How To Choose The Right SEO Agency

Looking for a professional SEO agency to help you grow your business online? The right agency can help you to improve your online visibility, drive traffic and improve conversions. They should consider your goals and provide you with a clear SEO strategy to get there. But how to choose the right SEO agency?

To choose the right SEO agency for your business, you should assess your goals and objectives. A good agency will ask a lot of questions to get to know you and what you do. They will want to find out your focus and plan a relevant strategy to get you there. Consider:

• The SEO services being offered
• Case studies and reviews
• Company culture
• Communication 
• Expertise in your sector

Read on to find out which questions to ask before you begin outsourcing your SEO.

How Much Do You Know About SEO?

Many businesses are aware of SEO but don’t fully understand it, let alone have the time to put it in place. Having a basic understanding of SEO practices is a good thing to have before choosing an SEO agency. You can then decide who is more likely to deliver realistic results.

A good agency collaborates with you on areas such as your keywords and content. Communication is key, so getting your opinion and approval on work is essential. You are the expert in your field, so your input is vital to success.

What Should A Professional SEO Agency Provide?

An SEO agency should be seen as an extension of your business. Outsourcing SEO should help to drive more quality traffic to your website, focus on keeping and converting users and communicate effectively and regularly with you. SEO is always changing and a good agency will keep on top of the latest trends and track how this potentially affects your strategy.

There are different areas within SEO. A professional SEO agency should have specialists in all of these to effectively deliver good results. Discover more about the different types of SEO in our complete guide. We have briefly explained each below:

On-page/Content SEO – This involves creating quality, helpful content and optimising this with your target keywords to appeal to your audience. 

Off-page SEO – This incorporates any actions away from your website that can contribute to getting your site seen, such as backlink building.

Technical SEO – This refers to the technical side of your website. So ensuring your website pages are indexed correctly, have optimal speed and can be crawled by the search engines.

Local SEO – This is where you want to focus your attention on your business area. Particularly good for small businesses that want to be well known in their area. 

eCommerce SEO – For an online store that wants to optimise their products to be the focal point of their site for customers and increase conversion rates.

Mobile SEO – Most users are now searching through their device. Mobile SEO involves optimising the website speed, and how responsive it is to mobile devices.

Good Questions To Ask A Potential Agency

Try to ask as many questions as you can, things such as:

• Do they provide a report? If so, how often should you expect this?
• Do you have a dedicated account manager that knows SEO?
• How does the agency manage their time?
• Will you receive a detailed proposal before signing a contract?
• Do they have a dedicated team, or is it just one person?
• Have they thought about what they are going to do to deliver ROI?
• Have they worked with clients in your sector?

What SEO Practices Should Be Avoided?

If an agency promises you the number one position on Google within weeks of beginning your campaign, this is a major red flag.  SEO takes time to work and is an ongoing process of small but impactful tasks.

Black hat SEO practices are processes created to attempt to trick search engines into ranking your content and can result in your website receiving a penalty from Google.
Look out for:

• Keyword Stuffing – Using a keyword repeatedly and unnaturally to try and rank higher for it instead of using keyword best practices. 
• Backlinks from low authority websites or spam directories – To build your domain authority you should build genuine backlinks from reputable websites. Any that are spammy can be seen as toxic, and can harm your domain authority. A common example is websites dedicated to mass lists of different domains with no relevance other than to provide a link.
• Hiding content – This includes things such as using the same colour font as the background or hiding content behind an image. The user won’t be able to see it, but the search engine crawlers will!

The use of AI should also be a factor to consider. While not something that is considered bad by search engines, AI generated content cannot give the Experience element of Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines. This means the content may not be considered helpful to the user. Also, if the agency is just going to use AI, then what expertise are you actually paying for?

How To Check An Agencies Credibility

Search for them, do they show up? If an agency claims to specialise in SEO then you should be able to find them on the search engines. SEO is an extremely competitive market but they should be at least visible within their local area. 

Check Out Their Reviews And Case Studies

Look at their client testimonials or Google reviews. Do they have case studies on their website that they can back this up with? Detailed, recent reviews are a great source of trust. The company sharing recent success stories on social media platforms and tagging in the company are also a positive flag.

What Are Their Values

When working with an external agency, it’s good if their values align with yours. Look for an agency that is celebrating people’s success and sharing their own. An agency that shows they value their staff is also important. The wellbeing of employees should be important to them, as creating a positive environment means you’re working alongside a happy and productive team.

Do They Meet Your Budget?

Whilst budget is always a consideration, it should never be the only factor for whether you decide to go with an agency or not. The price you pay should be part of your proposal. It shouldn’t be something that can be plucked from thin air and it should reflect what work needs to be done. 

Professional SEO Services At Wildcat Digital

Looking for the right SEO agency to help you raise your digital presence? The team at Wildcat Digital are experts in both SEO and PPC. Get in touch with us today to discuss your website and what we can do to help your business be seen above the rest.