do a site make-over, because the structure of the site, the domain name, and the way the folders are named and placed has a big effect on the results. That is one reason why it is expensive.

A proactive marketing-minded SEO expert can develop a unique strategy to get the top ranking you want.

I do SEO on the side, while our start-up is launching and have been doing it for 8 years. Pricing for small sites is usually in the $6,000 - $9,000 range, because of the site changes necessary. It is very detailed work and it takes about three months.

While that may sound expensive, when you consider that the lifetime value of a customer for my clients is over $5,000, you can see it is an easy decision to make.

I never promise any specific results because that is unethical, but all my clients are at the top of the various search engines.

Search engine optimization is specifically, how to improve your rankings when you have alarge enterprise or corporate Web site. Learn how to takesome of the tips and tricks that would work for a smaller Website and leverage that for a larger corporate Web site for faster results and trust with Google.
Specifically addressed will be:

On-page SEO, including
»» Title Tags, Meta Data and URLs
»» Content
»» Internal Linking (helping the spiders find your site)
»» Blogs
Off-page SEO, including (factors outside your site that affect it)
»» Link-building
»» Getting New Links
»» Link Bait
»» Blogs
»» Social Media
Enterprise SEO: An Entirely Different Game Keep these in mind if you have a large corporate Web site. (Particularly if the URL has some tenure
in the Web world):
Large sites tend to have trust and authority. Opposed to a site just starting out, a »» corporate site that has
been around for a few years may already have hundreds or thousands of Web sites pointing to it and it’s already trusted in Google.
»» Large sites have thousands of pages; indexing can be difficult/tedious
»» On-page SEO for large sites is about 80% of ranking equation for a large corporate site; changes to
existing pages have tremendous impact on your site’s traffic and overall exposure.
»» New sites take several months to start ranking
»» New/small sites have little authority; on-page SEO is about 20% of ranking equation
Title Tags, Meta Data and URLs
There are several things you can do to increase search engine optimization based on your title tags
and other descriptors on your site:
Each page should have a unique title and Meta data, specific to the content on that »» page, featuring the
targeted words you want ranked.
»» Write titles and meta data with keywords targeted for users. The Meta data is what shows up in your
Google search. A properly written Meta tag can get more traffic at the number two spot than a poorly
written title tag at the number two spot.
»» When possible, each page should have the main keyword for that page in the URL, i.e.: …com/bluewidgets.
»» When dynamic URLs have been created via a database, and are long and messy (with equals signs and
question marks, etc.), use code to extract specifics in order to properly construct them with unique Meta
data. If you have a PHP Linux-based Web site, you can use things like Mod Rewrite to create searchengine
friendly static URLs, which is not only just helpful for Google, but also for the end user because
it’s easier to remember a short, static URL. It’s also easy to link to a URL like that.
Remember: When changing URLs to follow these guidelines, use 301 (permanent) redirects rather
than 302 (temporary) redirects. A 301 will tell Google that the old URL has been updated and this
is the new URL that should be swapped out in your index. That will make sure that your indexing is
clean and the new URL gets indexed right away and you hopefully don’t lose any slip in rankings.
How long should title tags be?
Title tags should be short and to the point. You don’t want to stuff them with keywords. It’s best
to keep them to about 8-9 words; 4-5 words is even better if you can manage it. Try to keep it as
succinct and targeted as possible.
Businesses should put the name of their company in the title tag throughout their site. This is an
important practice for enterprise companies where talking about their brand is paramount. You want
to make sure that your brand stays in all those title tags. If someone types in a key industry term
looking for a product similar to yours and they’re familiar with your brand and they see your brand in
the title tag, that can bring trust and help that person find you better. Whereas, if they just read the
keywords, they might not know who you are and might not trust you.
We do provide SEO service:
• Our SEO services are cost-effective. We aim at building your corporate image while creating a tremendous ROI.
• Discuss with you and narrow down the right Key words, Titles, Descriptions, and Meta tags for top ranking in search engines.
• Optimize pages by placing targeted keywords properly in the title tags.
• Analyze the competitor’s web sites to see how they fare in search engine rankings.
• Analyze your sites content to see if the current content is adequate to attract visitors, and make them stay interested in the web site.
• Submit web site to search engines, after analyzing your current visitor patterns, and after tuning the web pages continuously to improve your page rankings.
• Promote web site on the search engines and the Internet to get an impressive ROI.
• Identify the targeted visitor for your web site.
• Analyze the web site technically to optimize the code of each page for optimum results.

We understand the business and believe in working with companies, understand the value of an eminent search engine ranking. As an IT firm we apply innovation and perseverance in every project.

Hello Derek,

SEO is indeed one of the most important factors in the web development process and a very good SEO always guarantees maximum ROI for you.
A website cannot perform well without having proper place at search engines and gaining that position requires use of some techniques very effectively and efficiently..

I would like you to know Derek, that we have been in this business for over 9 years and have an experience of over 5000 web projects internationally.

We have provided our clients with the best SEO ratings and their website have continuously been among the top 3 ones at major search engines.

You can check out our portfolio at : http://www.fullestop.co.uk
or you can mail me directly at: nimit.jain@fullestop.com

Some of our clients websites are: www.timex.co.uk
www.timex.pl
www.shoelagoon.com
www.treather.com
www.upkeepers.co.uk
www.beadspoint.com

For our detailed portfolio, check our company website.
You can mail me at my email address, and I will send you the ways we employ SEO techniques.

Looking forward for your reply.

Hi,
I hope you are having a great day!
I am Aashi, Business Manager at MSSPL. We are a professionally specialized Search Engine Marketing Firm since 2002. We provide a wide range of affordable Internet- Related outsourcing services to our clients all around the globe. Our aim is to provide effective web promotion services so that our clients can get maximum benefits and business from their websites. We mainly focus on quality, and combine our company standard services with the campaign management to deliver superior marketing results for our clients by saving their time and cost.
Our Search Engine Optimization services include everything from the initial consultation and strategy of increasing visitors on the website to the vital comprehensive reporting on our results. We use ethical methods for promoting website and genuinely concerned about the performance and success of your business.
Our Search Engine Optimization service focuses on:-
1. Website Review
2. Keyword and Competition Analysis and Research
3. Traffic and Baseline search engine ranking report
4. On Page Optimization
5. Article Writing Submission
6. Securing Back links
7. Blog Comment Links
8. Directory Submission
9. Project Management
We create and execute various web promotion campaigns.
We offer effective services like:-
1. Website Designing and Development
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
3. PPC ( Pay Per Click Campaign)
4. Social Media Optimization Marketing (SMO)
We have vast experience in promoting websites of various industries like finance, shopping, tourism, retail, entertainment, dating, real estate, auto etc.
You can order for FREE website analysis and we will outline further promotional steps for your website. So allow our MSSPL team the opportunity to review your business website needs and then offer you a quote based on our knowledge of your desires. Please provide us with an overview of what you are looking for. We will do our absolute best to work with you to help bring your website on the TOP of search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Regards,
Aashi
Email ID - sales@bizarredesigns.com or reply to this e-mail directly.
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The best way to select an SEO company is to speak with their existing and previous clients. This way you would be able to perceive the effectiveness of their SEO services.