Businesses these days that truly desire growth cannot do without SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Many individuals and agencies now provide this service; hence, many folks are now employed as a result of this. Irrespective of your business type, you need search engine optimization. Hence, your Chicago business must make use of this marketing technique to grow your organization. Visit chicagoseoscholar.com to learn more about how an SEO agency can help grow your Chicago business.
However, to get the best out of this marketing strategy, you need to hire the services of an SEO agency. Although you and your staff might be able to handle this process to an extent, nevertheless, having an agency handling it all is the best way to go.
Since this is the case, how do you select the perfect agency given that there are so many in the market nowadays? It means you will have to do a lot of research regarding the expert that you have in mind and what will be their effect on the website of your business.
Therefore, to ensure that you hire the perfect agency for your business, we have written this article just for you. In this article, we will look at the services range you should expect from an SEO agency. We will also list some important questions you need to ask before hiring a Search Engine Optimization Expert. Lastly, we will look at red flags you need to be wary of when you go hunting for a specialist.
Let us get started…
Services Provided by a Search Engine Optimization Agency
Below is the list of services you should expect the specialist to provide:
- Offering technical web development advice
- Appraising and maintaining the structure and content of your website. Click here to read more about website structure and the types.
- Managing online development campaigns of your business
- Providing content strategy as well as the timeline
- Monitoring results, goals-settings, and progress reports
- Keyword research
- Training your employees on best SEO practices
Your Potential Agency Must Understand the Workings of Search Engines
Organic search results offer better quality traffic compared to paid advertisements. This is also common knowledge among SEO experts. Therefore, these professionals understand Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Apart from the fact that organic search results offer better traffic, they are much cheaper. Despite being the cheaper option, they still have better results. Hence, your overall cost is less compared to paid advertisements.
Search Engine Optimization is long-term in nature and will keep increasing over time provided it is done properly. On the other hand, PPC such as Google Adwords is short-term and the results will stop coming in once you stop paying.
Therefore, ensure that the specialist you want to hire understands this clearly and can explain it to you in clear terms. Do not allow an expert to trick you into settling for paid advertisements over organic search optimization.
Questions You Should Ask the Agency before Hiring Them
Although there is no best time to employ an SEO specialist, nevertheless, hiring one when you want to redesign your company’s website or launch a new one can be regarded as perfect timing. Besides, if you are not at any of these stages, a good specialist will help you improve the site’s exposure.
But before you hire anyone, check out these questions you should ask the specialist you are considering:
- Are there case studies or live examples of your previous clients that you can provide us with?
- Is it web pages or websites that are ranked by search engines? (Answer: Webpages).
- What is the process that search engines use to locate, categorize as well as rank webpages?
- Does your firm provide online marketing as a complement to organic search techniques?
- What is your understanding of Google’s SEO and quality guidelines?
- What experience do you have in our particular industry or geographical region, city, or country?
- What results are you expecting for our sites? How long will it take before these results are seen? What KPIs do you use? Visit this link to read more about KPIs.
- How many years of experience in the business do you have?
- What do you consider to be the most vital search engine optimization techniques?
- What communication form do you prefer? How frequently should we expect reports regarding website changes, and will instantaneous recommendations be provided if there is a need to change the existing strategy?
Red Flags you should be Wary Of
There are ways you can identify a fraudulent agency. Check out these red flags below that a non-legit specialist will do:
- They guarantee that your page will rank number 1. (No matter how good an expert is, such a guarantee is at best a lie).
- Sends an email where they offer their SEO services to you without any prior discussion.
- Fails to fully reveal their intentions and plans for your site.
- Ask that you make payments to either another company name or a post office box.
- Possess shadow domains; these are domains that link visitors to a website through misleading redirects. These domains are owned by the SEO agency but claim that they belong to a client they work for.
- Offers to buy links or sell keywords.
- Includes links to their other customers on certain doorway pages; these are pages that do not have any relevance to the keywords of your business, and in most cases, they have concealed links to other unconnected sources that reduce your website’s link popularity.
- Make use of different aliases. Hence, you need to check out the registrant of a domain to confirm that they are not using different aliases.
- Fails to provide online marketing to complement the SEO services they provide.
- Does not want to work in association with your company’s sales team. They, as a marketing team, must work together with your sales team for proper maintenance of lead quality as well as a major return on investment.
Conclusion
In the article above, we have provided you with tips that will help you hire an SEO agency for your Chicago business. Once you utilize these tips, you can rest assured that your business will experience the growth it deserves from implementing this strategy.
