About 50 percent of businesses in the United States use a digital marketing agency.
If you’re the kind of business owner who likes looking at things with a glass half-full/half-empty perspective, you might have been on the fence about outsourcing your marketing for a long time. But now you’ve made up your mind. You’re looking to hire a digital marketing agency.
That’s a smart decision, but the work is far from over. Finding the right SEO marketing agencies for your needs can be a big challenge, especially because there are so many of them, each claiming to take your business to the next level.
How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
Know Your SEO Needs
A mistake some business owners make when hiring an SEO marketing agency is kickstarting the hiring process without having a fine understanding of their SEO needs.
Look, although the core goal of any SEO effort is to get top ranking on search engine results, this isn’t always possible. There’s only one spot for the #1 rank, and millions of businesses are competing for it.
This is why it’s important to know your goals and ensure they are achievable. For instance, perhaps what you need is increased search traffic, which will happen if you can land on the first page of Google. Or perhaps you’re already on the first page, but you want to maintain that spot. Or maybe you want to clean up your negative digital reputation.
Most SEO marketing agencies can work on any SEO aspect, but they’ll have a specific strength. One might be good at link building, for example, but not so good at blog content creation.
Another agency might only be good at getting your business trending. On that note, find out more about what it takes to trend your business.
So, when you know your SEO needs, you’ll focus on finding an SEO agency with the right strengths.
A Verifiable Record of SEO Success SEO
You can start an SEO agency today and make as many wild claims as you want. However, when a prospective client will ask for proof, you’ll likely start fumbling over words.
When hiring SEO marketing agencies, ask for proof. If an agency says they’ll double your search traffic in two months, ask them if they’ve done it before. Don’t take “yes” for an answer. Ask them to show you proof.
It’s easy to track digital marketing performance. SEO agencies do this every day. So, if an agency claims something, they should have the data (such as site traffic analytics) to prove it.
Scalability
Your SEO needs will likely keep shifting. As your business grows, you’ll also need to ramp up your SEO efforts. Your needs will increase.
Can the SEO marketing agency you want to hire scale up to meet your growing SEO needs? Or you will need to start looking for another agency with the abilities you’re looking for.
If scalability is going to be a factor, choose an agency that’s big enough, with the right human and technology resources.
Evaluate and Identify the Right SEO Marketing Agencies for Your Business
Hiring SEO marketing agencies is a smart move, but it takes some doing to find the right agency for your small business. With this information, though, you’re in a better position to find the best agency.
Keep tabs on our blog for more helpful articles.