How to Choose an SEO Agency: A Checklist 

Shan Serran
February 4, 2022
|
4 min read

Every day hundreds of new businesses are established online. With the ever-growing internet market, the online presence of businesses is vital for their success. Several analytics techniques and SEO is used to establish a strong image of your business online. A perfectly planned online presence can significantly impact your business, especially if it's new.

We know if you’re new to this, you must be thinking about how to choose an SEO Agency. Read along because we are here to help. We will guide you on everything from understanding an SEO Agency to choosing the one that fulfills your organization’s goals.  

What is an SEO Agency?

Before diving deeper into the process of choosing an SEO Agency, let’s first discuss what an SEO Agency is. 

Designing and launching a website can be done by anyone with the help of tools available online. But, the main goal is to get the traffic and attract clients to your website. This is where an SEO Agency comes into the picture. They can help you use social media marketing tactics and tools that can promote your business and increase revenue. 

In simple words, the goal of an SEO Agency is to work along with your business objectives and help improve the visibility of your website in search engines. SEO helps your business gain more traffic. Thus leading to a stronger market position, more visits, sales, and brand recognition. 

Can you do SEO yourself?

With a lot of practice and research, you can do SEO yourself. There are many courses and tools available online which can help you on your learning journey. However, if you want to achieve results quicker, getting the work done by professionals is a good idea. 

Types of SEO

It is not just important to get SEO services for your businesses- you need to get a service that your business needs. Before choosing to get services from any SEO Agency, you need to know which services are needed by your business. There are many different types of SEO you can get done for your business’ website. These include:

  • Local SEO

Tactics are used to help your business appear in Google's local search results. It is usually helpful for those businesses that have a physical location or an outlet.

 

  • Mobile SEO

Mobile SEO is the search engine optimization of websites with seamless viewing on mobile phones and tablets. More than 50% of internet users surf websites through their mobile devices. Customers prefer websites that are mobile-friendly and easier to navigate on these devices. 

  • Technical SEO

This SEO ensures that your website fulfills the technical requirements of search engines along with organic rankings. Technical SEO involves elements such as indexing, rendering, crawling, and website architecture. 

  • Content SEO

Content SEO deals with the content you put up on your website or social media pages. It can help your content gain more views and rank high in the search engine results. It describes how you should write and structure your content so that it can grab the viewer’s attention and prompt them to take action.

  • Off-Page SEO

This SEO focuses on external signals and links, and how others view or mention your website.  It deals with providing a good user experience and improving the website’s credibility, demand and relevance. 

  • On-Page SEO

In On-Page SEO, you optimize every page of your website to appear in the top results of search engines. It includes both the content as well as the source code of the page. With the use of proper keywords, titles, descriptions, and SEO-friendly content, on-page SEO can improve the page rank. 

A checklist to choosing an SEO Agency

Now that you are aware of an SEO Agency and the different types of SEO, you might have an idea of what you want to achieve. However, with hundreds of SEO agencies available with a variety of services, it might become difficult to choose one that can take your business to new heights. Given below is a checklist to help you choose the best SEO Agency for your organization.

  • Set a goal

Before choosing any SEO Agency, first, you need to determine your final destination. You might need to answer questions such as:

  • Where do you see your business after getting services from an SEO Agency? 
  • What do you want to achieve and do you have any ideas in mind? 

Let us give you a few examples of goals you might have: 

  • You might want to market your business using SEO or build stronger and useful links. 
  • You might want to set up an eCommerce website with SEO content that improves your page ranking. 

Whereas for results, you might have an objective of getting more traffic and sales per month. Or you might just want your website to appear on the first page of google search results. 

 

Depending on what goal you have in mind and what type of business you own, different SEO techniques are applied. You might want to choose an agency that excels in those techniques and guarantees positive results. 

  • Look for the best SEO specialists

Even after narrowing down your goal and objectives, you might still have numerous options to choose from. 

In order to choose the best option, look for agencies that have experts who can deal in your domain. They should have experience, ideas, and creativity that can take your business to the next level. Additionally, their strategic planning, idea generation, and problem-solving skills should be diverse enough to tackle all sorts of obstacles and risks. 

Some of the SEO services you can get from agencies include ranking, traffic, bounce rate, backlinks, and click-through rate. 

  • Read reviews

Thanks to the internet, now you can easily find reviews and testimonials from clients who have taken services from SEO agencies. They can explain better about their experience, the results achieved, and the professionalism of the team. Alternatively, you can ask the SEO Agency to share their portfolio and some of their famous clients. 

  • Look into their portfolio

Many agencies share their portfolios as well as case studies for previous projects. This does not only show their work but also their creative process from start to finish. It shows how they work to put forward something that can benefit the business and clients.

