Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring An SEO Agency
If you want to grow your business by getting more leads and traffic to your website, the most common-sense next step would be to hire a technical SEO company to help you increase your organic traffic!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a highly technical practice and if you don’t know a lot about it, your business can easily be taken for a ride.
To rank on the first page of a search engine results page requires a consistent and disciplined approach and if any technical SEO company promises you instant results, run the other way!
Let’s look at some of the pitfalls of hiring the wrong technical SEO company.
It’s Not Really a ‘Technical’ SEO Company
If a company offers you a ‘one size fits all’ package, be rest assured they are not following the technical rigor they really need to.
Each business is different with its own idiosyncrasies. This means that each business has a different website, target audience, competitors and goals.
What will work for your competitor might not necessarily work for you.
A good technical SEO company will make an effort to understand these nuances, understand the interplay between them and then offer you a custom solution, specialized to your needs.
There Are No Instant Results in SEO
There is a common misconception among businesses that fixing their meta tags and descriptions will yield instant results. Let’s make it very clear – it does not work that way.
SEO is a confluence of multiple elements that need to work in tandem. You cannot make disconnected and disparate SEO optimizations and expect a 100% increase in website traffic the very next day.
This means your website design, site architecture, linking strategy, keyword strategy, content strategy etc. need to work together for any meaningful results to show.
Technical SEO companies that promise “unlimited traffic” are fake and if you do get what you bargained for; these companies are most likely employing black hat SEO tactics.
Black hat SEO companies use fake networks and providers to show a temporary surge in traffic. This traffic is not only useless but will also completely mess up your Google Analytics data.
There’s no shortcut to SEO success. Good SEO takes time and when you get it right, it lasts!
You Can’t ‘Hack’ Your SEO
A lot of technical SEO companies take advantage of the fact that SEO is a complex and highly technical field.
Some of these technical SEO companies sell a proprietary tool to give you exponential results on the search results page and increase your website traffic.
SEO is no longer hacker space. Through the years and various search algorithm revisions, Google has cracked down upon such practices and made sure that organic and natural content is valued the most.
Many of these proprietary tools might even get you blacklisted because they violate Google’s policies.
Focus on creating content that your audience wants to read. The search algorithm is now smart enough to spot when someone is gaming the system.
They Do ‘Creative’ SEO Copywriting
Yes, keywords are important when it comes to writing content for SEO but keywords do not take precedence over the actual content.
And if an SEO company says they do creative SEO copywriting, take it with a pinch of salt and always ask for supporting data.
Keyword stuffing and writing specifically for SEO does not work anymore. Instead, look at what your buyer personas want and write for the problems they want to be solved.
If you write for your target audience, you’ll have longer session times and in turn higher ranking on search. So, writing for search engines alone will only take you so far, but writing for your buyer personas will give you better results.
Take some time to do your research and understand the basics of SEO before going out to shop for an SEO company. The better informed you are, the better the chances you don’t end up hiring the wrong technical SEO company.
There certainly are great SEO companies out there to help you but we recommend keeping in mind the pitfalls we discussed in this blog to help you in picking the right one.
Not sure about the SEO plan for your website of your business? Let’s discuss your needs and concerns in a call or book an audit.