How to Choose an SEO Service: Everything You Need to Know

Considering that Google indexes more than 1 billion web pages, the chance of a search turning up any particular page is like finding a needle in a haystack.

The data backs that up. More than 90 percent of the pages Google indexes get no organic search traffic at all.

To make your website stand out from the hundreds of millions of pages that never get a visitor, search engine optimization is key. A solid SEO strategy can help push your pages to the top of the Google results.

Before you choose an SEO service, let’s look at what you should know.

Have a Plan for Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Before you start looking for an SEO service, you need to decide exactly what you want it to do for you. Having a plan in mind gives you a starting point for your initial discussions, even if it’s only a general idea of your needs.

What are your goals for getting traffic from SEO? Do you want to get more leads, improve your branding, convert visitors into buyers, or do something else?

You need to customize your SEO strategy according to what you want to accomplish. If you start without a particular focus, you’ll end up spending a lot more money on the campaign and will likely get worse results.

Research Various SEO Services

There are different types of SEO services you can use when marketing businesses online. Each type of service targets different styles of business.

Standard SEO

The goal of standard SEO is to rank high in the general Google results. No matter where a searcher is located, your page will show up in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This type of SEO is good for businesses that deal with customers anywhere in the country or even the world. It’s also good for targeting people earlier in the buying cycle when they’re more likely to be researching their options than being ready to buy.

Local SEO

Local SEO targets searchers in your immediate area. This is best for businesses that work with local clients.

There are no benefits of SEO in having your pages show up at the top of the results in a city across the state or on the other side of the country if you don’t work with those people anyway.

eCommerce SEO

If your website is an eCommerce store, your SEO strategy needs to be a little different. These types of websites have very specific ways of optimizing the content to get the best results from Google.

When you choose a digital marketing service, it needs to understand how SEO works for your type of business. Check their website to see what type of businesses they typically work with and discuss that with them when you have your initial consultation, which we’ll get to shortly.

Get Recommendations to Choose an SEO Service

A good way to create a shortlist of services to consider is to get recommendations. Talk to other companies in your industry or related industries to see if they can recommend a good SEO service. Your competitors probably won’t want to share that information, but any industry partners you work with might have recommendations.

You can also get recommendations from local business groups. Join your local Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, or any other business networking groups in your city. You might find an SEO service that’s also a member, but if not, you’ll have plenty of other companies that can offer recommendations.

This is particularly effective if you’re looking for local SEO services since all the members likely do business locally.

Check Reviews and Testimonials

Once you have a shortlist of SEO services to consider, look at their online reviews and testimonials. Most services post testimonials on their own website, but you can be pretty confident that those are all going to be positive.

Instead, look at Google Reviews, comments on their Facebook page, and other places that current customers can leave feedback. If you see feedback from any companies you know or already do business with, you could also reach out to them to discuss their results.

Schedule a Consultation

Once you’ve settled on your top choice, schedule a consultation. Any SEO service worth its salt will happily discuss your needs before you become a paying client. Some will even offer suggestions in the initial consultation to give you some ideas for improving your SEO.

If an SEO company is confident in its abilities, it usually won’t have any issues with sharing these ideas. Most business owners barely have time to keep up with their own responsibilities, let alone have time to learn how SEO works to do all the work themselves.

Get an SEO Audit

Most SEO services offer an SEO audit of your current website. They’ll analyze your site to see what you’re already doing well, what you can improve, and where the biggest opportunities are for increasing your exposure on Google and other search engines.

An audit will get into many factors, including:

Keyword targeting
Content marketing
Leveraging SEO and social media together
On-page SEO factors
Off-page SEO factors
Backlinks

As you can see, SEO covers many different facets of your website, so it’s important to work with a company that understands your type of business and the best way to reach your ideal customers.