You can’t always depend on paid marketing channels to drive traffic to your website and to generate leads for your business. Whether you are a small business or big enterprise, at one point you need to get into SEO to drive organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic has a better conversion rate than any other paid marketing traffic. There are many benefits of outsourcing SEO services but there are also some important points that you need to consider when hiring an SEO Company to improve the organic ranking of your website in search results.
Considering these points not only helps you get the result faster but it will also save lots of money for your company. Knowing these things helps you prepare so that you can ask questions to your SEO Company before hiring them. Also, it will help you while you discuss things with SEO companies, with the help of these points you can choose the right SEO company that can help you improve your website ranking.
Important Points To Consider When Hiring An SEO Company
There are many things that you need to consider when hiring an SEO company to rank your business website. Here in this post, we will talk about the 10 most important points that you should consider when hiring an SEO company. So, let’s get started.
1. Cost
Cost is one of the most important factors that you need to consider when hiring an SEO company. SEO involves cost, A good SEO company may charge you between $200 to $1000, depending on the number of keywords. You need to set a budget for SEO. Different companies offer different costing and a different payment structure that depends on the number of target keywords, number of pages in your website and may also depend on your specific requirement.
Obviously, you can choose an SEO company that best matches your budget. But, let me tell you one thing, Good SEO won’t come cheap. SEO takes lots of effort and adds lots of value to your business. I suggest you, stay away from those companies or freelancers that say they offer the cheapest SEO services in the market.
2. Long Term Investment
SEO is a long term investment so if you are thinking that you will do SEO for a couple of months and you will start getting tons of traffic to your website, wake up now. It’s not possible at all, SEO is a continuous long-term process. You need to do SEO for at least a minimum of 6 months time (if your website is new, at least 12 months). This is the most important point to consider when hiring an SEO company, as you are going to hire that SEO Company for a longer period of time.
This is one of the biggest mistakes most of the companies do, they think that their websites will start ranking in just a couple of months and thus they are not planned for a long term investment and thus they end up wasting their time and money. Even once your website starts ranking at the top in SERPs, you have to keep investing in SEO to maintain the ranking, otherwise, competitors will overtake you.
3. Your Actual Needs
You need to know your actual requirement before you hire an SEO company. If you only need On-Page SEO or you also need Off-Page SEO. You are hiring an SEO agency just for SEO work or you also need Website Redesigning to improve your website conversion rate and user experience. Content plays an important role in search engine optimization, so you may need Content Writing Services as well.
Knowing your actual requirement, not only helps you choose the right SEO company but also saves time and money for your company. So, before you get into the process of hiring an SEO company, make a note of all your SEO and related requirements along with your business goals so that you can discuss that with the SEO agency.
4. Clear Expectations
See, you are going to hire an SEO company for the long term, so you both have to be on the same page. If you are not clear with your expectations, the SEO services provider may deliver something else, that leads to unnecessary confusion and frustration. Thus you need to have clear expectations of your requirement (better note down on a paper) and communicate that with your SEO company.
Expectations vary company to company, you may expect first page ranking for your website or you may expect tons of traffic to your website or you may expect quality leads. Whatever are your requirement and expectation, be clear with your SEO service provider, and discuss all your expectation with the SEO before you actually hire them.
5. Get Some Idea About SEO
One of the most important points, when you hire an SEO company, is, you should have some knowledge, ideas about SEO. I am not asking you to take an SEO training, but the basic knowledge about SEO will help you in choosing the right SEO company.
You can easily get some idea about SEO just by reading some SEO related articles online. In case if SEO is completely unknown to you, here are the SEO related Resources, where you can find many SEO and related articles. Spend some time reading these SEO articles before you actually get into hiring an SEO company.
6. Go For Long-Tail Keywords
I have seen lots of clients just going for short keywords (two word or three words keyword), I am not saying that is bad. But, these short keywords are very competitive and thus it will take more time to rank these keywords. Instead, I would suggest you, go for a mix of both short keywords as well as long-tail keywords.
One very important point here is, long-tail keywords have a better conversion rate as compared to short keywords. And also they are much easier to rank (depends on industry to industry, keywords to keywords), thus you will start getting the result quickly. Targeting long-tail keywords helps you rank for other keywords as well.
7. Check Their Website
Before you hire an SEO company, don’t forget to check their website and social media pages and profiles (I have seen many freelancers running advertisements on social media for SEO Services, but they do not have their own website, it’s rare but the truth). Going through their website and social pages, you can have an idea about their service quality that will help you in choosing the right SEO company.
8. Their Expertize & Knowledge
SEO requires lots of knowledge, expertise, and lots of practice. Here practice (experience) is very important. I have seen many freelancers just after doing some SEO crash course, start offering SEO services (even their own website don’t rank by then). So while hiring an SEO company, it’s very important that you check their knowledge, expertise, and experience in SEO. Check if they are able to rank their own website or not.
9. Know Their SEO Strategy
A good SEO company will have a proper SEO strategy to improve the ranking of your website. You need to ask about the overall strategy they will follow on your site. Which activity they would start first, how that particular activity will impact your website ranking. What all the things they will do On-Page and Off-Page. Here, you don’t need to know everything but a brief idea will be really good to increase your website ranking in search results and for your business success in the long run.
10. Guaranteed #1 Ranking
Don’t go for #1 ranking and stay away from those companies or freelances that guarantee #1 ranking in SERPs. I can bet, they don’t know anything about SEO if they do so. I am not saying that; it is not possible to rank #1 for any specific keyword, but that can not be guaranteed. Google and other search engines (even top SEO professionals) warns against those companies that make such offers. Be aware of this and stay away from such fake offers by those fake SEO companies.
As SEO is a long term process, it takes time to get you the result, You can achieve the top ranking but it will take lots of time (that depends on the competition in your target niche). Instead, What you should look for is the improvement in your site ranking and improvement in organic traffic. With the right SEO, you will ultimately get the top ranking in some time provided you are consistent with the SEO.
Conclusion
There could be many other things that you need to consider when hiring an SEO company but these are some important points that you should include in your list. Hope the points above, help you choose the right SEO Company that will help you in ranking your website in the organic search results.
