If you have any sort of business that you promote online, it’s well worth your time to look into a website, and more importantly, into starting SEO for said website. Many people put this off or end up not doing it at all because of the expense and effort and time investment that it involves; however, if you make sure that your money is well spent in your SEO efforts and that every optimization is backed by quality fresh content every day, then your online presence will be greatly amplified by doing so. As your online presence grows, your website’s traffic and thus your conversions and bottom line will grow along with it.
Once you choose an SEO company to start with, start working with them on a trial basis to begin with. There’s no need to make a major commitment until both parties are happy with each other and until a good working relationship is established. However, keep in mind that results from SEO are slow and gradual in coming; it is not like PPC where you can expect to start getting feedback on your efforts the next day. Rather, focus on how your relationship with your SEO provider feels and evolves throughout the weeks, whether they are taking the time to actually know your business and how it works, and whether they are constantly pressuring you to make new content.
That more than anything, is the mark of a good SEO agency: Rather than treating their service as just a thing that you buy and pay for, they will treat the relationship as a partnership where both parties are contributing to the effort, and hold you accountable for your part in it as well.
Always look to have your company be as upfront about the costs as possible. Everything you can do towards building up your SEO is optional and predictable. You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want! what this means is that costs in an SEO campaign are actually easy to predict, and it should be very rare for hidden costs to pop up after the original estimate from your company has been established. So you know you are dealing with a quality agency when all the prices and costs are transparent and well communicated.
Of course there’s also the matter of their history and portfolio. Ask for a list of clients they currently service, that you can call and ask about how happy they are with the agency. Also make searches for these clients’ websites under the keywords you see in their titles and homepage, and look for any listings on page 1.
Once you find a good SEO company that will keep you happy and that keeps you updated about what you need to do as far as contant in addition to what they are doing as far as optimization and linkbuilding, don’t let them go! Good SEO is very hard to come by and results come over the long term; think six months to a year before you can really call a campaign a success. If you are in it for the long term and can keep up with generating fresh content for your readers during that time, you can look forward to great results from SEO.