There are a ton of choices when you are considering hiring an SEO company. Prices and offerings range so drastically that it can be somewhat difficult to determine what it should cost and what you should get for that cost.
Knowing how to choose an SEO company is tough. It can be difficult to determine if an SEO company is offering a legitimate approach to improve your rankings, or if they are pushing outdated, frowned upon, or even flat out potentially harmful techniques.
As Maile Ohye of Google puts it in the video below, in your search for the right SEO you are trying to avoid paying a lot of money for bad results or “shady practices.” If you’re asking yourself – how much should I pay for SEO? – consider the following.
Good SEO is not “black magic,” Google says. There are no quick tricks for success in search engine rankings. “In most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefits.” This is sage advice straight from the horse’s mouth.
The bottom line is your company’s SEO potential is only as high as the quality of your website and content that you put out there. Finding the right company to work with to ensure that your site is technically sound and your content is focused is a challenge, but Google offers a 4-step process that will help you narrow down the field.
Google’s advice:
- Conduct a 2-way interview with your potential SEO company. Check that they seem genuinely interested in you and your business.
- Check their references.
- Ask for (and you’ll probably have to pay for) a technical and search audit.
- Decide if you want to hire them.
Google goes in depth on each of these steps. If you are currently in the market for an SEO company, or curious if you’re currently working with the right one, watch this video:
