How to hire an SEO company
Posted in Marketing on: Thursday, September 17, 2009 by Andy Kinsey
It’s one of the puzzles that each and every company considering Search Engine Optimisation (from an extenal compnay) faces. Basically the question is: How do I know which SEO to choose?
To be honest there is no set answer, each company needs to consider things from its own level… but one of the most important things and it covers many factors you will want to consider is… Trust.
Trust is a strange issue to consider, not least because its based on a persons emotional being. The fact that you are a company looking to hire means that you need to have a company trust … or a sole person in charge of the decision. Trust is based on past experience in life, if you have had a “bad” childhood maybe you don’t trust many people but sometimes things just click and you do, other people may have had a great childhood and trust every person until they break that trust… everyone is different. In SEO the issue of trust is much larger than in other parts of the internet sector… primarily because SEO is not a one-size fits all solution, each company requires something different, and each SEO will offer that something different from another.
The problem with SEO companies
So consider a scenario (and this is what most companies face when hiring an seo).
You are (or your company is) wanting to hire and SEO, so you approach 4 or 5 companies asking them to tender. Each one says they will tender and submits various documents you ahve asked for. But each is different in what it says. So you ask to meet them (as you always should before hiring), and you see each company says different things, approaches a solution in a seperate manner, and ultimately they come up with different solutions to the same problem.
So now which do you choose? Who do you trust and why? Which SEO is good for you and your company? and which is bad? and most of all who should your company run away from?
5 factors to consider with hiring an SEO company
To help understand who you should choose, i’ve identified 5 factors you should be considering when hiring an SEO for your company.
- An Open Book – will the SEO tell you what they are doing, tactics on how to approach your solution. Also do they tell you why they are doing itt, and if not do you blindly trust them? If they won’t tell you what they intend to do this is a huge red flag you need to consider… ok SEO’s will look to keep some things secret (myself included at times) but ultimately your are the client and if you want to know everything you are entitled to it! … if an SEO says something you don’t understand, and they wont explain… ask me.
- Proven Record – check references from clients (remember not all SEOs will publish exacting details of results)… but talking to other clients is often much mroe reliable.
- Site Improvement – sounds a bit mad but some SEOs will want to just focus on Search Engines and they shouldn’t be… SEO isnt just about being found on a search engine. SEO is actually about imrpoving conversions from the point of access as well as encouraging people to visit your site through these points of access. SEO is not a hidden trade, any SEO who wants to “work behind the scenes” only isn’t worth a penny as user experience is a key part of SEO.
- Great Expectations – from your first meeting you should talk about “realistic” expectations, remember if an SEO says in the first month there will be a million hits extra from 1 hit a month …they are lieing… SEO is a journet and results generally don’t filter through during the first month or two… its sometimes even 4 or 5 months before results are seen… AK Designs has always lived by the mantra of Under-Promise and Over-Deliver.
- Automation – if your SEO is automating processes generally you should be worried, unless they can prove a good reason behind it … automating processes on a website is fine and helps user experience … automating website submission to search engines can sometimes see your website being punished. Not all automation is bad but a lot is!
The art and science of SEO requires trust
Search Engine Optimisation is very much a science and art. Science because if we aren’t accurate with our numbers and coding then it will all fail and we are rubbish at SEO. Art because an SEO needs to be creative, search engines constantly move the goal posts as they strive to improve, so an SEO will have a whole bundle of ideas through which you should hopefully get to the top of the search rankings.
Trusting an SEO is like trust a friend, doctor, dentist or a member of your family. Determining whom to trust is a matter of gut instinct, recommendation and of course time. Get to know your SEO before you make any decision.
Getting to know an SEO is very important. You should ask lots of questions, both of the SEO and clients. Talk to them in an informal place (like a pub) get the SEO’s defence down and find them as a person and not the tool of a company. From questioning and getting to know them over a pint your gut instinct will be pretty much there… but there is one other thing you should consider. Honesty! An SEO will never be afraid to share the truth with you, and if they aren’t honest or trustworthy remember – theres always more SEO fish in the sea.
