But what does this mean for your business? A digital agency that specializes in SEO can help your business maximize returns on your web presence. Much like the search engines they work with, SEO is a rapidly evolving industry, and the right agency can wield their expertise to suit your company’s needs, allowing you to focus on the rest of your business.

It’s essential for starters to understand that search engine optimization, while complex, is not magic but rather science. Through a deliberate approach of link building, content development, and webpage optimization, new websites can use SEO to increase both organic traffic and conversions. The good news is you can remove the wand and crystal ball from your Amazon cart. The better news is that you can implement an effective SEO strategy with the help of a professional SEO company.

Once you consult with your team and decide to hire an SEO company, the question remains––Which SEO agency best suits my business? Currently, there are hundreds of options at your disposal, and more cropping up each day. Between SEO freelancers, in-house specialists, and full-fledged agencies, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Likely, you’ll start by browsing the web; however, we recommend asking your friends and colleagues. Which services have delivered results for them?

When you reach out to an agency, they’ll likely begin with a conversation, one in which they’ll assess the needs of your business and outline a plan of attack. During this call, be sure to ask them the following questions.

#1. What is your overall SEO strategy, and how do you produce results?

The goal of any SEO approach is, at its core, the same: to increase organic traffic to your website. With that said, there are many different ways of achieving this, so when consulting with an SEO agency, it’s important to consider the ways through which they plan to boost your search rankings.

Essentially, there are three main categories of SEO, and any SEO strategy worth its salt will account for each of them.

On-Page SEO

As the name implies, on-page SEO refers to the content visible on your page. This includes landing pages, rich media, blogs, your services pages, and other website content that your user will engage with. A solid SEO company will make sure to optimize all of this content for you, which can be done through a variety of means.

Keyword research consists of finding the best keywords to target on a page in order to boost its search engine rankings. Especially if your website is relatively new, you’ll want to select a company that targets keywords with attainable ranking difficulties. For example, if you’re hoping to boost traffic to your meal kit service, a good SEO company will find high-value keywords that drive qualified, converting traffic to your page, effectively carving a niche for your business, even in crowded markets. 

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the backend of your website, that is, the parts not visible to the average user. While it’s tempting to settle for optimized on-page content, what happens under the hood is of equal importance. While the user experience is important for human users, they are not the only one’s reviewing your site.

In order to categorize and rank your site, search engines crawl each of your pages, “reading” them and rating them on their own scales of readability, so to speak. Especially in the coming months, with Google’s page experience update, the speed, mobile-friendliness, site architecture, and security all factor heavily into your page’s ranking, and a good SEO service should account for this.

Off-Site SEO

The third, and arguably most difficult type of SEO, occurs off-site. It consists of all things related to building your website’s reputation within the greater community of the internet. By building a network of links to your site, links from authoritative and relevant sources, you’ll ultimately bolster the authority of your own page, all of which ties back to higher SERP placements.

This is where an SEO service really comes in handy, as building a backlink profile is as difficult and time-consuming as it sounds. With this in mind, you’ll want to look to an SEO company like LinkGraph, one that offers extensive and high-quality link building campaigns. A search engine optimization strategy needs to see you through in the long-haul.

Remember, not all SEO companies will offer solutions for all three of these elements, so be sure to assess the particular needs of your business before hiring their services.

#2. Are your SEO tactics Google compliant?

Just as a library has the Dewey Decimal System, Google and other search engines have their own systems with which they crawl and index web pages. Unlike your average library, however, Google has the mind-boggling task of organizing the trillions of pages available on the internet. What’s more, Google must rank these pages. To accomplish this, Google has a set of rules and criteria that pages must abide by in order to show up in searches.  

At first glance, it might sound tempting to manipulate these criteria. Cloaking content, stuffing irrelevant keywords into your copy, and plagiarism are all examples of what we’d call black hat SEO. While these methods may boost your rankings in the short term, they will ultimately damage how search engines regard your site.

