Finding a Good SEO Company
Even if you have a staff person that does SEO or a full blown SEO department, there may still come times when you may need some help. Even large companies fail in many of the basics of making their site easy for users and search engines to use and understand. When you reach this point, it’s time to hire some outside SEO help.
It is Hard to find a good SEO company
This is much harder to do than it would seem on the surface. If you believe the personal profiles you see on linkedin, there are 10’s of thousands of SEO experts out there who can help you get to the top of the search results. Then there are the dozens of emails from companies in India who can magically get you a #1 ranked site in 60 days. I’m not saying that none of these people or organizations can help you with your SEO, but from my conversations with many of them I’d be wary.
What to look for in an SEO company
SEO is not a simple art. This is because getting found by search engines crosses many functional lines within an organization. Because of this you need to find an SEO company that understands all of these disciplines, and knows how to blend a strategy that best fits your market and category.
Ask potential SEO companies about their level of expertise in the following areas, and their ability to build a strategy using all of them.
- Analytics & Keyword Research
- Content Creation (of all types)
- Link Building
- Content Distribution
- Technical
- Usability
- Design
- Social Media
Since search engines want to deliver the best content for the searchers intent, all these factors will come into play, and have an impact on whether or not someone will click on and share your site with others.
Though I can’t tell you in this article what the right mix is for your company. I can tell you that addressing only some of the issues will only get you half way to the top, and unless you’re already in the top 10 half way is not going to cut it.
Ask your SEO company if they understand these areas and how they affect SEO.
What do you think? Email me at nickv<at>nickvalente<dot>com
Follow me on twitter @nickvalente
Related Articles:
- In case you missed it, this is a great article on SEO from CIO magazine
- Content Mistakes by Nick Valente