A portfolio can show you whether the agency is capable of working on diverse backgrounds and new ideas. It can help you get an idea of what to expect from their work. 

  • Explore their social media

Almost all SEO agencies have social media accounts which you can check to read more about their services and offers. Or you can subscribe to their weekly newsletters and updates through email.

Additionally, many SEO agencies have blogs where they post articles, usually related to SEO. This can let you know how up-to-date the agency is with new trends in the SEO domain. 

Moreover, their social media presence can tell you a lot about how well they work. If they are well known and have a good social media following, they definitely know how to do their job.

  • Ask about their fees

We know you don’t want to be just throwing away money and getting nothing in return. This is why it is important to find out the fee that the SEO Agency takes for its services. 

Every agency has a different fee structure; some work on an hourly basis while others might offer contract-based fees. The fee structure will be different based on what you’re getting and how long you will be getting the agency’s services. 

Make sure to research well and take your time in finding the agency that offers a market competitive rate along with good services. However, keep in mind that high rates do not mean high-quality service. 

Put your money in an SEO Agency that can provide you bespoke services and outstanding experience. 

  • Check how they ensure the ease of customers

You would never want to work with an SEO Agency that is rude to its clients, even if its services match the ones that you desire. This is why you should get to know about the organization’s culture and how they ensure customer satisfaction. Client testimonials can be helpful along with the details of the agency, which are normally available on the “about us” page on their website. 

  • Communicate with the team

If possible, try to arrange a meeting with the team members who will be working with you on the project. Explain to them in detail what your goal is and how you want to achieve it. Good communication is the key to successful projects. 

As these SEO teams usually work as an extension of your in-house team, clear communication is really important. If you can not overcome the communication gap at the beginning, there might be a lot of problems later in the project. 

Questions to ask

Now that you know how to choose an SEO Agency, let us make it simpler. Here are some questions summarized that you can ask around to make sure you made the right choice:

  1. Ask the company representatives about their services. What makes them special and unique?
  2. Check how broad their field of work is. Do they offer services other than SEO? What domains or industries have they worked in?
  3. Ask their previous clients about their experience. What do they like the most about the agency? What needs improvement? 
  4. See how they would accommodate your needs. Can they make a plan so that you can later integrate other social media services? Do they outsource the work or do it in-house?
  5. SEO can be done in many ways; make sure your selected agency works the right way. Do they follow a code of ethics in their work? How do they ensure transparency and efficiency in their work?
  6. Social media users leave reviews which can be really helpful for you. You can get in touch with them and ask more questions. What was the best about the agency’s service? What needs improvement?
  7. You can’t just decide on an agency without asking about their fee and payment plan. How do they accept payments? Is there any way to cancel the contract once it is started? Research the SEO Agency itself. The online presence of an SEO Agency can tell you a lot about how good their work is. Does it appear in the search results when you enter the keywords? 
  8. Meet with the representatives and discuss everything in detail. Talk about how their team will work with yours. 
  9. Ask about any awards or certifications awarded to the company. They are good proof of the company’s success and can help you narrow down your options. 

What to expect from an SEO Agency?

If done the right way, SEO can help market your business through advanced link building, marketing strategy, analytics, and reporting. With the help of SEO experts, you can gain organic traffic and reach your target market easily.  In short, SEO can generate the following results:

  • Boost sales
  • Increase traffic
  • Improve page rank
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Provide better user experience
  • Increase the return on investment
  • Gain a competitive position in the market
  • Increase visitors to your online as well as physical stores

Final thoughts

SEO is an ongoing effort. Good search engine rankings require consistent optimization. Hiring a good SEO firm will ensure that your business keeps appearing near the top of the results for all relevant searches, something that can be priceless to any organization in today's highly competitive business environment.

 

The right SEO Agency can help you build your brand's image, increase traffic, and boost the business' profit within just a few months. If you're looking for reliable and bespoke SEO services for your business, partner with Veewz. Our out-of-the-box SEO solutions cover organic SEO, local SEO strategy building to execution will build a good brand image and a strong online presence for you. When customers search for your brand, you'll appear near the top of the list. 

 

To learn more about SEO, follow us on our blog, where you'll find informative articles like this one.

 


Author Bio

Shan Serran

With experience of over 10 years in Digital Marketing, Shan has been helping businesses with SEO, SEM, and Social Media. He founded Veewz with the vision of providing transparency in the delivery of digital marketing services and better options for businesses of all sizes and domains. When he’s not working, Shan loves to spend time with his family, watch movies and support his favorite team San Francisco Giants.

Do not sell my info