Bonafide SEO specialists will use white hat SEO tactics that abide by Google’s webmaster guidelines, which are rooted in the quality of both content and user experience. Sure, strategies such as link-building and keyword analysis take a lot of time and effort, but if you’re going to shell out for an SEO company, then you’ll want to make sure they comply with Google; otherwise, the benefits of their services will be short-lived.

#3: Does your SEO company know how to rank in my industry?

Although all SEO is centered around boosting organic traffic, SEO is not a one-size-fits-all type of service. Even if a search engine optimization company increases your traffic, there’s no guarantee that this correlates with increased revenue. A professional SEO company could maybe land you at the top of the rankings for cloud computing software, but this will do you little good if you’re in the business of CRM platforms.

Solid professional SEO services will be familiar with your industry. Certain industries, such as insurance, are highly competitive in terms of SEO. Others, like call center software, while less saturated, possess a high search intent, thus driving up the CPC for associated keywords. An SEO company should be able to understand the types of search idiosyncrasies in your industry and create a strategy accordingly. Armed with industry-specific knowledge, they’ll attract the type of potential customers that drive conversion.

#4. How does your SEO agency approach keyword research?

There are two ways in which SEO experts utilize keywords: buying search ads and page optimization.

Search Ads

The more straightforward of keyword methods, buying search ads allows you to show up in the search results for specific keywords you’ve selected. While this can certainly be a way to vault atop the Google rankings, you’ll be charged for every click, which can quickly become a costly form of paid advertising, not to mention the perils of click-fraud.

Especially for small and medium-sized businesses, Google Ads can be a hefty price to pay with little guarantee of a return on the investment. In the short term, it will surely bring a larger audience to your page; however, this will only hold for as long as you keep paying for clicks. On the other hand, SEO, while more complicated, provides a long-term solution, ultimately boosting organic traffic at lower cost. 

Optimize for Organic Search

The more laborious option is to optimize your page for organic search results. This is done by first making sure your site has content that is both relevant and of high quality. Then you’ll have to get other websites to reference your content and link back to it. All of this plays into Google’s algorithm.

Most professional SEO services will likely focus more on optimization for organic search. This process begins with keyword research, the best way to figure out which terms to target. One might assume that a personal injury law firm should naturally target the term “personal injury”; however, with its high keyword difficulty rating (62) and high costs ($44 per click), there is likely a more effective approach. A true SEO expert will take the time to figure out with you, the client, alternative search terms that will both save you money and increase your likelihood of SERP visibility.

#5. What previous clients or business owners has your company worked with? What were the results?

Nowadays, there are hundreds of digital marketing agencies that offer SEO services, and it can be difficult to figure out which one will suit your needs. A good place to start is by reviewing who they’ve worked with. Most SEO specialist services will list prior clients on their website. LinkGraph, for example, provides detailed case studies of their clients, in which they outline their methods and provide their tangible measures of success. Take a look at who a company has worked with. If they have a history of success in your industry, then it’s likely they’ll be a good fit for you.

In addition to the specific type of industry, you’ll also want to look into their success metrics. Did the SEO firm simply boost traffic? How did this traffic affect conversion? Did they utilize social media, email campaigns, local SEO, graphic design, or competitor analysis? For the best results, you’ll want to have your SEO goals in mind so that you can better observe a similar pattern of success in professional SEO services.

#6. For link building services: How do you get your backlinks, and how long do they last?

Link building is the backbone of any content marketing strategy. It improves your position on major search engines and expands both your web presence and authority. With that said, not all links are created equally, and you should pay close attention to how an SEO firm obtains backlinks for their clients.

