Most businesses would have had a negative experience using an SEO agency at least once in their lives if it’s a strong and established brand. However, you are not alone. Every brand that has a good idea about SEO might have heard what might go wrong if the right agency is not opted.
Business owners should choose an SEO agency that could provide a positive experience to the customers. If you are looking for an SEO agency, Blurn could be a good choice as they provide high-quality services which could bring in effective results. To get more information about Blurn, click here.
Most of the agencies would sound straightforward but they actually might not be the same. Learning about an agency’s real reputation would require something more than seeing a lot of positive reviews they have. Testimonials and reviews on agencies’ websites are selected. If you check for reviews on search engines or other third party websites, it could also prove to be unreliable.
Some SEO agencies threaten their customers with legal action if negative reviews are not removed. Some agencies might make use of sinister threats like negative SEO. Positive reviews could easily be incentivized or could acquire early on in the campaign. Hence, it will not be a true indicator of the SEO agency’s reputation. You could reach out to some of their clients to find out their real reputation directly. You could find out soon if the testimonials are true or not and you might receive valuable tips from the clients.
Are Digital agencies and SEO agencies different?
An agency that might offer various digital services does not usually specialise in SEO. Many digital agencies would have web design services and then may expand it to hosting, AdWords management, graphic design and SEO. The main issue is the staff they have working on SEO is someone familiar with the industry but not a specialist. For a digital agency, there would be a lot of staff members or offshore teams would be under the supervision of a department head.
Agency would have a long list of SEO tasks that should be done regularly but there may not be an SEO specialist with huge experience to take care of the project. Digital agencies survive even if they face failures when it comes to SEO due to the success in other services they provide.
It would be better to hire an agency that has a proven track record of successful SEO activities that can handle different brands that belong to different genres.
Results & Achievements
An effective SEO agency would remain effective. It is not realistic to expect an SEO agency to gain rankings in every industry. However, gaining consistent page rankings for solid keywords is possible. Instead of asking the agency in the rankings, they have achieved, you could read or enquire about case studies that could be found on their website or the client’s website. You can check the testimonials and try to find the website of the person who left a review. You can visit the website and see the keywords and meta titles of the site. Carry out research for the keywords on search engines and see the rankings of the websites.
As the search engines algorithm changes, the rankings of the website might fluctuate a lot. Just because an agency could rank a website a year ago doesn’t mean that those techniques are effective now.
One of the strongest indicators to gain rankings is the website of the agency itself. All agencies do not try to have their websites for SEO related search terms. Writing for SEO terms does not always produce a great ROI. A lot of effort and expense is required for the same. If an agency gets ranked on the front page for SEO, it is a very good sign and you should probably go for that agency.
Pricing Range
You should watch out for pricing tiers. It is very tough to make it work and in most cases, a fixed pricing structure means that the agency would not use technical SEO.
You should make sure that you are well aware that you would be doing this work they are pitching to you. Larger SEO agencies would make use of sleek sales staff on commission bonuses to sell the maximum they could. This word means that you will be able to see the ruthless side of the industry. However, you should make sure that you are not paying for things that you do not need. It is also common for a salesperson to pitch in results that would require more work than the SEO staff.
The best-case scenario would be when you call the SEO agency and you get a chance to speak directly to the person who would be doing the SEO work and the same person ends up giving you the quote. This is only possible when you are working with smaller agencies where the owner himself is the head of SEO.
What KPIs do the agencies sell?
One of the biggest scams you could find is that they can convince the customers regarding ranking for their brand name or some such phrases that are less used.
You should make sure that the keywords they quote for you have enough monthly searches to make an ROI possible. Ranking for your brand name is the first step. Always remember that once the website is ranked on the first page for a search term, it would only get a percentage of the monthly search volume and not all of it. Make sure that you are not solved on potential conversions from the full search volume of the search terms.
Some agencies would try to get full control of your digital properties. They will try to sell you a new website design, ask you to move your website to their hosting, try to move the domain over to their account, convince you to turn your ad management to them and make various similar convincing requests that might not be acceptable to you.
They would even try to convince you by saying that it would make your life much easier if the entire work is managed by a single company. Even though it is technically correct, it would be a fact that they could entirely control your brand. It would make it tough for you to leave the association.
