How do you know if you can trust your SEO agency? These are the red flags of a bad SEO agency you should watch out for!
What to Expect from an SEO Agency
You’ve most likely heard how important SEO is for getting your business found online. But you’ve probably also wondered what to expect from an SEO agency, haven’t you?
For starters, most business owners know they need SEO but don’t really understand it.
Furthermore, we’ve all heard varying stories about both the good and the bad SEO agencies … whether or not they delivered on their promises.
Let’s discuss what you should expect from an SEO Agency (while also setting some realistic expectations about what an SEO campaign does not include).
What is SEO?
While often associated with link building, SEO (search engine optimization) involves more than building links. Performing SEO for a website is the process of optimizing:
- The on-site content and structure of a website
- Off-site link building with high-value backlinks, rather than quantity
- Local SEO for a business’ location(s)
All of these efforts combine to help a website provide information in the most effective (and user-friendly) way possible so that search engines rank it higher.
The goal of Google is to create an environment where there are many high-quality sites competing for the same keyword or keyword phrase. This creates a better experience for people searching online because they get more relevant results, rather than being bombarded with irrelevant sites that have nothing to do with their query.
The goal of optimizing your website for search is to give your pages a competitive edge to help drive them up in the rankings while targeting specific and relevant keywords to the right user! And more than ever, to be considered a high-quality website, it’s important to stand out by having a clear USP, mission statement, brand messaging and voice.
This is where an SEO Agency will be able to help your business!
What is not alright is when an agency uses corner-cutting strategies, known as black hat methods, to improve your rankings. While SEO strategies will vary from agency to agency, the use of certain unethical SEO practices should have you scurrying away as quickly as possible.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO
Okay, so you’re probably wondering whether or not SEO is right for your business.
We believe SEO, while a long-term strategy, is the way to go! But marketing strategies aren’t really a one-size-fits-all scenario, right? So, let’s discuss some important elements of SEO that can help you determine if it’s right for your business.
The advantages of SEO are as follows:
- Improved rankings for search engines
- Increased organic traffic to your pages
- More qualified leads generated from organic traffic
- Higher conversion rates for websites
The advantages of SEO are as follows:
- The initial time and effort invested (e.g., developing quality content)
- Slow response from search engines (like Google)
The Challenges of SEO
SEO is not an easy task, and it’s becoming increasingly more difficult as time goes on.
The Challenges of SEO:
- The competition is increasing in the digital world as more and more people are finding out about the importance of having a strong online presence.
- More companies are investing in their digital marketing strategies, which means they will be competing with you for your target keywords and potential customers and clients.
- There is so much information available online that it becomes very hard to know what to trust.
- It takes time and effort to keep up with all the changes in the industry.
What Does an SEO Agency Offer?
An SEO agency offers data-driven SEO campaigns led by experts in the field who are keeping up with the most recent changes in the industry.
At GYBO Digital Marketing, we have a set 6-month minimum strategy in which recommendations and implementations are customized based on your website’s needs. Our basic deliverables include (but are not limited to):
- Keyword Research & Mapping – An agency will help determine the most valuable and attainable keywords to improve the chances of key pages of your website ranking. To top it off, they’ll select keywords that will attract the right audience to help generate more quality leads.
- Technical Audits – An agency will do a thorough review of a website to determine the technical elements (ex: page speed, redirects, 404s and more) that may hurt its ranking ability. Sometimes we find elements that prevent a website from indexing at all. All these elements are compiled in a report to recommend fixing.
- Competitor Research – A good SEO campaign should include researching a website’s competitors for both on- and off-page strategies that help them rank, gain backlinks and engage or convert visitors while on the site.
- Link Building – Yes, we’ve circled back to this because it is a good strategy for improving the authority and trustworthiness of a website. While there is some deliberation about how to build links a good SEO agency will only use white-hat SEO link building techniques.
- Content Strategy – An SEO agency understands that relevant and useful content created for search intent (and with user experience) in mind is a huge part of the success of a website. Whether or not your SEO campaign includes content writing, having a sound content strategy for creating pages that will rank is important to online success.
- Local SEO – Although many brands want to be visible everywhere, a good SEO agency will help the owner of a new website to understand the benefits of local SEO when it’s appropriate.
- Tracking Important Goals – From lead generation to sales, your SEO campaign should include the tracking and reporting of essential goals that can be measured from CTAs and buttons on your website.
What’s Not Part of an SEO Campaign?
Sometimes there’s confusion about what an SEO campaign will look like. Generally speaking, SEO campaigns don’t include:
- Social Media Management or Reporting.
- Ads (PPC, Social Media, etc).
- Email Marketing.
- Web Development.
Although they may not be included in a general campaign, you can often add these to your plan for an additional fee.
But Wait, There’s More …
In all seriousness, you should expect NOT to be given guarantees. Guarantees (whether ranking, traffic or ROI) is a major red flag of a bad SEO agency.
A few things you should expect from an operational standpoint:
- Honesty – your SEO agency should provide honesty about whatever situation arises.
- Transparency – your SEO agency should provide transparent reporting – whether good or bad.
- Ownership – Not only should you have access to your major accounts (Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Business Profile) you should own them.
The purpose of all of this?
You want to be able to access your data when and if you decide to leave your SEO agency.
How Do I Know if My SEO Agency is Doing a Good Job?
When reviewing reports, you should see improvements in the following areas:
- Traffic from organic search.
- The number of ranking pages and terms.
- Domain Authority.
- The number of backlinks.
- Important Goals and KPIs as set at the beginning of the campaign.
While many business owners like to view reporting data on a very granular level, a good strategy for reporting is to review metrics and KPIs on a monthly basis with your SEO agency. It’s more valuable to review this data in a month-over-month view and even more eye-opening when reviewing over the long term (quarterly or every six months) to see real trends and the impact of your SEO campaign.
Why Choose GYBO Digital Marketing?
We see ourselves as your strategic marketing partner, helping your business reach its goals through data-driven strategies and recommendations.
Our team is passionate about using our expertise to not only help your business get found online but to succeed in achieving (or exceeding) important goals. And we believe in honest and transparent communication because we want you to understand how and why we’re working on each deliverable in your SEO campaign.
As your SEO agency, we want you to know exactly what to expect from us, even before we start your campaign!
Ready to learn more? Contact us today.
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Passionate digital marketing expert with over 10 years of experience. Broad, hands-on marketing skillset, from web developer, SEO, PPC, Data Analytics & Tracking.