10 things to look out for when choosing an SEO company.
SEO is big business and the right company can produce exceptional rewards for your business but with so many SEO companies springing up every week or claiming to be the best, how do you seperate the wheat from the chaff?
Many businesses fall prey to deceptive advertising and end up paying good money for poor results. With so many companies offering top 10 positions, guaranteed results and more we’ve listed 10 things to look out for before engaging an SEO company.
1. Be wary of self proclaimed “Number 1″ SEO companies. Such companies tend to use aggressive sales tactics to attract unwary clients. Their websites will display pages optimised for phrases such as “Number 1 SEO Company in London, Edinburgh, UK” etc. The simple fact is that there is no such thing as a Number 1 SEO company. There is no league table and these are nothing but deceptive advertising claims designed to hook you in.
2. Be wary of companies who publish deceptive number 1 results for their clients. Often these companies will display results for their clients on phrases that are very poor or required no SEO to achieve. These phrases often include brand names or product names.
For example:
“Acme company christmas candles” – this phrase requires no skill to rank number 1
whereas
“christmas candles” requires a lot of skill to rank number 1.
3. Be wary of the “big” SEO companies. Often they will have you believe that because they’re big they’re better. The simple fact is that size does not matter at all in SEO, it’s results that count!
Often, big companies are only interested in big clients and most definitely big fees. Big fees have to finance big overheads and big salaries. Big SEO companies also have high staff turnover and unless you’re a big client you can be just a number so service levels may not be what you would expect.
We have regularly produced better results for our clients, many of whom have had previous experiences with big companies. Our fees are on average 50% lower than the big SEOS so ask yourself – why pay twice as much for the same results?
4. Be wary of self proclaimed “original” SEO companies.
There are countless so called SEO companies claiming to have been doing SEO since 1995 so it’s safe to brush aside such claims. Google didn’t emerge in any capacity till around 1998 and the term Search Engine Optimisation wasn’t even coined till around 1997. In Scotland the internet was fledgling and very few companies were offereing SEO at all – we should know – we knew who our competitors were.
The fact remains that many of these self proclaimed original SEO companies were nothing more than web design companies who jumped on the SEO bandwagon around 2001 when SEO became popular. Bear in mind too, that some of these old hands are still using outdated SEO techniques.
5. Beware of SEO firms displaying awards, accreditations and other accolades. These are entirely deceptive and have nothing whatsoever to do with any professional standard. SEO is as yet an unregulated industry with no officially recognised body. Accreditations can be bought and even Google accreditation does not mean good SEO. Remember this – Google is still a commercial company with a secret algorithim. They are not an officially recognised institute such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants so Google accreditation does not mean quality SEO. Many of the best SEO companies have no accreditation whatsoever – they just get great results.
6. Avoid any company giving guaranteed results. No one (except Google, Yahoo etc) can guarantee a result.
7. Avoid any company claiming to know or have cracked the Google algorithim. No one except Google knows this.
8. Avoid any SEO company who guarantees you specific traffic. No one can guarantee you specific traffic.
9. Avoid any company who guarantees sales/conversions. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink as they say. No one can guarantee sales or conversions.
10. Avoid at all costs any SEO firm who offers you a set package. Even two companies selling the same product will require different levels of SEO.
Great post. One of the hardest things is selling something that can’t be ‘guaranteed’ especially when every day a company gets calls offering ‘No 1′ or ‘the top spot’! I know someone who was stung by that recently. Unfortunately they were an older couple who just trusted someone who sounded like they knew what they were talking about. The result? They are about 2 grand down with on a tiny amount of PPC for searches that mean nothing to their company (and certainly aren’t terms their customers would be searching for).
Hi,
Some very well made points, especially size isn’t everything! However, the article is quite negative, even though the points are valid and well made. Would be nice to understand what you consider to be positive attributes for SEO partners?
At e-inbusiness we provide SEO services as part of our eMarketing team. We don’t promise results, we always explain that whilst some elements of SEO can have an immediate impact (and we stress “can”), SEO is a long-term strategic project and it should be planned with goals and those goals should be regularly evaluated. The market changes regularly and you need to be flexible to respond. An example is social media optimisation – 12 months ago this was not as pressing but with Google exploring how it can weight the value of, amongst other things, user generated content and rich snippets, SEO professionals need to adapt and learn how to factor this into an optimisation program.
For me the most important factor is the attitude, personality and culture of your partner – an SEO agency should be good at what they do, otherwise why are they offering services? What sets someone apart is how effective they are at building a successful partnership with you and becoming passionate about your website, treating it as if it were their own. No passion and poor communication will end in tears!
thanks
james
Thanks PoLR.
Sadly, there are PPC companies out there too charging ridiculous fees for setting up a campaign. We’ve seen the work of some companies who have done nothing more than set up a PPC account as per Google’s instructions and charged over a grand for the privilige. No keyword research, no competitor research and the ad copy was just attrocious. PPC is more search engine marketing/advertising but the same stuff goes on unfortunately. We have a 10 tips for PPC coming shortly so hopefully it will put some pointers the way of those confused about stuff.
Great comment James! I agree the article does lean towards negativity and this was our initial aim. We get a lot of phone calls from businesses who have been taken in by the spin so we want them to think negatively and question SEO companies before engaging with them and especially before parting with any cash. Forewarned as they say…
On the positive aspects…we have an article that will be posted soon on the positive things to look for in an SEO.
You’ve summed up pretty well in your post what we too consider to be positive aspects.
We consider communication and regular contact with the client to be one of the foremost qualities (not just sending out an analytics report at the end of every month). Agreeing with the client at the outset, telling them exactly what you intend to do and working with them is key to good success and a long term relationship. Keeping tabs on their progress throughout is fundamental – there’s nothing quite like the boost you get when you call a client and they tell you orders are on the up.