How to Choose an SEO Agency in 2022?

As the basics of SEO are still being understood by business owners and managers, they are often left disgruntled by their SEO companies, largely due to a lack of tangible results in the long term. This article is designed to help you: avoid costly mistakes and Google penalties; choose a good SEO provider; and get the best SEO results out of them.

Yes, SEO is Lucrative, but only when done right, which requires a combination of good technical understanding of Google’s algorithm, strong web development skills and a strategically-sound marketing approach.

SEO Pitfalls should be avoided! A number of “blackhat” activities in SEO, which, in spite of fetching some results in the beginning, could attract a manual or algorithmic Google penalty, seriously hurting the long-term visibility of your website on Google, and therefore swallowing up a large part of your online revenue.

Successful SEO work requires specific expertise, talent and skills that come together and put in a good amount of manual work over several months. So, it’s impossible to cut costs without cutting corners. But, some salespeople tend to sell discounted SEO packages that aren’t sustainable.

Tip 1: Don’t fall for cheap SEO packages; you’re better off not doing any SEO at all! It’s impossible to do any meaningful SEO for less than a certain amount. If a potential client asks for SEO less than what’s feasible for us to show results, we politely decline their business.

“Discount baits”, could lock you in for a long time before you’ve properly tested them out and seen any tangible performance.

Tip 2: Don’t fall for discounted lock-in contracts. You should be happy to pay a little more to keep them on their toes at all times. We offer month-to-month rollover contracts so you’re free to leave whenever you wish.

It hardly takes any effort to rank high for keywords with low search volumes. For example, if you are selling shoes online, ranking you on the first page of Google, for a keyword such as “buy shoes” is probably more than a thousand times more difficult, than for a keyword such as “shiny black shoes with laces online”.

Tip 3: Ask for monthly search volumes in your geographical region for the keywords they are showing you the performance for. Monthly Search volume is simply the average number of people using the keyword on Google in a month; or in other words, the popularity of the keyword. This can be found on Google’s keyword tool. All our reports have the average monthly search volume against each keyword.

Many agencies tend to produce reports that hide, rather than reveal, a large part of the truth. Every report needs to have the most important performance metrics, such as keywords, their search volumes, and your Google ranks, at the very least.

Tip 4: Manually check Google ranks for at least for some of the important keywords regularly. Ask for just a simple report with the above metrics. We always present the most important performance SEO metrics as they are.

Our clients often tell us that all other agencies they have worked with employed this technique to some degree.

Tip 5: Tell them that you want things in simple terms and that you just want to see search volumes and rank growth on Google for each of the keywords you’ve chosen. We break things down for you every step of the way.

Google improves its algorithm in favour of user experience every few months. With each improvement, the SEO landscape is slightly changed.

Tip 6: Ask for Details on Recent Updates on Google and the way SEO is evolving, so you can improve your website, and content to further accelerate your SEO performance. We spend a big portion of our revenue on R&D and provide regular updates to you to keep you informed.

While it’s true that many aspects of your website need to be coded well, for good SEO growth, an honest SEO provider should be able to make reasonable judgments on the quality of any website ahead of signing you up.

Tip 7: Before you sign a contract ask them if there is any major change needed. We always tell you about all key issues on your website before we begin and then stagger smaller improvements along the way.

A link could be worth $5 or $50,000 depending upon the value it adds to your SEO performance. The best links that help you get good SEO growth are totally manually produced, which are labour-intensive.

Tip 8: Go through the links and the posts they come from to assess their quality. We have multiple levels of approval of every aspect of every link we produce.

While several SEO providers know little about SEO, the third-parties they outsource it to, know even less.

Tip 9: Ask them if any of the work is outsourced and what the qualification is of those doing the actual work. We have our own team and manage every piece of work ourselves.

When you ask challenging questions, some SEO providers tend to not respond or dodge the question in a clever way by sending you a report.

Tip 10: Ask them for direct answers to your questions and challenge them where required. We’re always just a call or email away from you.

If we can help with any aspect of your SEO, please feel free to get in touch for a free audit & consultation, or explore our results-driven SEO Packages delivered by industry-leading experts.