Monthly Archives: October 2014

Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short refers to the process of increasing traffic to your site through free, organic ranking on search results in search engines. It is a well researched fact that people generally click on the 1st 3 or 5 rankings on search results. The higher you rank, the greater are the chances of increasing traffic to your site. More traffic translates into more business which is the moot purpose of any business. While SEO is necessary to grow organic traffic, it is not so easy a task to do on your own. SEO requires a thorough understanding of how search engines work and how content can be distributed on the net to increase the visibility of the site and enable it to rank higher in keyword search. Hiring an outside agency can prove to be far more effective as they come with specialized knowledge and experience of successfully managing SEO for other organizations.

The biggest challenge when it comes to SEO is finding the right agency that can understand your SEO requirements and implement a SEO strategy that is aligned to your business goals. There is also the danger of engaging with an unethical SEO agency which can result in Google penalizing or even removing your site altogether from search listings. Agencies that try to manipulate search engine results through overly aggressive SEO tactics can cause more harm to your business than good, so be very careful when choosing an SEO agency to grow your business. Below are some tips to help you choose the right SEO agency to meet your business needs.

• Check for past credentials since there is no better commendation for a company than happy and satisfied customers. Cross check sites they have done SEO for in the past and get references from clients on the kind of work done by them. This way you will know whether they have the capability to match client expectations.
• Ask them to prepare and present a SEO strategy for your organization. Since the needs of each client are different, they should be able to come up with a SEO plan customized to your organization. If they offer only a generic SEO strategy to all clients, chances are they are not going to be able to help you build long term SEO value.
• Ask questions on the SEO approach followed by the agency. If the focus is only on increasing ranking for specific keywords, they do not have the expertise required to undertake a complete SEO campaign. SEO which is done only to increase ranking for specific keywords will produce only limited results. SEO success actually relates to increasing organic traffic for a wide range of relevant and targeted keywords rather than a few keywords.
• A good agency will recommend changes to the site as well as part of SEO campaign. They will recommend technical changes to increase performance of your site as well changes to improve user experience and content quality so that the site as a whole gains more credibility and is able to attract more traffic and also keep visitors engaged in the site for a longer time. If an agency is able to give you a holistic SEO campaign which includes recommendations beyond the scope of traditional SEO, they are the ones to go with as they are ensuring long term credibility and value for your site.
• Lastly, a good agency should be able to provide you with regular reporting metrics on SEO progress. Google Analytics is a good tool to use to measure organic traffic at the start of the SEO campaign and follow the traffic growth throughout the SEO campaign through daily, weekly or monthly reporting metrics.