Before the advent of the internet, retail businesses used to advertise via billboards to increase the footfall to their stores. However, with the convergence of technologies, business paradigms have changed altogether.
The internet as a medium has surpassed all other mediums in terms of popularity and reach. The ubiquity of the internet has brought the world to a single forum and has removed the conventional jurisdictional barriers and physical boundaries. Now, businesses strive to increase their digital footfall i.e., genuinely interested customers who visit the site to make a purchase.
The legitimate means to drive organic traffic to one’s site is SEO
The SEO field is getting saturated by the day, thus making it difficult to search for the best SEO Company for your brand. A good SEO company can deliver a perfect launchpad from where your business can get a sustainable source of qualified leads and increases its prospects of future growth. O the other hand, a bad SEO company can drop your rankings and earn penalties from search engine rankings for carrying out black hat practices.
A drop in the rankings has a direct impact on a business’ bottom line, thus, jeopardizing its operations and curbing its chances of cutting through the competition.
“Today’s SEO needs to understand all of marketing at a deep level, the psychology of the human race, the specific culture to whom they’re marketing, the social media landscape, web analytics, web design and development, viral marketing, content, product, business models and more.”
Google recommends using this 3-step SEO evaluation process
Today, conventional SEO practices won’t do the job. SEO practices need to be designed, keeping in mind the human psyche, the cultural influence to which a business’ target audience is subjected to, the hive mind of the society, web analytics, content, and more.
So, to select thebest SEO companyfor your business, you have to follow these three steps:
- Know how curious the SEO Company is
There is no one size fits all kind of an SEO solution. While selecting various vendors for your business, you don’t have a dialogue, and it’s mostly vendors pitching their sales and making commitment s. However, SEO is different, and an agency can’t commit you anything without inquiring you about:
- What is your USP? What is your value proposition?
- Who are your customers, and what is your business development funnel?
- What is the goal of your website? Is it an online sale, an appointment set for a phone call or visit, sales inquiry lead form?
- What other channels do you use for marketing?
- Who are your competitors, and what is your differentiation strategy?
An SEO agency has to walk a mile in your business’ shoes before crafting an SEO policy for your business. SEO blueprint will have a few things in common across the industries and various business models, however, some elements in the strategy will be atypical and specially intended to serve the nature of your business and bring your company closer to its goals.
If an SEO agency is not asking you these above-stated questions, then you know that they aren’t committed as they should be.
- Ask for testimonials
It doesn’t cost a thing to over-commit something. The business development managers of agencies often misled business owners by committing to deliver results on the go. However, you don’t have a parameter to check whether they are exaggerating or not. Ask for testimonials to verify.
A competent SEO agency won’t shy away from sharing its testimonials. You can always cross-check from its past clients and inquire about its expertise and proficiency.
- Ask for Technical and Search Audit
The first two steps will help you eliminate several options. This step will reflect the proficiency of the SEO agency and the fact that whether they have stood the test of time. SEO practices keep evolving depending on the Google updates such as Panda and Penguin and changing best practices recommended by Google’s webmaster.
Besides, the social media landscape also has a significant influence on current SEO practices. Asking for the Search and Technical Audit will help you get an insight into the modus operandi of the agency. You can then verify the post-audit recommendations from Google and assess the technical know-how of the agency.
Search audit includes finding the lacunae because of which your website isn’t ranking as high as it should have been. This would consist of the necessary copy of your website, the type of content that gets published on your website, and then twists it needs, the bookmarking of your website on various local directories, the link juice which your website derives from higher DA websites, etc.
Technical audit is much like checking the anatomy of the websites, the internal browsing issues, the URLs, the Meta tags and Meta descriptions, and others.
After going through this exercise, a clear winner will emerge — an agency that scrabbles the depths of the SEO ocean – the one which is brimming with creativity.
