Things You Should Know When Hiring an SEO Provider

If you have an online presence (like a website), then it is important to go for SEO for the ongoing success of your business. Your website may be the most expensive you own in your industry, but if there are no visitors to the website, the whole effort becomes fruitless. And it is not just visitors that you need to your website, but targeted visitors. It is only quality SEO service, like Columbia SEO,Greenville SEO, Myrtle Beach SEO that can bring in relevant and consistent web traffic to your site. For those new to SEO, the following article will help them to determine the differences between good and bad SEO providers.

The SEO campaign needs to be performed in a way which helps in reaching the SEO goals and get the final goal of having a meaningful presence on the Internet. Making an investment for quality SEO services is quite an important decision to make for the expansion and growth of your business. With effective SEO services, all your SEO efforts become ineffective and turn out to be waste of time and money.

Few things to know and understand when hiring an SEO provider:

You should consider hiring the services of a Florida SEO Company, or Local SEO Jacksonville provider as an investment for your online marketing success. It should not be taken as a business expense, instead, it should be considered as a strategy for your business, and a great way to improve your business presence within your industry in your area. You should consider hiring the services of an SEO provider as that of hiring an employee that has good knowledge and understanding about your business, and the reasons for the online presence of your business.

Getting listed on the first page of Google or any other search engine is all that matters. Visitors hardly go to the second page to search for their chosen product or services. Google is an excellent search engine and people trust it blindly about its ability to display the most relevant results on its first ranking page.  Hence, people hardly click through to the second page, and so if a business website is not on the first page, the owners consider it almost as good as nowhere. The most clicks take place in the top positions of the first page and decreases as one goes downwards on the page.

It needs mentioning here that the ‘big’ keywords are not always everything to go for. It would do well to be on the first page for some of the smaller keywords, instead of trying to rank for such bigger keywords and fail to be on the first page. For example, an accountancy firm in Columbia SC may not get the first-page rank for such competitive keyword ‘accountant’, but the same business could achieve the high rank for such a keyword as ‘chartered accountant Columbia SC’. Any good SEO firm would do a comprehensive research of keywords that would help your business to rank high on the first page of search results, and also for those keywords that have good search volume and would make them worthy of trying to rank for your business.

It needs mentioning that the whole effort of SEO is to beat your competitors online. This is achieved by trying to be on the first page of Google by taking appropriate steps. This requires doing the following things.

To put a website on the first page, the search engines have their own conventions that they follow. Those websites that conform to these conventions by making the search engines get what they are looking for, will find their websites reach better rankings in the search results. The only hurdle that you have to cross is your competitors. Hence, those websites that rank high on the search results for your chosen keywords are your online competitors, and your SEO campaign should focus on beating them out of those top positions. While there are keywords that are easy to get the desired ranks, others will turn out to be a difficult proposition. The selection of keywords depends on the online competition for each of the keywords. A good SEO expert would do a thorough research of the different keywords and their competition, and after selection of the most effective keywords that are needed for your business, they should implement the necessary SEO strategies.

On-page and Off-page SEO

It should be noted that Search Engine Optimization is a complex science and is evolving with time. When you are interviewing a prospective SEO service provider, you should have an understanding of the two main kinds of SEO available – the On-page SEO and the Off-page SEO.

On-page SEO includes the elements on your website that affect the SEO rankings (like keywords, page headings, internal links, outbound links, usability, etc.). Off-page SEO comprises of elements that are on the website, but which affect the SEO ranking (like back-links, social sharing, citations, etc.).

It is easy to work on the off-page SEO, but one also needs to do the necessary changes of on-page SEO. A good SEO provider will do a thorough review of your website and inform you about what need to be changed for on-page SEO for the website improvement. The SEO provider will ask your web designer to make the necessary changes for on-page SEO.

It should be noted that an increase in search engine ranking does not relate to an increase in leads and improved sales. An SEO provider can work towards getting your website, Google Places, videos, articles, blogs, etc., rise high in the search results.  An increase in sales or leads cannot be said with certainty because that depends on your sales potentials. The SEO provider is not responsible for ensuring that the extra traffic that comes to your website will turn into more sales or leads. The need for your website is to have good marketing to convert those visitors into sales, and it is the responsibility of your marketing consultant to work for it.

The basic differences between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ SEO provider are as follows.

Good SEO Providers

Any good SEO provider knows the above points well. They do their best to build a proper SEO plan for your business, and that includes doing an extensive research on keywords and market. They will often ask to include this task, even when the client refuses it as worthless. If a client does not prefer to go ahead with the groundwork, the SEO provider would ask not to work further because they know that they will be unable to show the good results to their client. The first priority of a good SEO provider is to provide their clients with good results. There are some clients who jot down few keywords, considering that these are quite relevant to their business, and thinking that they have done enough research on the keywords. It should, however, be noted that real keyword research takes a good amount of time, while doing an investigation. A good SEO provider would use responsible SEO techniques, like securing quality back links,paying more attention to on-page SEO,ensuring a good user experience,aiding social sharing,improving citations,etc.

Bad SEO Providers

Bad SEO providers usually take money from their clients as a first step to start their work. They usually do not conduct proper keyword and market research, but instead, they will ask you to provide few keywords and also your business URL. If this is the case, then most likely they are simply using software to get irrelevant back links for your website all over the Internet, using link farms, blog comments, and other means. Often this type of job does not work well, as the domain or URL may fail to match the required keywords of the client. This could also lead to your website being penalized by Google, and in the long term, it could lead to damaging the credibility of the website.

Bad SEO providers usually resort to bad SEO methods (often referred to as Black-hat methods). The use of these methods could have a detrimental effect on the rankings of the websites, and there could be chances of the website being sand-boxed by the search engines. Undoubtedly, this is not desirable, and the damage done to the website could be hard to overcome.

Hence, it makes sense to hire the services of specialist SEO who has the knowledge and experience in highlighting the qualities of your company, and also is capable of making your business stand out on the internet by bringing attention to your products and services. It is important that your company’s ethics are reflected well through your website and showcases the ethos of the company as true as possible.