How to Choose a Reliable SEO Company For Your Business

 A reliable and trustworthy SEO company can help your business grow by establishing your digital brand and ensuring that you have the best possible Internet presence.

A lot of companies fail to take advantage of the Internet because the SEO experts they hire, do not have the necessary experience or knowledge to identify new markets and explore new opportunities.

The importance of reliability in SEO

I am insisting on the matter of reliability and trustworthiness because after talking with a couple of our latest clients, I realized that they have experienced a sudden drop in traffic after they hired an ‘SEO company’ that did all sorts of tricks on their account.

So, choosing a reliable SEO firm is not only important for progress but it is also necessary in order to avoid losing your traffic potential due to bad SEO practices.

Step 1 – Decide why you need to hire an SEO Company

Before actually choosing which SEO firm you will trust, it is important to decide and have clear in your mind, the reasons you need to hire an SEO firm in the first place.

In my opinion you should consider hiring an SEO or digital marketing firm when:

You don’t have a have website and you need to build a proper Internet presence from the beginning  (It may be a surprising figure but according to Google, 58% of US businesses do not have a website)

• You have a website but you are not getting any traffic
• You have a website, you are getting traffic but not customers (i.e. conversions)
• You have a website but it is not optimized for search engines, social media or users
• You want to improve your internet presence
• You want  to find new customers in other digital markets i.e. mobile

Step 2- Where can you find a good SEO firm?

SEO firms live online; they are not the kind of companies that need to be in your neighbourhood.

In the majority of the cases all communication is carried out via email, or skype and there is absolutely no reason for a site visit.

This method is actually faster and it also costs less.

So, where can you find good SEO Companies?

1) Word of mouth – Ask you friends (either your real friends or your friends on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn) if they have a recommendation to make.

Knowing that a company did good work on someone else’s web property is a very positive factor.

2) Click on the ads – When you search for terms like ‘reliable seo company’ or ‘seo services’ you will see a number of ads on top of the search results.

These are PPC ads and companies that their ads are displayed, invested a good amount of money to secure one of the top positions.

In order to get a good ROI they have to provide for a good service otherwise they will not be able to survive in the long term.

3) Organic rankings – The same rules apply for organic rankings. Companies that appear in the first positions of the SERPs have already invested a good amount of time and money, which is another signal that they take their business seriously.

In addition, if they can find customers online for their own needs, they can do it for you as well.

Step 3- How to assess the reliability of a SEO company?

Regardless of how you will find the company to hire, it is always advisable to do a bit of assessment before making your final decision.

I have talked about this before (read this article for more details: what to look for when hiring an seo company), but in general a quick way to assess the reliability of a company is by looking at the services they offer and making sure that:

They are not making unreal promises – Don’t trust anyone that is promising first page rankings (either in Google or other search engines).

If you see something like ‘We can get you to the top of Google Search’, in simple words it means that they don’t know what they are doing.

Too good to be true promises are equivalent to fake promises and you need to stay away.

They can explain what actions they will do – Although your goal is to hire a professional firm to handle your Internet presence without having to worry about SEO or digital marketing, this does not mean that you shouldn’t know what methods they will use to increase your website rankings or get more traffic.

If they can’t explain exactly what they will do and all they tell you is about ‘building links’ then forget about them, they can do more harm to your website than good.

They have a clear pricing scheme – The most appropriate pricing scheme for SEO services is either per day or per hour.

It is best to ask for this in advance so that you know how much you will have to pay. I

also suggest you read: how to outsource SEO without paying a fortune for getting the highest possible return from your SEO investment.

Ask them to do a SEO Audit first – Another way to evaluate the work of an SEO is to ask them to do an audit of your website. A SEO Audit does not cost much, but it’s a quick way to evaluate the effectiveness off the company.

If you are happy about their work you can continue with buying more services.

Talk to them – Don’t forget about the traditional methods i.e. make a meeting. In this case it can be a virtual meeting using Skype or Google+ but you can still ask questions and interview your prospective partners.