Simply put, the way to obtain backlinks is by creating quality content. A good SEO company will review the entirety of your website and determine which pieces of your online presence hold a high linkable value. From there, they will optimize your content for both overall quality and target keywords in addition to creating new content that they’ll work to place in authoritative publications. It’s important to note that all of this outreach should be 100% organic. While there are certainly ways that you can pay in order to place an article, the most effective (albeit time-consuming) method is through pitching content to publications. With LinkGraph’s scalable link building campaigns, their editorial team will draft original, high-quality content and pitch it directly to authoritative web publications, thus building the authority of your own web presence.

Some companies will obtain links that only last for 6-12 months, giving you little benefit in the long run. Since Google’s algorithm can detect other unnatural link building tactics (that is, black hat SEO), it’s important to make sure that a professional SEO company plays by the rules. Bad links are penalized by search engines, whereas high-quality links that appear in useful content can drive organic traffic to your page for years to come.

#7. How will I know what changes your SEO company has made to my website?

It can be scary, essentially handing over the keys to your company’s web presence, especially for those not well versed in the language of Google, Bing, and the almighty algorithm. A professional SEO company understands this, and they’ll take steps to keep you in the loop on their process and overall progress of your SEO campaign. This can be achieved through a variety of means such as weekly reports of keyword rankings, conversion rates, backlink numbers, and traffic quality.

LinkGraph takes it one step further, giving clients access to its proprietary SEO software suite. With this program, users can keep tabs on key analytics and better manage their SEO campaigns. For those looking to maximize their ROI, this tool functions as a handy dashboard, providing insights into technical SEO, backlinks, meta tags, and keyword performance. Some companies portray SEO as a nebulous concept, a tendency you should be wary of. In truth, effective engine optimization is driven by data, which is why LinkGraph is not afraid to quantify and display findings, providing clients with the utmost in transparency.

#8. What is your SEO firm‘s pricing model, and do you require long-term contracts?

While the cost of SEO services varies widely, based on the size of a project, its duration, and the specific SEO pros behind it, it will behoove you to consider a company’s pricing model. This includes initial charges, hourly rates, and monthly retainer fees for longer-term agreements.

Again, this all comes back to knowing the goals of your SEO strategy. If all you’re looking for is to establish a backlink profile, then this can likely be done in a couple of months. More in-depth tasks, such as overhauling your site’s user interface or producing original content, will likely take longer and, naturally, come with a higher price tag.

Many of the larger, more established professional SEO companies will require you to lock into a long-term contract of up to two years. This might not be a bad thing; however, many younger agencies and independent consultants will be more flexible with their SEO marketing services, allowing you to opt-out of your agreement in the event that you’re unsatisfied with their results. You and your team should establish some tangible KPIs and evaluate your progress accordingly. With that said, it’s important to remember that the most worthwhile SEO strategies take time to come to fruition. SEO work takes time, patience, and years of experience.

#9. How involved does your company need to be in the process?

While SEO companies may all refer to themselves as such, there’s often a wide discrepancy in the services they offer. Some agencies specialize specifically in link building, whereas others offer full SEO overhauls, from web design to content creation and direct marketing. When taking stock of a company’s services, you should consider not only your goals but also the inner working of your own operation.

If your interior design team is literally just you and your installers, then you’ll want to consider seeking an agency that can plan and execute an SEO campaign from the ground up. On the other hand, if your company is on the larger side (perhaps you already have a graphics team and web developer), then you can pick and choose the desired services, integrating them with your existing team.

In an ideal world, an SEO agency could handle everything without you having to lift a finger; however, you should be careful of companies that ask nothing of you. At the very least, they should ask you for access to your CMS, Google Analytics account, Webmaster Tools, and social media accounts. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine they’re doing much of anything at all.

#10. Why are you the best SEO company, and why should I choose your services over competitors?

Ultimately, the best indicator of a good SEO company is transparency. From inception to execution, an agency should keep you fully aware of their research, strategies, implementation, and success metrics.

Unfortunately, it’s not so uncommon for SEO agencies to do more harm than good. Through black hat strategies, some companies are able to sell you on short term traffic gains and then leave you holding the bag when the algorithm recognizes the shoddy nature of their techniques and penalizes your page.

