Once you’ve decided to leverage SEO to get ahead of the competition and increase your business visibility, you will have to team up with an SEO consulting company. Unless, of course, you have an internal SEO department.
Over the last couple of years, the SEO consulting industry has become very lucrative, attracting more and more people.
The aftermath? A simple Google query will result in hundreds of SEO consulting companies. Which one do you choose?
To help you find a reliable and trustworthy SEO consulting company able to set your business for success, we’ve compiled a list of 10 things to look for when choosing such a company.
What is SEO?
You probably know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But, what is SEO in its essence? SEO encompasses numerous actions, all carefully devised around two goals:
- Boost traffic on your website
- Increase the quality of the traffic on your website
SEO does it by boosting the position of your website on the search engine result pages. SEO also refers to generating organic traffic, meaning that the traffic doesn’t originate from paid ads.
Among other things, SEO involves optimizing online content so that search engines choose to display it as a top search result for a specific keyword.
Benefits of Hiring SEO Company?
While there are many benefits of hiring an SEO company and outsourcing your SEO strategy to professionals, the following ones are the most noteworthy.
Cut Down Expenses
If you don’t have an SEO specialist, you will have to hire one yourself. In most cases, you will need a team of SEO experts to pursue all opportunities in your market. It’s a very costly approach, and you may find it simply not feasible.
On the other hand, hiring an SEO company allows you to cut down expenses and run a cost-efficient SEO operation. You can easily scale up or down your SEO operation depending on your needs and pay only for the SEO services you use.
Access To Talented and Experienced Professionals
The SEO company niche is very competitive. To stand out from the crowd, SEO companies have very strict hiring policies. It enables them to build a team of talented and experienced professionals.
On top of that, they use cutting edge tools that cost hundreds of dollars every month. Your business will benefit from these tools as well without having to purchase not one of them.
Best Results In a Reasonable Time Frame
There is a reason why someone is called an SEO professional. These people have years of experience in the field. They have worked on hundreds of different projects both in terms of scale and targeted goals.
Teaming up with an SEO company will help you get an SEO strategy specifically tailored to meet your business needs and goals. Thanks to their expertise, you’ll get the best results in a reasonable timeframe.
Focus on Your Core Business
Once you outsource your SEO to an SEO company, it is no longer your worry. The SEO company you choose will take care of your entire SEO strategy ground up.
You’ll be able to allocate all your time and resources to manage and improve your core business processes.
Get Help With More Than SEO
Some of the SEO companies are full-service digital marketing companies. If you choose to partner up with one of them, you will get help with more than just SEO.
These companies are capable of delivering a full-scope strategy to meet all your online marketing needs, ranging from web design and content to SEO and social media marketing.
Do They Offer Full-Scope SEO?
SEO is so much more than identifying relevant keywords and including them on a website. Your future SEO consulting partner has to be able to deliver a full scope of SEO services. Fortunately, there is an easy way to figure out if they do.
Hit the official website of an SEO company and check whether they offer technical, on-page, and off-page SEO services. SEO services, in general, can be divided into these three categories. If they offer them all, you have stumbled upon a full scope SEO consulting company.
Experience In The Field
SEO is as old as the search engines are. Over the last 20 years, search engines went through thousands of changes, while some of the best practices remained unchanged. The experience in the field empowers SEO consulting companies to deliver outstanding services.
More importantly, experienced SEO professionals know the field inside and out, enabling them to fine-tune SEO campaigns for ultimate results. They know how to handle unannounced Google algorithm updates and what changes to make to keep your SEO campaign on the track. It’s very important because the SEO field is continuously changing and delivering new challenges to businesses worldwide.
Social Proof
If you pay close attention to SEO consulting company ads, you will see anything ranging from “the best SEO consultant” to “SEO firm with hundreds of satisfied clients.” You should always look at these claims as a sort of bragging. Some of them may be true but, at this point, you don’t know that.
