With so many businesses vying to provide your company with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, it seems daunting to analyze them all and pick one that best suits your needs.
However, if you’re that determined to gain traffics for your site and finally receive and increase sales from it, you can’t just neglect the idea of hiring one to aid your business.
Myriad of articles with tips and suggestions to hire an SEO agency have already flooded the internet. Now, guess it’s about time to tackle some costly mistakes individuals make when hiring an SEO partner.
As they say, “Wise is the man who learns from his mistakes but wiser is the man who learns from others’ mistakes.”
That being said, follow through this post to possibly sidestep making same mistakes in the process of picking an agency to optimize your place in the search engine results.
1. Wanting to get quick results
Here’s the thing: Regardless of the SEO agency you hire, be it a team of experts from SEO Philippines or some other known companies from the West, it isn’t right to assume they will be able to produce fast results. It is simply because web crawlers don’t work that fast. Moreover, say they can get you enough traffic in an ample of time. However, converting your visitors to clients still takes combined efforts from both ends.
When your website produces relevant contents, readers will likely spread the good words thus inviting more traffic to your site. Social media may not count to your site’s positioning in the search engine. Nonetheless, when paired up with SEO, it’s a great way to get more visitors to your site. But then again, just like SEO, social media results do not occur overnight. Therefore, signing with an SEO agency that promises an immediate surge in traffic is bound to be a waste of money.
In contrast, an agency that knows its business will be laying the groundwork for significant improvement during that first 30 days that will come to fruition over time, according to Inc. The payoff is not instantaneous, but it will be genuine in terms of gaining loyal customers.
2. Saying yes to a package deal
Some SEO firms offer neatly arranged packages with all the generic services tied up in an attractive bow. Even if you doubt that some of them apply to your business, it all looks easy and streamlined.
However, successful SEO programs are completely customized to the business user, according to Jonathan Long of The Huffington Post. Your program should be geared to your industry, your marketing goals and your keywords. Anything less is a simply a financial drain.
3. Not considering the agency’s credentials
Failing to thoroughly vet any SEO agency you think of hiring is a classic mistake of busy business people. A referral from a friend is indeed good. However, you have several other sources to confirm a specific company’s record.
You can preferably do some advance research that will make you save time and money. Like for instance, look for independent online reviews of SEO agencies and the ones you are considering in particular. Ask businesses (they have served or are serving) for references. Ask the SEO agent for a portfolio of his previous works and projects. Reserve making a decision until you are satisfied that the company has a proven reputation.
4. Selecting people without industry experience
Even though the basics of SEO span all industries, the technical points of linkage, keywords and analytics are best left to experts who understand the particular field. Else, you might find yourself paying for the time it takes for them to get up to speed or the mistakes they make due to inexperience.
5. Forgetting about the analytics
It’s better if you can assess the effectiveness of your SEO upgrade for the months and years. Having said that, ask prospect SEO agencies how, when and what they provide in terms of progress reports. A professional agency should deliver the statistics that go beyond Google rankings and website traffic figures. Such information should track how your site attracts new viewers, how many return for more information, who fills out forms and most importantly, how many convert to customers.