Like many B2B services, SEO marketing can become a fixture of your business. The road to the top of Google is both long and complicated; however, with a solid SEO company as your partner, you can get there. Currently, LinkGraph offers several different plans, providing you with flexibility both in terms of cost and contract length. An effective SEO strategy takes time, but LinkGraph is dedicated to providing results, all the while keeping each of their clients fully in tune with the process. 

The post 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Professional SEO Company appeared first on LinkGraph.

Each year, search engine optimization has become more technical. Once upon a time (in a land not very far away), keyword stuffing, content cloaking, user-agent based content switching, GSA-driven automatic link spamming, forum spamming, and other forms of search shenanigans used to actually impact search results. As the cost of cloud computing continued to fall, it became possible for Google’s crawlers to fully index the full internet. Machine learning and neural networks became increasingly sophisticated, and through consistent refinements to Google’s algorithms, the efficacy of such black hat strategies was eliminated and reversed, and the sites that employed them were permanently banished from Google’s search results. Indefinitely. And good riddance!

Fortunately, as developers who’ve built search engines ourselves, we’ve never relied on these get-rich-quick hacks. As white hat SEO specialists, we focus on strategies that follow Google’s  webmaster guidelines. Our blog and SEO starter guide will help you understand and master the basics, avoid common mistakes, and get a more advanced perspective on the data science behind SEO. We’ve even identified data-driven features to programmatically flag and fight many forms of internet spam. Take that, evil spam-makers!

Some of the more public signposts chronicling the beginning and end of this era include 2003’s crowdsourced effort to make “miserable failure” the top result when anyone Googled “George Bush” and Google’s 2007 algorithm update to prevent such “Google Bombs” from happening. Matt Cutts, the public-facing voice of Google’s search quality and webspam team, advised google webmasters that improving your search engine rankings is about creating high-quality content and delivering an excellent user experience on your web page.

Today’s technology toolbox

Nowadays, the arsenal of tools required to be a successful search engine marketer in organic search is high-tech and extensive. You need to arm yourself with spiders, multiple link and site metric providers, onpage SEO auditors, duplicate content checkers, title tag / meta description / alt text optimizers, a litany of automated tools, and a familiarity with the browser’s DOM (document object module) and how servers generate and serve HTML content.

The proliferation of front-end Javascript frameworks like ReactJS, Angular, and Backbone is steadily increasing, and standard canons of data organization and URL structures continually grow in complexity. Search marketers now need much larger toolboxes to store more nifty search engine-friendly devices and maybe even a big ol’ playbook to master the science of search engine optimization, including:

• HTTP server codes, Robots.txt file, XML Sitemaps, and other related Site Architecture considerations.
• Web analytics tools like Google Analytics to visualize and quantify user behavior (bounce rates, conversion rates, time per session, pay per click performance)
• Paid search (Adwords PPC), social media marketing, display advertising through Adsense, and retargeting campaigns.
• Google’s Search Console and similar tools created for Bing Webmasters give insights into crawlability and indexation stats.
• Structured data, Schema.org, and rich snippets to allow webmasters to help search engines make SERPs (search engine results pages) more intentional and informative
• New meta tags in the HTML markup utilized by other platforms like Facebook’s Open Graph
• Mobile search, and optimizing UI/UX for mobile devices through responsive design, and CSS allowing designers to target the aspect ratios of different devices through media queries
• Front-end Javascript frameworks, single page apps using hashbangs or browser.pushstate(), and server-side rendering with PhantomJS or better
• Browsers like Chrome enforcing best practices like HTTPS across the internet to (hopefully) make the internet a better, safer, more useful place
• Introduction of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
• Expansion of crawlable content to domains previously uncrawlable in facets of the “dark web,” especially inside iOS applications.
• Non-Google crawlers building a corpus of the internet with different goals, like AppleBot

All of these revolutions have happened in less than a decade, and the SEO landscape looks nothing like what it did before. The rapidly growing and always-evolving ecosystem of search is making search advisory increasingly technical and complex. Doing SEO the right way means understanding exactly what your client needs and delivering real value, leveraging every single technology and trick at your disposal. To do that, you have to understand every detail of this crazy new ever-changing terrain, and keep your toolbox organized and up-to-date. And sometimes that’s pretty difficult when you’re trying to focus on growing and managing the other extremely important parts of your business.

