If carried out properly, SEO provides a variety of benefits for your business.
However, the degree to which SEO helps your business depends on how effectively you implement SEO services.
In particular, it’s imperative for your company to use the best and most relevant resources available to help your company succeed in its SEO efforts.
For the most part, there are 3 common resources for your business to choose from for SEO services.
- In-house team: An internal marketing team or team dedicated to SEO service activities, such as content marketing.
- SEO software: Software that automates certain SEO services. An example of SEO software is Moz, which you can use to perform keyword research and test the competition for target keywords based on the strength of your competition.
- SEO company: SEO companies are experts in their craft, and can design an SEO program that is specifically suited to help boost your company’s visibility through search.
In-house teams and software both have distinct benefits, notably, cost. While each entails some form of cost to your company and require training for your employees, they are not as expensive as hiring an SEO services provider.
That being said, your business cannot ignore the potential value of hiring an SEO company. SEO companies possess industry knowledge and technical expertise that can fully optimize your site for search rankings.
In order to experience the maximum value from an SEO partner, though, you need to find the right partner for your company.
The process of finding and partnering with the right SEO company for your business involves diligent research and an understanding of your exact needs.
This article outlines the top 3 things that you should consider during the process of partnering with an SEO company.
1. Use Your Company Goals to Inform SEO Strategy
Before you start looking for an SEO company, you need to determine how SEO fits into your business strategy.
Your overarching business and marketing goals should inform the direction and shape of your SEO strategy.
For example, if you are primarily concerned with improved branding, approach SEO with the following question in mind: “How can I invest in SEO to improve the branding of my company?”
Communicate this goal to potential SEO partners. The more targeted your approach is, the better chance you have of achieving that goal.
As experts in the field, SEO companies know how to format strategy to maximize branding potential, or whatever your company’s primary objectives may be.
2. Ask Educated Questions and Vet Potential SEO Partners
The best way to know whether an SEO company is a good fit for your business is to communicate with them.
Partnerships work best when there is educated, thoughtful dialogue between parties.
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Vet SEO companies for their experience providing services for businesses of your size, industry, and objectives.
Your business needs to take it upon itself to research how they plan to use SEO to help their business.
Having hypotheses in mind for what sort of SEO services you want to be included in your SEO campaign helps when discussing the terms of a partnership with an SEO company.
Even if you’re hypotheses are a little off-base, decent SEO companies will recognize that you have at least done your homework and can level with you about how realistic your expectations are.
Use ratings and reviews to research the experiences of other businesses with the SEO companies you are considering.
The more granular you make your research process (i.e., industry focus, specialty), the more it will help you to determine the best SEO companies for your particular goals.
3. Decide a Price You are Willing to Pay
This almost seems too obvious to list as part of your process of finding a services partner. However, this is the part of the process that sees a lot of businesses back out of an SEO partnership.
Setting an educated price range for yourself makes the vetting and decision process more efficient.
A few of things to remember when setting your budget for SEO services:
- If you invest in SEO, it’s going to cost you. Keep this in mind if you are considering abandoning a services partner in favor of your internal team or software. The cost of internal teams are the opportunity costs of assigning them to SEO tasks in addition to the hours training. Software, on the other hand, both has an initial cost and your employees must be trained how to properly use it.
- There are a number of factors that determine the cost of SEO services for your business. For example, if you are operating an outdated site, an SEO company will likely have to perform some form of a website redesign to help your company start ranking for target keywords. While including technical services like this are certainly worthwhile, they increase the price of an SEO company.
- There is no guarantee that SEO will work for your business. Effective SEO also takes time. You need to be willing and able to pay an SEO company’s retainer for at least 9-12 months if you are truly invested in effective results. At that point, if you are not satisfied, you can revisit your agreement.
This process, too, requires thorough research on your part. You need to understand which SEO services are more costly than others and what factors that impact price apply to your needs.
Always include price as part of your vetting process of potential SEO partners. Legitimate SEO companies will be forthcoming about the price for your expected returns.
Research and Consider the Value Potential of SEO Companies
SEO is a great way to market your business on a growing platform of customer interaction.
Among the 3 most common resources at your disposal for SEO resources – in-house teams, SEO software, and SEO companies – SEO companies allow the highest ceiling for success.
The expertise of SEO companies allows them to implement a curated SEO campaign that is particularly well-suited to your company and its needs.
If your company takes the time to examine your goals, research the best services and SEO companies for those goals, and determine a price range, the process of finding and partnering with an SEO company is much more efficient and more likely to yield positive results.