How To Choose The Best SEO Agency For Your Business

There are so many Digital Marketing and SEO agencies out there today bombarding business owners with ads, calls, emails, and sales propositions it has become an annoyance to most business owners. Especially when business owners need to spend their time working and growing their own business instead of dealing with marketing agencies and trying to figure out who will provide value and who is a snake oil salesman, or if it is even worth investing in SEO and digital marketing. The one thing I want to make very clear to all business owners is that SEO in particular is NOT the same across all providers! SEO is not just a simple service anyone can provide. There are no college courses that teach SEO, there is no clear formula to follow, or instructions that work anywhere on the entire internet. Thousands of people and agencies claim they know how to rank your site in Google, yet very few actually provide any value. So how can you find the diamond in the rough? How can you know without any doubt that you can pay a digital marketing agency or SEO to rank your website at the top of Google search results, and get value from it? How can you know that if you rank at the top of Google it will bring value? Well I am going to give you those answers. It isn’t super easy, but if you pay attention and learn just enough about what I am going to say, you can find the right digital marketing agency or SEO to get you the results that will make you a great deal of money and bring you the business growth you want!

Forget Anyone Who Is Trying to Sell You Something Cheap!

The first rule of SEO is understanding the value of ranking 1st in Google. The internet has been around a while now and it is NOT easy to rank 1st in Google for any key word search that will bring in profits. That is a FACT of the internet. Millions of people have scoured the internet in search of any and every search term that can bring in money by ranking a website. The market has been saturated and many have been there and done that already. To rank first in Google for any search the brings any sort of financial benefit is extremely difficult! That is a simple fact that every business owner needs to know and understand! If there are agencies or SEO experts claiming they can rank you for a low price of $xxx.xx that is snake oil, forget it, it WILL NOT WORK! Ranking takes an incredible amount of expertise, some time, and it takes financial resources to compete. Many may be tempted by a low price, but it is a waste of time and money!

Ask For Proof! A Good SEO or Digital Marketing Agencies Has Ranked more than 1 Website 1st in Google!

Ask them to provide you examples of websites they have ranked first in Google, and for what keyword. Pull up a window in Google and search for that website, if you do not see that website ranking first then you know it is bull, run the other way! If you see it ranking first, notice if the search is local. That means is the search term looking for a local business or service such as insurance agent in Raleigh, NC, or is it a national or international keyword without a location in the search term such as Best Insurance Agency. Ranking for a local term is great and some of those can be highly competitive, but it is another level entirely to rank for a national or world wide search term. If they have ranked sites for that, then you know these guys must know what they are doing! That is a keeper! So remember always ask for examples, preferably more than one so you know it isn’t a fluke!

Why The Big Agencies Are Usually A Bad Choice

The big agencies and companies out there have all sorts of tricks for selling you products, and you might think that these big guys must know what they are doing, otherwise why would they be so big right? WRONG….There are very few companies that rank for competitive keywords, if these large companies have thousands of clients how many do you suppose get a great deal off attention? How many do you think rank first in Google? Few if any, so the majority of those clients if not all pay and never reach the top. Don’t be that guy. The huge companies pay very low level people to do your “SEO” which barely even registers as what the actual service is supposed to be, in fact they are just good at selling their product and that’s about it, don’t make that mistake.

Science Matters! Why Testing is the only thing that makes a Great SEO

If you have ever searched to find out what SEO is there are thousand of experts claiming to have the secret. All the articles conflict, nothing they say actually works. Google changes it’s ranking algorithm nearly every month so any information on the web or any information being taught is no longer relevant after a month. So how can anyone know what is going on? Testing is the answer! A Great SEO understand they need to run their own tests on the algorithm, and I don.t mean scrape data and make wild hypothesis and educated guesses. To test the algorithm one must make thousands of test pages with pig latin, or nonsense content, then design a test for a non sense keyword nobody else is trying to rank for. Then you change 1 thing on a web page. You search for that nonsense keyword and there you will see if that 1 thing you changed on that page makes that web page rank higher than the identical pages without the variable you are testing. It take a great deal of resources and tests to come up with actual scientifically tested and repeatable results. That is testing and a great SEO tests every variable imaginable and can at any point check the search results for a keyword and tell exactly what Google is doing, even when they change their algorithm. So if you want the best SEO in the world, ask if they are testing varibles and have tests running, and to show you one of their tests. That is the way to get the absolute best SEO experts in the world working to rank your website and get the results you want!