When hiring an SEO agency to help you optimize your website you’ll want to look for transparent SEO practices and results. But what does that mean?
What is SEO?
Let’s define SEO first of all, it stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s a way to make a website more appealing to search engines (basically Google). A well optimized website should be easily found by your target audience. Basic optimization will get your webpage up and running and noticed by Google. Well-written content with professional writers who specialize in SEO content, like Filament, is a must so your content can remain on your site (as long as it’s relevant) and drive site visits. But sometimes websites feel they need a bit more.
What does an SEO Agency do for me?
An agency that specializes in search engine optimization will go further and continually track your website and the results for your selected keywords. They’ll watch the statistics and analytics and adjust and adapt throughout time to give you a dynamic website that responds to your changing audience, their needs and wants and even seasonal promotions.
What sort of SEO transparency should I look for?
Unfortunately there are SEO agencies out there who really aren’t SEO agencies, they’re just looking to scam websites out of money by offering promises they can’t deliver on. This is where transparent SEO can come in handy and is actually vital. A good agency will be looking at the analytics regularly and either adapting for you or suggesting you make changes to respond to the results. You should be able to request the analytics at any time to see for yourself how your keywords are doing, what pages are most popular, where your visitors are coming from and which efforts are failing or winning. The agency should also be able to explain to you, in terms you understand, what they are doing and what they are going to do to help your website stay optimized. Too many illegitimate agencies try to confuse their marks with jargon and data that’s difficult for the layperson to understand. Watch out for these practices.
What to look for in an SEO Agency.
When auditioning SEO agencies, you want to find one who is willing to involve you in the process and educate you along the way. You should never be made to feel stupid or left out. There should be regular reports or analytics provided so you can see the math behind the madness. Your results should be tracked in some way so you can see how they’re doing and how you’re doing. And you never want to go with a company that makes the promise or guarantee of getting you to #1 on Google. There is just no way to guarantee that, if there was everyone would be doing it.
Transparent SEO helps both the agency and the website stay on top of the market and constantly evolve the website in question. It’s not a mystery and should never be shrouded in secrecy or confusion.