About the Author
Andy is director & chief designer @ AK Designs. Addicted to SEO, Designing, Twitter, His Googie (G1) and all things tech in general. AK Designs (andy kinsey designs) has worked with clients of all sizes from small local charities to larger national fiscal companies and a number of large multi-national organisations. Andy’s motto in life is simple, ”To under-promise and Over-Deliver” something continued into the AK Designs mission. The AK Designs website is also the home of Andy’s SEO articles.
12 Comments
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Have to completely disagree with you about the user experience part. While obviously very important to a site’s success, it has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is exactly as it sounds – optimizing for search engines, and has nothing to do with the experience regular site visitors go through.
While it would be nice to find an SEO company that also does user experience, that would be rarity and I wouldn’t suggest determining which SEO company to choose based on this.
But surely any good SEO would interact with the general user experience on a site their working for. The point I think Andy’s trying to make is that whats the point of optimizing a site and improving its pagerank, if when the user clicks on the link, it turns in a 1980s strobe disco, with music and all. In this case (unless of course the user was looking for a site whos sole intention is 1980s discos) an SEO should feel the need to step in and give their say about the site as a hole.
Personally I believe SEO and user experience go hand in hand.
You can have the best website ever from a technical point of view but if the user experience is bad, then your goal conversions will be rubbish and your bounce rate will be extremely high. Whats the point of having your site at the top of search engines if it doesn’t do anything?
It also affects repeat visits, high bounce rate and low repeat visits will knock your site off the top spot in favour of a site thats got its user experience right.
At least thats my thoughts..
I think @eran has missed the point both @liam and @kirsty have picked up on.
ultimately SEO and UX go hand in hand, a website shouldn’t be but it always is about trade-offs between what is best for one thing and what is best for another – design and seo are just 1 example of this.
Trust. It pretty much all boils down to trust.
I wrote a very similar article from the other side of the fence:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-grow-your-seo-firm
Glad to see we agree :)
As I said, obviously for a site to be successful it has to have good user experience. It needs good marketing as well. A nice design helps. No server downtimes is usually helpful. SEO does its part. I wouldn’t expect someone to do all those things at the same time though.
SEO is optimizing search engine position by increasing pagerank and improving content relevancy. This has nothing to do with improving the user experience.
increasing content relevancy has everything to do with UX
Just to help clarify my point about UX and SEO being together as one I have written a new post … 9.5 steps to UX & SEO Heaven
http://andykinsey.co.uk/ux-seo-heaven/2009/
Let me know what you think.
There seems to be a lot of different business models for SEO companies. A company many of my clients uses (Jajja.com) only charges when they have succeeded on placing you top #10 on Google.
What do you guys think about that model? The cost is pretty high (you pay per word)
@Emil to me this seems a little backwards … I can’t see any prices floating around their site nor can i read it even when i click to see the english version all that appears to be in english is the navigation which isn’t of much use to me :s
Charging for a word in the top 10 … i don’t know of many people that do single word searches when they are looking for something… my website stats seem to prove my point… there isn’t one reference from a search engine where the search term is a single word … its always two or more… not sure if you mean one phrase… if so this model does make a little sense … offers a little security to the client though id be sceptical of this company using black hat techniques (im not saying they do …im just saying be careful)
@Andy You pay for a single word. For example; I can order the word “milk” and they will make sure I rank as high as possible on “milk”. When my page is place 1-25 on Google they’ll charge per day on that specific word. Ranking high on “milk” will help me rank high on “buy milk” and “milk information” etc. which comes for free. Their charge rate depends on which word it is. From 25 SEK to 125 SEK a day. That’s around £2.2 – £11.
If you’re interested, here is a google translated version of their swedish website:
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jajja.com%2Fprodukter%2Fsokmotoroptimering%2F&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=
Few things to go through.
Firstly, yes SEO and User Experience go hand in hand. Afterall its about optimizing a website to not only appear high on search engines for targetted keywords. but also draw click throughs via content and then capture those conversions with a good user experience. Its all linked.
The business model of paying a daily rate to rank on the top10 for a keyword is downright stupid. Firstly search engine ranking is relative. Someone searching on Google in Texas for the keyword ’shoes’ would get different results than someone from the UK because of geo-location. Would only the .com be the barometer? How would you monitor this. Ranking for single keywords is getting downright impossible these days, so you would already be on a losing battle.
And due to the long tail longer keywords produce higher conversions. So all round its a pretty non-sensical model.