Things To Look-Out for Before Hiring an SEO Agency
Every business wants to take advantage of Search Engine Optimization as it is widely popular for generating traffic and leads. Since it is an organic form of marketing, SEO attracts more relevant traffic to the website, unlike Pay-Per-Click.
However, if you are a business dealing with other businesses and operating on a B2B model, then you must use SEO to your advantage. It will help you generate more leads and give you a chance to convert those leads to customers.
There are plenty of elements involved in optimizing a website. But, implementing SEO tactics is not as easy as it sounds. To effectively optimize a website, one has to optimize the images, website content, the structure of the links, page loading speeds, and other things.
Putting the company’s time and resources to optimize the website might deviate the focus from the company’s core objective. Therefore, it is advisable to hire a B2B SEO company to do the necessary optimizations for you.
But, when it comes to hiring an agency, you must be very careful since you have agencies from around the world to choose from.
So, here are some things that you should look-out for while hiring an SEO agency.
- Unrealistic Promises
Generally speaking, it is wise to not trust an agency that makes promises which sound too good to be true. There are high chances of their plans being ineffective.
The business environment for SEO agencies is highly competitive, and many often make promises they can never keep.
So, if the agency promises you first page rankings within a month, you must stay away from them. It requires a lot of time and effort to get high rankings on Google.
On the other hand, if they set realistic expectations and walk you through the progress, they can probably be trusted.
- Case Studies or Success Stories
It has become mcommon to see claims of being an SEO expert. But, as a rational consumer, you must always check your potential agency’s past clients. So, you must ask them to give samples of their SEO work with legitimate reports that indicate their performance.
To cross-check the samples, you can do a quick search yourself.
Furthermore, if they seem defensive to provide you with any case studies or reports, that is a red flag.
- Experience in the Industry
The SEO industry is highly dynamic, making it difficult for many to cope with the pace.
However, when you are hiring an agency, you expect them to adapt to the changes.
So, ensure that the agency has a team of true experts that can help you understand and optimize your website with the latest developments in the SEO industry.
Get on an in-depth call with the team and research the individuals on LinkedIn to assess their credibility and experience.
- White Practices
The practices and tactics that an agency employs is an indicator of their credibility. Many fake SEO experts might take advantage of quick and easy black-hat SEO practices to get you the rankings. However, search engines have some measures in place to prevent such sites from ranking high. If any black hat practice is detected, a search engine can block your website.
So, you should ask them to give you a report of the strategies that they might implement on your web property.
- Deliverables
No matter how good aB2B SEO agency is, it would be difficult to work with them without clear expectations of deliverables. Before hiring them, clear the exact deliverables, frequency of reports, milestones, and other specific goals.
Also, you must ask what can be considered a successful campaign to have clear expectations.
If an agency is not able to provide you with clarity on the deliverables, you must keep looking for other agencies.
While searching for a reliable SEO company, these are a few things that you can keep in mind to make an informed decision for best results for your SEO marketing campaign.