Why white label?

At LinkGraph, our white label SEO services let you to leverage our expertise and provide our products to your clients while you continue to focus on managing your clients and growing your business. We work with 100s of digital agencies and SEO resellers who leverage our platform to get great results for their clients. It’s like Cyrano de Bergerac for SEO–we write the beautiful love letters (aka SEO-friendly content) and you get the girl (aka client)…and the kudos!

Many of our most successful clients are digital marketing agencies who use our white label SEO services and in-dashboard SEO software to get their clients the results they need to continue growing and deepening their relationship. Our partners rely on our in-house teams for content marketing, link acquisition, guest posting, local citations, content writing, and reporting tools. Just think–to offer the level of expertise and experience our LinkGraph team has amassed throughout the years, you’d have to add a slew of employees and provide them with everything they needed to stay abreast of all the goings-on in the Matrix-like world of SEO. Overhead, benefits, training, technology, education…all of these expenses would explode exponentially. And in the time you’ve spent building this expensive new team you could have been out adding new clients.

There are a lot of reasons white labeling makes sense. Forbes recommends that entrepreneurs consider white label services to avoid reinventing the wheel, to keep your customers happy, and to basically get back to doing the business that is your core competency–and money-maker.

LinkGraph’s white label SEO services

Our white label SEO services are designed to optimize every aspect of your client’s websites, utilizing a handful of tried and true, yet constantly updated, strategies. Through a combination of outreach-based link building, custom blog writing and onsite content creation, and a series of audits and testing to ensure that our strategies are working properly and are achieving your client’s desired results. Our “secret sauce” is really not a secret; it’s simply the knowledge and expertise we’ve gained from near-lifetimes of being knee-deep in the world of SEO.  We understand what to do within each of these areas of focus, and we do it well–for you, and for clients. As the provider behind your no-longer-white label, it’s just as important to us to please your clients as it is for us to earn your satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.

We’re going to let you in on our “secret sauce” of search engine optimization so that you know–and can share with your clients–exactly how we’re working together to get them to the top of the SERP.

We start with link building through content marketing: We know. Building high-quality links is hard. We’ve been executing highly scalable and effective link building campaigns for years now, helping brands and agencies earn hundreds of inbound links per month. Along the way, we’ve seen it all. But we can’t express just how important it is. Every comprehensive Google ranking factor study–including the definitive and still-relevant 1998 PageRank article by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page–has found that the number and quality of links pointing to your website is the number one factor most correlated with ranking well in search.

Getting backlinks with relevant content and relevant sites is what we do best, and why we’re an industry leader. We wrote the book (well, at least lots and lots of content) on defining publisher quality, content relevancy for both brand and publication, and keyword research. We realize the importance of backlink building better than most anyone.

So when we start working with a client, we’ll need to first evaluate and audit what they currently have on their site so we know what needs to be done. We’ll run our LinkGraph web crawler throughout their domain to evaluate and index all of the site’s existing links in the backlink profile. Then we’ll compare the results of this audit to the backlinks of top competitors, and see where the client stands, because our goal is to make them stand out and above any and all competitors when it comes to search engine results.

During our audit of your links, we’ll also note and create a plan to rectify toxic, or unnatural, backlinks. These occur when the sites linked to your content are full of spam, were created exclusively for the purpose of link-building, are not being indexed by Google, or contain viruses or malware. Toxic links are aptly named because they will poison your site in the eyes of Google. In fact, you will be served with penalties resulting from Google’s Penguin update, which specifically sets out to punish backlinks from PBNs and excessively high exact-match anchor text.

