Well done search engine optimisation, often called SEO for short, is designed to allow web sites to show up in search results when folks look for products and services rather than simply company names. The idea is that people looking for things online are able to discover a business website with virtually no prior understanding of the business or its name. You’ll find all manner of tricks and techniques which fall under SEO, but the good sustainable methods (also sometimes called “white hat SEO”) are based around the perception of making your web page easier for search engine to read and understand, meaning they rank you higher in searches for appropriately relevant terms.
It really is not uncommon to determine to outsource SEO to external marketing agencies as well as other companies, but you can find far too many dodgy types available who like to take companies seeking SEO – especially local and smaller businesses – for a really expensive ride. How then does one actually go about finding a good, honest and legitimate search engine marketer?
It’s actually incredibly easy to find a good SEO agency online. Go to a search engine like Google or Bing and type in “SEO agency.” Ignoring the paid ads at the very best, whichever firm has landed at the top of the search results are what you want – they must be great at SEO or their very own website would not be so high within the natural listings!
To narrow things down a bit, you can try extending your search. Say you live in Essex and want a local agency – just type in “SEO agency Essex.” Or maybe if your website is specialised and you want particular help with it you may add your industry or site type – “SEO tourism” or “SEO eCommerce” for example. This may be a great way to search out niche SEO agencies who have specialist knowledge in your field.
Sometimes SEO agencies (or at least people claiming to be SEO agencies) try to solicit companies by sending them emails or submitting contact forms with various enticements and offers. However if you see something like this come in then it’s best to ignore it – if a company which supposedly specialises in search engine optimisation is reduced to spamming inboxes to get business rather than, say, doing SEO so their own website ranks highly and people can find them anyway, chances are they are not excellent. The exact same is true of SEO services advertised on paid advertisements at the top of major search engines or on banner ads on other web sites. If their search marketing is any good, what makes them having to pay for their placements?
Another thing to bear in mind is to steer well clear of any SEO agency that promises you “top position for x keywords” or something similar. Nearly all modern internet search engines used personalised searching, meaning that everyone sees web sites in slightly different ranking positions based on their personal search history. Absolute rankings are a thing of the past, any anyone claiming to deliver this sort of service is lying click through the next post their teeth. Modern SEO shall use sustainable “white hat” techniques so that you can bring useful traffic to your site, not use exploits and dodgy tricks, that can constantly get them slapped by search engine updates like Google’s infamous Panda and Penguin algorithm changes.
Once you have found an SEO company that looks mostly all right you are going to need to ask them some questions before you decide to leap into their services. And the normal checks like existing client list and testimonials, it is a wise idea to speak to someone directly on the telephone or even in person.