Step 4- What you should know about SEO?

If you have knowledge about a subject (even basic), it makes it easier to do negotiations or even challenge a method proposed by your SEO.

It is very difficult to cover everything you need to know in a single post but for starters you can have a look at this article: What is search engine optimization and why it is important.

Besides understanding the terminology it is advisable to:

Go for a long term plan – It may take more than a couple of months to get results from your SEO efforts.

The competition is huge and search engines need time to process the data they capture from websites.

It is therefore more appropriate to hire an SEO for a number of months rather than a couple of months without any return.

The duration of their work is something that you need to discuss with them and agree before signing any contract.

SEO is not about building links (and it never was) – True SEO has nothing to do with link building.

In the near past many ‘companies’ associated SEO with cheap link building techniques and many people still believe that the work of an SEO is to build links but this is far from true.

The job of an SEO is to ensure that a website is secure, fast, user friendly and with good ranking positions on all major search engines.

It’s not about SEO anymore- A successful SEO campaign incorporates actions from digital marketing like social media marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing etc.

The main focus is still on the website and how to optimize it for search engines but for optimum results you need to look for areas outside the boundaries of the website as well.

Step 5- It’s all in the results

One of the most interesting things about the internet is that everything is measurable.

There are metrics and reports that can help you measure and monitor the activity of your website in terms of incoming visits, time users spend on site, pages they visit and many more .

What you can do is start looking at these metrics and if after 6-7 months the SEO Company you hired did not manage to bring in more traffic then possibly you need to consider changing your contract.

The best way is to discuss with them first and hear what they have to say having always in mind that changes to a website may take time to generate positive or negative results.

As a rule of thumb 6-7 months is a good period to judge the effectiveness of any SEO techniques.

Conclusion

Even if you are a small business owner, a blogger or an online shop owner, you need to ensure that you have the best possible Internet presence and that you are taking advantage of all digital channels.

If this is something you cannot do yourself either because you don’t have the time or knowledge then it is more preferable to hire a professional, reliable and trustworthy SEO firm to do it for you.

Before hiring an SEO make sure that: you know what they will do, how much you will have to pay and what to expect as a result.

Don’t believe in too good to be true promises and if they don’t produce decent results after 6-7 months then consider terminating your contract.

Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO

 

Many brands and businesses know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their digital properties, and the benefits they will get from that SEO work being implemented on their behalf.

SEO will certainly improve a website’s overall searchability and visibility, but what other real value does it offer? Why is SEO so important?

These 12 reasons should offer some clarity, regardless of the industry or business size, as to why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level.

1. Organic Search Is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic

Organic search is a huge part of most business’s website performance, as well as a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement.

As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and the many, many others.

That’s not to say that all search engines don’t contribute to a brand’s visibility — they do — it’s just that Google owns about 75 percent of the overall search market. It’s the clear-cut leader and thus its guidelines are important to follow.

But the remaining 25 percent of the market owned by other engines is obviously valuable to brands, too.

Google, being the most visited website in the world (as well as specifically in the United States), also happens to be the most popular email provider in the world (with more than 1 billion users). Not to mention YouTube is the second biggest search engine.

We know that a clear majority of the world that has access to the internet is visiting Google at least once a day to get information.

Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines is always going to work in a brand’s favor. Quality SEO and a high-quality website takes brands there.

2. SEO Builds Trust & Credibility

The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search with thanks to the trust and credibility of the brand and its digital properties.

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Many elements go into establishing authority regarding search engines like Google. In addition to the factors mentioned above, authority is accrued over time as a result of elements like:

Quality backlink profiles.

Positive user behavior.

Machine-learning signals.

Optimized on-page elements and content.

But establishing that authority will do more for a brand than most, if not all, other digital optimizations. Problem is, it’s impossible to build trust and credibility overnight — just like real life. Authority is earned and built over time.

Establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, effort, and commitment, but also relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that allows customers to trust a brand.

