Looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant
-
Hello Folks,
I run an eCommerce site for video surveillance equipment. We used to be on top of page one for related terms until about a year ago and now we are in page 2 or 3. We have 2 in house full time web developers and I have tried 3 different SEO firms with very poor results.
I am looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant with proven & verifiable track record. If you or someone you know has used an SEO firm or consultant with good results, I would appreciate if you could point me to them.
Thank You!
-
First, you don't want to hire an SEO company that makes "guarantees" about getting you 1st page Google placement within a short amount of time.
A) Google's in charge, not them, so they can't promise you anything.
B) Generally, the techniques that are utilized to get you 1st page results quickly are against Google's quality guidelines and are easily discovered and penalized by Google. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
To elaborate on point B, more specifically, I'm talking about the creation of "unnatural" backlinks that are intended solely to boost rankings for particular keywords. I would definitely interview the SEO company and ask them what sort of techniques they employ. If they mention link building, I would insist on seeing samples of links they've built for clients.
If they show you poorly written articles or discussion forum posts containing money keyword links such as "house painter boise" or "office furniture delaware" then I would recommend you avoid the company. These exact match anchor texts can improve a website's ranking for such terms in the short-term. In the long-term, however, a website's link profile will show very obvious signs of abuse. It's kind of like a person who's been on steroids for an extensive period of time and will inevitably get slapped with a manual or algorithmic penalty.
You want a more modern and up-to-date company that utilizes quality content marketing and creative social media and marketing solutions to garner your website more natural links.
I would also attempt to diagnose if your website currently has any such penalties. You can use Google's Webmaster Tools to check if you have a manual penalty, or you can use something like the Fruition.net Google Penalty checker to see if you were negatively impacted by Panda or Penguin. If any of the above prove to be the case, I would then do a lot of research on penalty recovery before hiring an SEO company to improve rankings.
-
First thing, did you ever establish why your seo dropped off and why you disappeared from your original position?Secondly, what did those other agencies do that was poor?
I can't help you I'm too busy but I might be able to point you in the right direction - then the rest is up to you.
-
There are really tons of SEO companies offering snake oil services. When people ask me how to find a good SEO company I give them a step by step process and here is what it looks like:
- If you have a big budget, Moz have the list of companies “List of Recommended Companies” just go there and choose anyone of them and you probably will find the one you are ideally looking for.
- If you have a small budget lesser then $1000 a month most probably no good SEO company is going to touch you unless they are new and wants to build a reputation or you cut a good deal with them.
- If you have decent budget, here is how you should go about it.
- Choose the list of companies and check their expert level. Blog and their presence on social media will help you judge that.
- Instead of email communication, try and talk to them over the skype and voice. Understand their vision and find out more about what they can do for you in terms of ranking and conversion.
- How will they do it is very important. If they are not transparent and open about their process, cut them from the list, otherwise go for it.
- Set clear goals and deliverables. We will provide you rankings and not sure about conversions is not a good deliverable. They should set goals everywhere that includes traffic, rankings as well as conversions.
- Give them independence to do everything that gives your business a positive bump.
If any company you are in contact with is fulfilling all the requirements then you probably should go for it.
I looked in to your website and this is what I found within the first 30 seconds:
- The website design is boring and does not allow audience to engage. My advice is to try A?B testing of your website design.
- From the ranking perspective I don’t see many problems. You are ranking well for many keywords (just not only on the first page). You need someone to work hard for you and take these rankings to the first page of Google so that it starts converting.
- Links are not bad either, just need to kill some links coming from Press release websites.
I think overall you are in a better situation than most. All you want is a company who can help you improve your website CRO areas plus hep you get the rankings on the first page of Google.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How would changing every title tag on your site at once affect SEO?
We are moving our website to a new CMS, and working with a vendor who would like to change the title tags from the current format to a breadcrumb structure. Our fear is that this may negatively impact the current optimization efforts in place. Our current title tags are a mixed bag of good, bad and neutral, but some have been optimized for best practices. Does anyone have any insight on the effect we would see if everything were changed at once, or any suggestions on how we could test this before we launch the "new" site? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | cparedes1 -
Adwords account suspended for talking about SEO. Why isn't Moz suspended, too?
First let me say that we don't care that much about Adwords. We were spending about 20 bucks a month and we never optimized it, tinkered with it, or cared that much. Business is booming for us just with organic search and referrals from happy customers. (We're a blog writing service called BlogMutt. Motto: We work like a dog to fill up your blog.) But we just got suspended from Adwords. After multiple inquiries and multiple unhelpful responses, we got a note that said: "Please note that your website contains matter which states your site's SEO increases. Anything which relates to SEO is not allowed as per Google Policies. Please make appropriate changes to your website." Now, we don't say your site's SEO increases with BlogMutt. What we do say is what everyone says, that blogging is a best practice for any modern marketing effort. We certainly are less clear about improving search rankings than, for example, moz.com. Why is it OK for Moz, but not for us? Don't get me wrong. I think Moz should be able to continue advertising. I'm just wondering how we got into the Adwords crosshairs. Any thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | scodtt0 -
Best Way Optimize SEO for a Multi-service Company Serving Puget Sound, WA.
We offer several services (carpet cleaning, tile cleaning, fire & water restoration and rug cleaning and repair) in about a 50 mile geographic area (Puget Sound, WA.) We have optimized our main site, set up 4 microsites to support our main services and are now running 4 Adwords campaigns. We believe we are on the right track, but would like to hear from others who have multiple products/services to sell primarily in about 10 major city areas. What has worked for you? Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | ibizworks0 -
Looking for Reviews on Ad Matching Company "Vertical Search Works"
Hey there, We got cold called by "Vertical Search Works" - VerticalSearchWorks.com and while it sounds great (low CPC compared to our current PPC stuff) on great networks (DIY, HGTV), no contracts, pause anytime... But RipOffReport has two bad reviews on them and I have not been able to search out anything else on them online. If anyone has insight before we start working with them, let me know! Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | WineCellarInnovations0 -
Seo and ads for Baidu (china)
Has anyone have experience doing seo for the baidu search engine? I have a client who wants to target businesses in china so we are exploring options for PPC and SEO. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated? I was thinking of getting a bi-lingual mini-site made that would catch leads from seo and ads. Can anyone suggest any chinese PPC/seo freelancers?
Paid Search Marketing | | Netboost0 -
PPC + SEO - Both well ranked, which penalty if there's any.
Hello everyone, I have a doubt about the PPC and SEO. For example if i rank at first page ( something like 5th position ) for one specific keyword, and then I decide to add this keyword to my PPC campaign. My 5th rank will be penalized by google if i buy the PPC keyword ? Thanks.
Paid Search Marketing | | augustos0 -
Whats the most seo optimized websites?
Want to hear your opinions, let me know what do you like.
Paid Search Marketing | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0