It would be best if you dug a little deeper to check whether the SEO consulting firm is as successful as it claims. Check out their official website, and look for social proof, hit social media, including LinkedIn, to discover who their clients are. If there are some case studies, feel free to check them as well. You have to make sure that the company in question is not making empty promises.
Are They Marketing Enthusiasts
SEO is just one cog in the digital marketing machine. After identifying and targeting relevant keywords, the best companies will suggest the most optimal actions to pursue. In other words, the SEO consulting company has to have a team of marketing enthusiasts ready to work on your projects as if their lives depend on it.
You will know that you are talking to the right SEO consultant if he or she elaborates on the entire SEO strategy, from choosing the keywords to how to implement them in a content strategy to generate high-quality leads and generate sales.
Live Reporting
While SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy, it doesn’t mean that it cannot generate results in days or weeks. After all, you should be able to see what you bought for your hard-earned cash. SEO consulting companies are aware of it, which reflects some of their services.
The most important service to look for is live reporting. With live reporting, you will get insights into the up to date deliverables of your SEO campaign and measure the performance and ROI of your SEO efforts.
Calls and Checkups
Remember when we talked about going with marketing enthusiasts? The best SEO consulting companies have a broad scope of marketing services able to leverage the results SEO delivers. Some of these services include class and checkups.
For instance, you will be able to identify how many people call from your website and how many of these calls result in sales. With calls and checkups, you‘ll know where your hottest leads are coming from and improve your marketing strategy to capture even more sales.
Expertise In The Field of Digital Marketing
Experience is not the only important factor you should consider when looking at the SEO consulting companies. The expertise is right there beside experience in terms of importance. How do you check the expertise of an SEO consulting firm?
Most of these agencies have a “Who are we” or a similar webpage on their sites. You can quickly check if they have licensed professionals on their team. A license paired with years-long experience ensures that you will get dependable service carried out by the talented people.
Efficient Communication
When outsourcing your SEO campaign to a third company, you have to make sure that you can easily communicate your ideas. Communication is a two-way street, and you should look at the communication options the SEO consulting agency supports.
The more options they have, the better as you can continue to communicate with them efficiently, even when you are outside of the office. Being able to communicate seamlessly should also be parried with good communication skills, which you will be able to assess after the first meeting.
Company Culture That Aligns With Your Own
Since you are outsourcing a sensitive process to a third company, you should check whether the SEO consulting agency’s culture aligns with your own. Why is this important? SEO experts will have to communicate with your employees from various departments.
These departments include sales, marketing, customer service, and even IT. If you choose a firm with a similar culture to yours, SEO experts will easily fit in, which will positively reflect on teamwork, collaboration, and communication. Finally, it will help your employees easily understand the instructions and go through the project milestones with ease.
Which SEO Tools Do They Use
Long gone are the days of manual SEO. Over the years, SEO has become increasingly complex, and it is unimaginable to cover and complete all SEO processes manually. That’s why there are several cutting-edge tools developed explicitly for SEO experts.
If you want to find a partner able to devise and carry out an SEO strategy specific to your business needs and goals, you need a partner that uses at least a few of these tools. Some SEO consulting companies have gone a step further, developing their own SEO suits that reflect their unique approach to SEO.
Why Choose OneIMS?
OneIMS is more than an SEO company – it’s a leader in the field of online marketing. Besides the team of SEO professionals, OneIMS enables you to get access to top talented people in the fields of content marketing, web design and development, PPC, social media marketing & more.
Here at OneIMS, we work closely with our clients. We will help you assess your business needs and devise a custom-tailored online marketing strategy to help you generate high-quality leads, boost sales, and set your business on a path of success.
Schedule a consultation with one of our professionals today to transform your business into an industry leader.
This checklist of things you should look for in an SEO consulting company will help you make an informed decision. SEO is one of the most critical strategies. Since it is a long-term marketing effort, you should make sure to get professionals that know how to adapt the SEO strategy according to the latest Google search algorithm updates.