3. Good SEO Also Means a Better User Experience

Everyone wants better organic rankings and maximum visibility. Few realize that optimal user experience is a big part of getting there.

Google has learned how to interpret a favorable or unfavorable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.

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Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer.

A clear example of building a strong user experience is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offering the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for users.

The intention of that is offering users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily.

Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favor.

4. Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions

With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of small- and medium-sized businesses’ success.

Local SEO aims at optimizing your digital properties for a specific vicinity, so people can find you quickly and easily, putting them one step closer to a transaction.

Local optimizations focus on specific towns, cities, regions, and even states, to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging on a local level.

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SEO pros do this by optimizing the brand’s website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as local listings relevant to the location and business sector a brand belongs to.

To promote engagement on the local level, SEO pros should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, its Google My Business listing, and its social media profiles as a start.

There should also be a strong emphasis on user reviews on Google, as well as other reviews sites like Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (among others), depending on the industry.

5. SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle

Customers do their research. That’s one of the biggest advantages of the internet from a buyer perspective.

Using SEO tactics to relay your messaging for good deals, groundbreaking products and/or services, and the importance and dependability of what you offer customers will be a game changer.

It will also undoubtedly impact the buying cycle in a positive way when done right.

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Brands must be visible in the places people need them for a worthy connection to be made. Local SEO enhances that visibility and lets potential customers find the answers, and the businesses providing those answer.

6. SEO Best Practices Are Always Being Updated

It’s great to have SEO tactics implemented on a brand’s website and across its digital properties, but if it’s a short-term engagement (budget constraints, etc.) and the site isn’t re-evaluated consistently over time, it will reach a threshold where it can no longer improve because of other hinderances.

The way the search world evolves, basically at the discretion of Google, requires constant monitoring for changes to stay ahead of the competition and, hopefully, on Page 1.

Being proactive and monitoring for major algorithm changes is always going to benefit the brands doing so.

We know Google makes thousands of algorithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be extremely difficult to come back. SEO pros help to ensure that is avoided.

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7. Understanding SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web

With the always-changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place.

But staying on top of SEO includes being in the loop for the major changes taking place for search.

Knowing the environment of the Web, including tactics being used by other local, comparable businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial for those brands.

8. SEO Is Relatively Cheap

Sure, it costs money. All the best things do, right?

But SEO is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things, and the payoff will most likely be considerable in terms of a brand’s benefit and bottom line.

This isn’t a marketing cost; this is a true business investment. Good SEO implementation will hold water for years to come. And, like most things in life, will only be better with the more attention (and investment) it gets.

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9. It’s A Long-Term Strategy

SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken, and many of those actions will have an impact that lasts more than several years.

As the market evolves, yes, it’s best to follow the trends and changes closely. But even a site that hasn’t had a boatload of intense SEO recommendations implemented will improve from basic SEO best practices being employed on an honest website with a decent user experience.

And the more SEO time, effort, and budget that is committed to it, the better and longer a website stands to being a worthy contender in its market.

10. It’s Quantifiable

While SEO doesn’t offer the easier-to-calculate ROI like that of paid search, you can measure almost anything with proper tracking and analytics.

The big problem is trying to connect the dots on the back end since there is no definitive way to understand the correlation between all actions taken.

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Still, it is worth understanding how certain actions are supposed to affect performance and growth, and hopefully they do.

Any good SEO is going to be aiming at those improvements, so connecting the dots should not be a challenge.

Brands also want to know and understand where they were, where they are, and where they’re going in terms of digital performance, especially for SEO when they have a person/company that is being paid to execute on its behalf.

There’s no better way to show the success of SEO, either. We all know the data never lies.

11. SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light

High-quality SEO will always find a means of discovering and leveraging new opportunities for brands to, not just be discovered, but to shine.

Offering quality SEO to brands means submersing an SEO team in everything that is that brand. It’s the only way to truly market a brand with the passion and understanding that brand’s stakeholders have for it: becoming a stakeholder.

