Surprising as it may seem, SEO agencies are highly competitive and many of them resort to using less than ethical measures in order to get 'good' results for their clients. However, SEO agencies that use these methods can often not sustain their results, or even worse will end up getting your website penalised by Google. This could mean that you either drop several places in the rankings, or that you're not seen by Google at all.
In order to find a good SEO agency there are a few questions you need to ask the company and yourself, before committing to a contract. Here are our top five tips for finding on of the good agencies.
Automation
Automation in SEO is rife. It saves the agencies both time and money, and allows them to feed you impressive statistics about the amount of backlinks to your site they are creating.
Automation covers a whole host of things. For example, an SEO agency may set up an automated system to comment on blogposts and in forums in order to get people to click through to your site. The problem with this if it's done badly is that the things they are writing will have little relevance to the blog they are posting on, or the content of your website. Not only is it arguably wrong to spam another person's blog with unwanted comments, but those who do click through probably won't spend very long on your site.
Manually submitting articles and relevant posts to forums may take longer, but it is a more organic way to link build. It also gives a higher chance of relevant traffic coming to your site.
Quality vs. Quantity
If an agency offers you a multitude of article and blog submissions then be wary. Quality and quantity are both important, however do not accept sub-par submissions just because there is a large amount of them. Quality writing is more likely to bring in a better ROI for your website.
Monthly Reports
Results often take time to occur and thus it is important that your SEO agency updates you regularly. They should be open and honest about how statistics are changing, and nothing should be kept from you. The agency should review each month, deciding whether or not they need to shift focus or continue in the same direction.
Time
If an agency promises you incredibly fast results, you should probably exercise some caution. Google is often suspicious of those who manage to get to the top of the rankings very quickly, and often these results cannot be sustained over a long period of time. A longer contract with an SEO agency will ensure that results are delivered over time and thus sustained over time.
On-page & off-page
On-page SEO is as important as off-page SEO. Even if the agency are not designing your website from scratch then if you ask, they should be able to update your site, or at least offer suggestions that your web team can implement, so that it has a better chance of ranking well. Many SEO agencies focus solely on the off-page work as they feel it is more heavily weighted than on-page work, but the importance of on-page SEO should not be underestimated in this way.
This, of course, is not a comprehensive list of everything you need to look out for. However, it is a good starting reference for when you are looking for the appropriate SEO agency for your website.
Kingpin SEO are experts in the SEO field. They use ethical link building and offer website design in order to gives your website the best possible chance for success. |
