How to Be Sure You Have Hired the Best SEO Services for Your Business

SEO or search engine optimization can be a technical maze but every website must have it. Most businesses, small or big, might have an in-house team but usually prefer to hire professional SEO services. In the latter instance, how do you make sure that the SEO company you partner with is best for your business?

Businesses spend a lot on developing a good website and feel the work is done. It is like dressing up in your best outfit and then sitting in front of your idiot box with nothing else to do. Visits from search engines should contribute to at least 60% of overall traffic. But If your monthly traffic is just a couple of hundreds then your website is in a bad place and you need SEO help. More the traffic, the better the brand visibility, and the higher the conversion.

Among the numerous SEO companies out there how do you find a credible agency? Keep in mind, the best SEO company is subjective and depends on the goals you have. It is NOT “I want more leads”. If you get the traffic and if you have good conversion points on your website, leads will come in. So, how do you choose an SEO service, and more importantly, how do you stay away from “Black Hat SEO” agencies — these are the hyenas of the SEO world.

Stay clear of over-promising SEO agencies

As a business, you might not be familiar with the technicalities of SEO, in fact, many businesses find themselves in this boat. It is important that you still be able to identify a credible SEO agency from a scam. A bad SEO agency is one that uses fraudulent means (called Black Hat SEO) to increase traffic in a short span of time. It will harm your brand and can get your website penalized by search engines such as Google. Here is how to spot an over-promising SEO company.

Promising increase in traffic in a short time: Such ‘SEO experts’ will get you traffic in underhand ways. For example, showing unrelated content to users and redirecting them instead to your website. These link schemes or misleading redirects can bring traffic to your website but they will bounce. A high bounce rate tells Google that your site is not a quality site. You will see your organic traffic drop but it will be too late and very expensive to recover. There are many other tricks that Black Hat SEO companies do to get quick traffic.

If the SEO company you are considering hiring is offering you a guaranteed #1 ranking on Google Search — it’s time you run. It is a scam so don’t fall for it. Search engines like Google use over 200 ranking factors and no SEO company has a special relationship with Google to guarantee you results. It takes a lot of sustained work to get keywords on the first page of the search. The best SEO companies will guarantee you better results but they will also be transparent about the ways to achieve it.

I invite you to read the rest of my article: How to choose the best SEO company for your business