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The better a brand is understood, the more opportunities will arise to help it thrive. The same can be said about SEO.

12. If You’re Not on Page 1, You’re Not Winning the Click

It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re likely not killing the organic search game.

A recent study shows that the first three organic search ranking positions result in nearly 40 percent of all click-throughs, while up to 30 percent of all results on Page 1 and 2 don’t get clicked at all.

What’s this mean? Two things:

If you’re not on Page 1, you need to be.

There are still too many instances when a user types a search query and can’t find exactly what it’s looking for.

Simple and Free SEO Tools to Instantly Improve Your Marketing

 Whenever I dream up a home improvement project for my place, I end up working smartest and fastest when I have the right tools at my disposal. It’s amazing the difference a good tool can make – and the extra time it takes to get work done without a helpful tool.

Fast-forward to online marketing. How can you work smarter and faster with SEO?

It starts with having the right tools.

I’ve collected a big sampling of the best free SEO tools on the market—tools with a wide variety of uses and covering a number of common needs. These tools are fast, free, and easy-to-use. I hope you find one or two (or twenty) you can put to good use, today.

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

Check the speed and usability of your site on multiple devices

Enter a URL, and this tool will test the loading time and performance for desktop and for mobile, plus identify opportunities to improve (and pat you on the back for what you’re doing well). The mobile results also come with a user experience score, grading areas like tap targets and font sizes.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Alternatives: Pingdom, WebPageTest, and GTmetrix

2. Moz Local Listing Score

See how your local business looks online

Moz crunches data from more than 10 different sources—including Google, Yelp, and Facebook—to score your brick-and-mortar business on how it looks online. Results come complete with actionable fixes for inconsistent or incomplete listings.

Moz Local Listing

3. Keywordtool.io

Hundreds of keyword ideas based on a single keyword

Enter a keyword, and the Keyword Tool provides a huge handful of long-tail keyword opportunities and common questions asked.

Keyword Tool

Alternative: Answer the Public, Ubersuggest

4. Google Analytics

Complete web stats and search insights

In addition to tracking pretty much every bit of traffic you could imagine on your website, Analytics also surfaces many keyword insights as to which terms people use to land on your pages.

You can get this data either under Acquisition > Search Console > Queries or Acquisition > Campaigns > Organic Keywords.

Google Analytics

Alternative: Matomo, Open Web Analytics, and Clicky

5. Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools

Constant website analysis, alerts, and error reports

These webmaster tools help give you a taste of what the two top search engines think of your site. It’s helpful to see any bugs, alerts, and indexing issues.

Pro tip: Each of these two tools requires a bit of installation on your site. If you’ve got a WordPress website, you can add the webmaster code automatically through a plugin like Jetpack or Yoast.

Google Search Console

6. Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker

Comprehensive link analysis

The free version of Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker shows the top 100 backlinks to any website or URL, along with the total number of backlinks and referring domains (links from unique sites), Domain Rating (DR), and URL Rating (UR) where applicable.

Pro tip: Paste in a competitors website to find instant link opportunities.

Ahrefs Backlink Checker

7. Moz Link Explorer

Complete overview of your website, pages, and links

The free version of Link Explorer gives you a quick look a full range of link analysis, including a look at the most impactful links coming your way and your most linked-to pages.

Moz's Link Explorer

8. Google Keyword Planner

Know what people search for

Enter a keyword or group of keywords into the tool, and Google will return all sorts of helpful stats to guide your keyword strategy: monthly search volume, competition, and even suggested terms you might not have considered.

Google Keyword Planner

9. Google.com in an Incognito Window

Discover auto-fill opportunities

Searching Google.com in an incognito window will bring up that all-familiar list of autofill options, many of which can help guide your keyword research. The incognito ensures that any customized search data Google stores when you’re signed in gets left out. Incognito may also be helpful to see where you truly rank on a results page for a certain term.