If we find toxic backlinks, we’ll help your client get rid of them by disavowing them and requesting a re-review of your site from Google to get the site back in Google’s good graces.

We can also help you spot broken links from 3rd party websites that you’ve already earned but aren’t getting any benefit from because the old pages on your site no longer exist.

In addition to backlinks, we audit the keywords used on your client’s site as well, and identify your client’s current rankings across search queries that are most relevant to their industry. This process helps us identify potential opportunities to improve your client’s search rankings based metrics like overall keyword difficulty, traffic share by domain, and monthly search volume.

Next, we create quality blog articles and onsite content: It’s significantly easier to improve rankings for content that is well-written, researched, internally links to your most valuable landing pages, and is highly relevant for both users and bots. Based on our experience working with hundreds of brands looking for growth, we have repeatedly seen that exceptional content is a key part of competitive differentiation in the SERPs.

That’s why high-quality content has always a core focus for LinkGraph. Our large staff of talented US-based writers create original, beautifully crafted pieces that meet our strict quality guidelines. These articles are tailored to be hyper-relevant to the key demographics we’ve identified through our thorough site audit. Every piece of work created by our writers is reviewed and edited by our in-house staff of professional editors. Our editorial team follows the AP Stylebook to a “T” and adheres to our quarterly-updated policies for content.

Using the information we gathered from our audit of a site’s and its competitors’ target keywords, our teams utilize proprietary language-processing software to benchmark our pieces of content against those competitors who are already ranking on page one. This allows us to iteratively optimize content before we publish to be absolutely sure it will deliver the results we’re seeking.

With our excellent, original content in hand, we reach out on your client’s behalf to publications with high Domain Authority to secure placements on contextually relevant domains. Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking metric created by Moz which evaluates multiple factors of a site, including linking root domains and the total number of links, and turns them into a single score ranging from one to 100. The higher a site’s score, the higher it is predicted to rank on SERPs.
DA is a competitive metric, meaning that it can fluctuate based on the rank of the websites of competitors in the client’s space. Bonus tool: to check the DA of your site and your competitors’, enter the URLs into LinkGraph’s free bulk DA checker to see what your site’s domain authority is.

What this all boils down to is that we’re going to do everything within our power to place your client’s content on the sites of relevant, industry-related publications that are highly-competitive and highly-ranked in SERPs. The result? Your client’s website authority increases with better quality backlinks. The content our writers have created for our clients has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, AdWeek, Mashable, Wired, The New York Times, USA Today, and thousands of other top-quality, widely-read publications.

Lastly, we check our work. All of the work we put into helping you make your client look awesome is for naught if they aren’t effective. To ensure your client that our methods are working, we provide a client dashboard that allows you and your client to measure their performance with granular metrics. We like to compare the original, baseline metrics your client’s site was sporting before our team intervened on your behalf to the post-project metrics to show just how effective our joint efforts have been in increasing your client’s position on the SERPs.

We’ll also perform technical audits, security audits, and penetration testing of your client’s website to be sure that it’s soundly constructed, well-protected and as hacker-proof as possible.

So what are you waiting for?

Now that you know our not-so-secret formula for making websites amazingly SEO-friendly (honestly, it’s more than SEO “friendly;” it’s more like they’re “in a relationship” with SEO), why not give us a call and see what we can do for your digital agency? If you’ve ever considered adding SEO and backlink-building services to your menu of client offerings, consider white-label SEO services with LinkGraph. Our white-label reseller program was built upon our desire to make the Internet a better place for great companies and rid the world of spamminess. Our ginormous toolbox full of proprietary tools, our team’s decades of hands-on experience, and our commitment to stay on top of and ahead of every factor affecting search engine optimization make a partnership with LinkGraph a great investment, both for your agency and for your present and future clients.

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