With so many SEO companies to choose from, it can be very difficult to distinguish between them and work out which SEO company is best for you. When times are hard, and the recession tightens its grip around the budget of most companies, it is often very appealing to go for the cheapest option. Companies are also tempted to take on the job of SEO themselves, which can lead to disasterous consequences as we wrote about in our post on the dangers of DIY SEO.
So why not go for the cheapest option? Well there is certainly no harm in trying to get a competitive price, although when marketing budgets are limited, SEO companies generally thrive as they are a cheap and cost effective method of marketing your product or business online. However if a company is offering prices that are too good to be true, then you would be right to be suspicous. Here are just a few things to look out for:
- What are you actually getting for your money? Is it just a homepage optimisation, or are you getting a full service for your whole site including an on-page and off-page strategy?
- What are the associated monthly fees? Are you getting a cheap deal upfront, and then being hit hard by a monthly cost? If so, what are you getting each month and how much time are the SEO company actually spending on your site?
- If you’re getting a report such as an on-page optimisation report, is it a generic report based on a template? In order to save costs, SEO companies offering cheap services normally have templates for all their reports which are simply filled in by a junior web programmer. These reports are normally non-specific containing quite general information about your site. In a lot of cases, these are recommendations and best practices as opposed to actual issues with your own site, and as such involve quite a lot of analysis from your side to check all the points listed in the document.
- Additionally, these reports can lack the crucial amount of detail required to optimise your site properly, and can often miss elements of your site that might infact get you penalised or removed from the search engine index (normally a naive mistakes as opposed to any kind of black hat intent).
- Finally, you may find it very hard to get hold of the company once the invoice has been paid. The account managers might have 100’s of clients each and so the proper amount of time isn’t being invested into monitoring your site’s progress and reporting back to you. For a successful campaign, it is imperative that the traffic is analysed and your site is adjusted as required.
To find out more about a full service SEO company then check out the information provided on our website or get in touch to speak to us directly. Remember that the success of your website / online marketing campaign can have a huge effect on the success of your business, so think carefully before investing your money.