Google in an Incognito Window

10. Google Trends

See the relative search popularity of topics

Google Trends shows the popular search terms over time, which is useful for uncovering seasonal variations in search popularity amongst other things. Compare multiple terms to see the relative popularity.

Google Trends

11. Ahrefs SEO toolbar

Instant SEO metrics for web pages and Google searches

See how much traffic the current web page gets each month, how many keywords it ranks for, how many backlinks it has, and more. Also shows the search volume, CPC and difficulty of every keyword searched in Google

Ahrefs' SEO Toolbar

Alternative: MozBar

12. SEO Web Page Analyzer

Get a full on-page analysis of your website

SEO Web Page Analyzer performs a comprehensive on-page analysis to uncovers issues like as missing image alt tags, heading structure errors, and page bloat.

Web Page Analyzer

Alternatives: HubSpot Website Grader, SEO Analyzer

13. SERP Simulator

Preview how your web pages will look in Google’s search results

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See how your meta title and description will appear in the search results before you even publish your web page. Works for desktop and mobile. Check for truncation issues and fix them instantly.

SERP Simulator

14. Schema Creator

Customize how your web pages appear in the search results

Create custom code so that your reviews, events, organizations, and people are displayed the way you want in Google’s search results. Once you’ve created your schema code, copy and paste into your website.

Here’s an example of Schema in action:

Schema

15. SimilarWeb

View site stats for any domain

Use this tool to estimate how much traffic a website gets. See a breakdown of traffic sources, locations, and more. A helpful tool for competitor research.

SimilarWeb

16. SERP Robot

See your ranking position for up to five keywords

Enter any website or web page and up to five keywords to see where you rank for each of them. Check your competitors’ rankings too.

SERP Robot

17. XML Sitemaps

Build a sitemap

Simply enter your site’s URL and some optional parameters, and XML Sitemaps will create a sitemap that you can upload to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Free up to 500 pages.

XML Sitemaps

18. Browseo

See your website the way a search engine sees it

Enter your site, and this tool will strip out everything but the guts, revealing your website the way search spiders see it. This particular view can be helpful to see the hierarchy you’ve given particular elements (maybe without realizing it!).

Browseo

19. SEO Site Checkup

Audit your website for on-page and technical SEO issues

Site Checkup runs through a fast audit of your site, checking for proper tags and surfacing any errors that might come up.

SEO Site Checkup

20. Yoast SEO

Suggestions for search engine optimizing your blog posts

Enter the main keyword for your blog post and Yoast SEO will suggest how to tweak your blog post to optimize it for search engines.

Yoast SEO

21. LinkMiner

Instantly find broken links on any web page

LinkMiner is a simple Chrome extension that checks the HTTP status of all links on the current web page. All broken (404) links are highlighted red. A useful tool for discovering broken link building opportunities.

Link Miner

22. Google Business Review Link Generator

Create a link for customers to review your business on Google

Customer reviews are important for local SEO purposes. This tool allows you to create a shareable link for customers to review your business on Google.

Google Business Review Link Generator

23. Copyscape

Check for duplicate content

Enter a URL for a blog post or website, and Copyscape can tell you where else that content exists online. You might find results that you’ll need to follow-up with to help get your SEO in order.

Copyscape

24. Robots.txt Generator

Easily generate an all-important robots.txt for your site

Robots.txt files let the web robots know what to do with a website’s pages. When a page is disallowed in robots.txt, that’s instructions telling the robots to completely skip over those web pages. There are some exceptions in which case a robots.txt might be ignored, most notably malware robots that are looking for security issues.

Robots.txt Generator

25. Structured Data Testing Tool

Structured data helps to provide context to the information on your page. This tool from Google uses live data to validate the structured data for any web page, or you can copy/paste code to test it.

Structured Data Testing Tool

Further resources

Putting together a list of free SEO tools can be a daunting task. There are hundreds out there! I aimed to grab the ones that we’ve found valuable here at Buffer and the ones you can use via the web within minutes to get some amazing insights.