If you want your website to have the best possible search engine optimisation rank, you are probably considering the services of an SEO management company. Looking for one is not the problem but finding the right one is quite another. How can you find the best agency? What questions do you need to ask them? What answers should you be cautious of?
One of the aspects of online marketing is managing your website’s SEO. Although SEO is essential for every online enterprise, there’s not a strategy that will fit all circumstances. SEO has to be customised for your business, industry and enterprise goals.
Even if your website is currently optimised, it is not a guarantee that you will attract your target audience immediately and once you have brought them over to your website, it doesn’t always mean you will get leads and sales right then and there.
With that in mind, how will you be able to find the right partner who can help you achieve your business goals? Here are just some of the elements you need to consider when looking for your potential SEO management company.
Find out how they will aim their SEO efforts. Try to ascertain if they have a good research program to back you up. After all, SEO is all about preparation and knowing what you’ve got. Research is a big part of it. Without it, you won’t be able to determine areas you need to improve on, finetune your marketing strategies or even create a marketing plan in the first place.
SEO is geared towards the satisfaction of web users and the application of SEO techniques to websites. Some business owners have no idea about SEO so their initial plans and goals may not align with the SEO agency may have in mind.
For instance, a business owner may want to rank higher on a keyword on a national scale. If the SEO agency can determine that this is not the best way to reach the client’s business goals, they would suggest a change in the strategy and lean the client’s focus on topping the local searches instead. In this case, the client needs to be educated about the best strategies that would be beneficial for their website for the short and long term. But if you are an entrepreneur who knows your way around basic SEO, then by all means find an SEO company that is willing to work out your plans, as well as include their own too.
Figure out if their SEO strategy will include website analysis, navigation, coding, content creation and formation of backlinks. After analysing your website, a good SEO management company will be able to give you recommendations on what needs to be improved in order to create a better user experience for your customers and increase your conversions. The tasks we have mentioned earlier are just some of the elements that will affect your website’s SEO ranking. Therefore, adding technical SEO to your strategy should be a requirement in your online marketing arsenal.
Establish if they will perform competitor analysis. Finding out who your competitors are and why they are performing well is one of the most effective ways of improving your SEO ranking. If an SEO company will not do this, better find another one who will.
In addition, an SEO company with many years of experience in the industry is also a great criterion to consider however, do not let this single criterion be the dealbreaker. Some SEO management companies are fairly new but their staff could be highly experienced and results-oriented. What’s more important is their capacity to accept new clients and apply their expertise to your business and help it grow.
Determine if they will work with existing content or create new content for you. Any of the choices are fine but combining them is better. Find out if the SEO management company can get the most out of your existing content and improve it by adding fresh content, after they have done a thorough research of your website, of course. If the company is not capable of creating content if you need it, it is probably best to consider another company who can.
Although no SEO management company is keen on sharing their trade secrets, they should be open about their goals, tactics and tasks that must be delivered to you. For instance, they might offer you suggestions to update your existing content, optimise the content headings, metadata or create a new navigation structure and compress your images to make your website lighter and easier to load.
Suggestions must be based on thorough website analysis and not just guesswork. After all, there is no single approach to implement SEO tactics.
An SEO management company should have some or all of the following services for its clients:
SEO is complex and time-consuming but with the help of various tools, the workload can be transformed into something practical and feasible. SEO management tools also help the agencies to perform their job better, supervise their progress and spot errors in your website faster. These tools can also provide real-time results and data which can be used to improve your website in real-time too. On top of that, the tools can help them keep pace with SEO updates which happens more than once in a given year.
If you are unsure if you need online reputation management, think again. A lot of web users nowadays trust user-generated content before making a decision or finalising a purchase. If you are not keen on checking out constructive criticism from your customers through comments, you might find out that it’s already too late when it’s hurting your bottom line.
A lot of customers prefer to research a restaurant online even before setting foot inside a restaurant and if they see a lot of negative reviews on your website, they will probably think twice about booking dinner for two in the near future.
Your offline and online reputation will also affect the hiring of talented individuals in your company. If people think that your reputation is questionable, you might have a hard time finding potential employees to work for you.
Still unsure which SEO Management Company to work with, you can talk to an SEO expert at Smarter Media about it. If you are ready to ask serious questions and take the definitive step towards online business success, feel free to get in touch on 01793 292 171 or hello@smarter-media.co.uk today.
