So, you have a website, and you want it to be visited by a billion people every day and generate millions of dollars in income. Sure, go call yourself Amazon and go ahead. If you aren’t called Amazon or even the New York Times, then you need to start at the beginning like everyone else and build up your site’s prominence using a lot of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) skills.
Now, you can opt for self-learning, and make all the mistakes that these companies made and forgot over a decade ago, or you can save yourself a lot of time and energy, and money too by investing an SEO campaign with a good SEO company.
BUT!? You exclaim and ask, what is a good SEO company?
Well, that’s the question, it’s THE question, since there are more SEO companies than there are websites, and everyone claims to have the best algorithms, the most intelligent software, and the fastest results.
BUT! And this time it’s me exclaiming WAIT.
Not everyone can have the perfect solution as they claim to have, and this is the crux of the matter. How do you sift through all the bullshit and get to the core of a good SEO service?
The answer actually lies in understanding what the internet is all about, and what is SEO.
Let’s start with the SEO 101.
A web page is a construct of words and digital media. The way other sites can reach you is through knowing which words your site contains. This means, if you sell milk, you don’t want to use the word grease. You want to use the word milk, and all its derivatives, as well as negatives and strings of associated wording. This way you will assure yourself that anyone is searching for milk or something to do with milk, that will lead them to your website.
However, you are just one in millions of websites that vie for milk seekers online, so you need to improve your reach and stand out from the crowd. This means you want to be one of the top five sites listed in a search engines list or your chances of being seen and found go down to zero. Most users don’t go beyond the first search page unless they are seeking a specific named product or service.
This is where website design, preparedness for SEO and paid advertising come into play.
Since this article is not about SEO, but about choosing the right SEO company, I will not delve into the features of creating an SEO website, but will look at the factors you want to form a company that will place you in the top five spots of any web search request.
The Five Cores of an SEO Companies Integrity
- Communications
- Customers
- Pricing
- User Friendliness
- Hands-Free
Communications
The first and most important feature that any good SEO company must provide is an open line of communications, and this starts with explaining the process and aligning your expectations with reality.
Reality is the core of integrity, and this means the company will explain to you what your website category market size can reach the highest level, and how much it will cost to reach that level for different speeds if attaining it.
This means that after your site is SEO prepared, the next level is the budget, and the more money you have, the faster you will grow. It’s a straight forward equation. Here is an example:
- You only rely on referral networking; you do not use any paid advertising, expect a very very very long time to grow.
- You rely on advertising online only, using basic sites such as Google Adwords, expect a steady growth but need to maintain SEO content updated at all times.
- You have a large budget, place an ad in the Superbowl, advertise on key sites such as Amazon, advertise with large websites that have a lot of visitors, expect to grow fast.
Remember, there is a vast gap between reality and expectation. A good SEO company will explain this to you and take you to step by step through the process showing you roughly how long it takes to grow the popularity of your site. Also, they will explain to you the specific focus of your site, as I started out with milk:
If your site is selling milk products, then your market niche is different from a site that delivers new about milk products. The focus is different, and a good SEO company knows how to differentiate between markets.
The bottom line is that a good SEO company, like Jen and Jen SEO NJ, communicates the reality and does not pamper to your fantasies. If a company suggests, you will get hundreds of thousands of visitors with their services, run away and don’t look back.
Customers
Ask the company for a list of their top clients; nothing speaks better than results. If there are some major players with large audiences, then the company knows its job. If however its filled with small fry, don’t bother with them. Take an SEO course yourself; you will reach the same results without paying someone else for that.
Pricing
Remember that pricing is key, you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars for nothing. Make sure that every cost has a purpose, and remember an SEO solution includes restructuring your website, restructuring how you input new data into your website. Adding automation apps to maintain the integrity of the SEO content as and when it comes in. The budget is also for online advertising that is manipulated correctly.
Understand this, Adwords is not simply placing an add with some keywords; it’s a complex algorithm based science that requires constant attention to changes in the way the internet evolves. Keywords and phrases are complex in creation, the advert wording has to be exact, and the market markets have to be focused correctly.
A proper campaign is made of many small campaigns, and this means constant audit and control. The top SEO companies have bots that manage the AdWords style accounts, and they are connected to many advertising boards around the net. The graphics and text ads are carefully curated, and the keyword and market focus is matrix based.
The bottom line is you must be prepared to pay for all this extremely hard work. However, ask for proof of service, and see what their dashboard looks like and to what depths they reach.
User Friendliness
In this instance, I mean how simple is it to interface with the company and their dashboard. Do you need a Ph.D. in Statistics to understand what they present? Or is their dashboard metrics simplified, showing you only the curated and salient points. Is navigating their services easy? Is the GUI for idiots or is it for scientists?
The bottom line is you want an interactive experience that will attract a 3-year-old and not a Rocket Scientist on the quest for a way around a black hole.
Hands-Free
Don’t go with an SEO company that wants you to manage your sites SEO if they cannot do the job, turns away. The whole point of SEO service is that they take over your site, leaving you to just input the daily data. A truly magnificent company will install apps that automate the SEO process once they have integrated it initially. This means they have optimized your site, and now the content is up to you, and they maintain a vigil over campaigns and site integrity using automated processes (bots). This makes life easier for all and reduces costs.
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Conclusions
Choosing an SEO company is like choosing a dentist, you don’t want anyone touching your teeth, you want it to be painless, affordable and constantly improving. Use the five-factor approach and don’t waste your money on shams and scams. Remember, true SEO is real science, it is a mathematically based algorithmic approach to improve your placement in search engine results. It demands a joint effort from you and your SEO service provider, but should let you concentrate on content, and leaving the site management and market to them.
My final word, an SEO company, should only be sought after if you intend to create a large awareness, which means you want more than 5,000 unique visitors a day (every day) reading at least 2 pages of your site and responding or buying or participating in at least 100 actions a day. Anything less is not worth the effort or the money, and if you work at it yourself and spend around $500 a year, you will reach that target within 12-24 months depending on your site’s content.
