Friday 9 June 2017

5 Important Things to Know Before Hiring an SEO Services Company for Your Business


Every company wants to grow, most of them have heard of search engine optimization, but only some understand what it really means. As a result, businesses easily get misguided during their initial interactions with SEO companies who try to take undue advantage of that knowledge gap.

There is no limit to building awareness about this subject. But there are few fundamental aspects of SEO that will definitely come handy when hiring SEO service provider for your company. In fact, at OH! Design Studio, our SEO services team always educates the 
potential clients about these aspects in our very first meeting.


1. What promises do SEO companies make?


The end result of SEO is not about keyword ranking or website traffic volume. SEO is ultimately meant to achieve some marketing objectives like increase brand awareness or lead generation. Website traffic is just one of the ways to measure the success of SEO efforts. Only when this increase in traffic leads to increase in say business enquiry, that's when a business benefits from search engine optimization. Many SEO agencies promise increase in traffic or improvement in keyword rankings, but not all of them are confident about its direct impact on sales or brand awareness.



2. What dependencies SEO companies have on their clients?


SEO companies cannot work in isolation but in close coordination with the business, so you need to plan time and resource allocation in advance.

To be able to represent your business in online realm, SEO expert needs to understand your products/ services, USP, your clients’ requirement etc. If they make a guess and work on assumptions, it may lead to creating an online identity of your business which may be different from who you really are. Just because you are outsourcing your online marketing to an SEO agency does not mean that you can leave it in auto-mode.



3. What additional expenses SEO clients have to be ready for?


Website Changes for SEO 

SEO techniques are applied on website (on-page SEO) and some outside the website (off-page SEO). There is always some scope of improvement through on-page changes which could range from mere content modification to coding changes. I've worked on a project where 80% result of SEO was obtained from on-page changes. For another project, administrative challenges prevented any major code change, but we managed to improve rankings with content edits only. Your business needs to factor for time and cost investment for website changes for SEO.

Content Creation 


As of today, SEO has a huge overlap with content marketing. It means that to improve organic rankings, good quality content is a must. That is another investment which you have to factor for. You could either hire a content writer yourself or pay your SEO service provider for content development.


4. How long SEO clients have to wait to see the results?

Organic SEO takes time to give results. But that does not mean that you have to play a blind game for 12 months. Recently, I read a competitor's contract clause where it was mentioned "All SEO Packages come with a 100% performance Guarantee. If we do not achieve at least one top 10 natural rankings within 12 months starting from the date of your SEO campaign for your target keywords, you can cancel the contract with a notice of 1 month."

SEO results can be tracked and measured at many levels. Regular monitoring helps in optimizing the plan on an ongoing basis. You really don’t need to wait for 12 months to find out whether SEO is helping your business or not.



5. What type of SEO companies to avoid?


  • Those who are offering 100% guarantee that they will rank your website at no. 1 position in search results.
  • SEO agency which is promising top rankings fast.
  • Those who say that paid search improves organic SEO.

Summary of 5 important things to know before hiring an SEO services company:

  1. Website traffic and page rankings are just outputs of SEO. Final outcome for the business is in the form of lead generation or increasing brand awareness.
  2. Businesses must work closely with SEO team and hence must factor for internal time and resource allocation accordingly.
  3. SEO requires website changes and content creation, which would be an additional expense for the business
  4. Organic SEO is like a long term investment, which takes time to produce results. But at the same time beware of agencies who shy away from evaluating and showing showing intermediate results.
  5. Clearly avoid those SEO firms who make claims like 100% guarantee for ranking website at no.1 position.

OH! Design Studio is niche branding, design and digital marketing company in India.