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What to look for when hiring a SEO company?
I would like some tips on what to look for when hiring a SEO company since I met with a few and they all look good and it seems like my opinion in who I want to pick is getting influenced by the "salesman" aspect instead of maybe what is best for me. also would you recommend a SEO specialist or a SEO company. Thank you for your time and efforts.
PS: please do not send me request to work. I will not respond I am just looking for information and do not want to be flooded with job requests. Thank you.
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31 Replies
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SEO specialist or an agency totally depends on your niche, scale, industry and goals.
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Agency is better. Biased, because I am an agency owner myself, but won’t reach out.
An agency comes with more than 1 person which is necessary in SEO. If you hire an SEO they won’t do Content, and a content person won’t do linking. So kinda interlinked.
Next, the agency comes with an organized working procedure while you’ll have to make sop for a specialist. Tough work.
An agency holds themselves (only good ones, and we too!). If an agency is good they will not only discount you prices but also double down efforts, for a specialist, they want salary and that’s all they care about. But for an agency they know their client is always on the lookout for.
What’s a good agency?
1. Someone who knows whitehat and got results
2. Someone who knows that goal of SEO isn’t just traffic but leads, unless you’re a blog
3. Someone that treats you as their boss.
4. Pricing. Usually there’s no thumb rule but for us we can say 1000-2000$ usually that comes with 15-30k words of content too.Happy to answer any questions that you might have.
Cheers. Happy hunting
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When hiring an agency, I focus on two key things: the likelihood of them getting the results I want, and how certain they are about achieving those results.
For the first part, I look for agencies with clients similar to my company in terms of type and stage. This gives me an idea if they can handle my specific context.
For the second part, I do aggressive reference checks. I mean really aggressive – I’ll ask for calls with 2-3 past customers for detailed 30-minute conversations. I ask about both the good and bad of working with the agency, including any issues that came up.
In my experience, good agencies are fine with this process. I used to worry reference checks would scare off the good ones, but they’re actually cool with it because they have clients who speak well of them.
If an agency is nervous about reference checks, that’s usually a red flag that their results might not be great.
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A legal, in-writing guarantee. People are going to reply and say I am crazy, but we’ve offered it for years and never failed to deliver on it.
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The best thing to do is to have an honest conversation and see if they are only selling you something random or, in fact, trying to help you.
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Just look at ROI only, if they are capable of achieving the targets
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No matter whoz u choose big brands to local seo agencies mostly resell their projects. They just work as a face but backend goes to third world countries like India philipines pakistan. They are just deal with u take their bigger cut near 50-60 and spending hardly 30-40%
What you gets
They get more money from u and hire a cheap one to work for u.
They show them very professionally but they are just a junk a gold digger
End of the story cut the middle man and deal with direct any expert who have experience in working on live projects.
No matter people show u a big success and big move but it’s all depends on many things it’s just a dream. Most of time you end with switching company and process start again from the starting
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What to look for when hiring a SEO company?
Look if they are faking their previous work.
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You May Find SEO Specialist On LinkedIn or Twitter, check their websites, case studies, and Results They Got for their clients, good seo specialist will give you clear idea about timeframe required for Getting Results Through SEO
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An interesting question that will open up a huge debate.
I started an SEO agency 16 years ago and having been in engineering I loved the challenge of engineering yourself to the top of the rankings.
Very early on I remember the phrase ‘Content is King’ and it has taken me 15 years to fully understand how powerful and valuable that statement is.
SEO is about trying to get the search engines to send you qualified traffic of people who may want to buy or do business with you. Over the years, the SEO industry has tried various tactics to influence search engines including professionally written content, backlinks, social platforms, reputation management (5-star reviews etc.) and many more.
The problem is search engines change their algorithms regularly so rankings can fluctuate and at the same time many SEO agencies (including ours) focussed on the main keywords such as Lawyer Dallas or Divorce Lawyer Dallas as these were considered the main keywords.
Now, with the introduction of AI tools, the industry is in a position to help clients in a way that wasn’t possible before due to time/budget constraints.
As an agency, we now provide 10 x 2000 word articles for our clients every month, which means over a 12 month period they will have an extra 240k words on their website.
Whereas before, agencies would be limited in targeting keywords to rank, now, we can target topics. So, for example, if you were a dentist providing cosmetic dentistry, you could have 10 articles per month added to your website all around the topic of cosmetic dentistry.
The search engines see your business as an expert on that topic and drive traffic for hundreds of keywords.
One of our clients who started adding content 10 months ago now has a full diary and the traffic to his website is for hundreds of different keywords and reaching potential clients 200 miles away here in the UK.
So yes, it has taken me 14 years to realise that ‘Content is still King’ and I would advise looking for a local agency that focuses on adding evergreen content that will turn your website into a valuable business asset.
Best of luck with your research 🙂
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If you have the budget, hire an inhouse seo specialist and supplement with an agency. Someone inhouse is good because they can help prioritize what you need out of an agency. Otherwise just go agency.
When considering any seo agency or specialist, also check out the sites they’ve worked on and start googling terms related to their sites. Its not a hard metric and it seems obvious, but most forget to do it.
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U have checked relevant references and the strategies to reach their goals?
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* Do they have their own site?
* Do they rank on the first page for at least 50 keywords on their own site?
* Is their website excellent in all technical metrics?
* Do they have real testimonials from real people?If so, that’s a good company you can rely on. Otherwise, why would you think they could do it for you if they can’t do it for themselves?
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Tangible results. A quality agency should be able to draw a line from their services to increased revenues in your bank account, and how they’ve done so for others in the past.
Experience in similar or adjacent industries is also important but not critical.
The difference between a freelancer and an agency is with a freelancer you’re usually only getting one individual, whereas with an agency you’re getting a team. Which to choose depends on what your needs are and how difficult your industry is from an SEO standpoint.
As a salesperson, it’s relatively straightforward to make SEO make sense – but as a consumer I suggest you try not to get too caught up in the buzzwords, terminology, etc. Focus on the questions they ask about your company and see if they can make suggestions that make sense.
Another thing to look for is if they come to the meeting prepared. Are they blasting you their standard pitch-deck? Or do they provide tailored information specific to your company?
If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot them here. Best of luck!
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There are actually very few people to get you the results you looking for sadly. This business and even this sub and thread full of a bunch of hacks.
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