Top 5 Credibility Cues of SEO Companies

The Inevitable SEO Lag

One of the most frustrating characteristics of developing quality organic traffic is that it takes time and resources. SEO campaigns require an initial investment of time and resources and can seam like a cost center, which makes it even more important to have trust in the professionals you’ve made responsible for converting those efforts into trackable and positive ROI. Establishing this trust is the single most difficult barrier to entry for any company seeking an SEO service provider. After a month or two of organic optimization doesn’t yield ten-fold results a client will sometimes get impatient with the “stay the course strategy” response. We’ve seen scenarios time and time again where companies leave potentially lucrative opportunities on the table because they could not bridge the trust gap with their provider. These credibility factors are meant as resource to better vet search optimization companies and to introspectively take measure of your own web marketing firm.

1. Proven Success

Any reputable search optimization company should be able to provide you specific information on a similar campaign where they’ve achieved their goals and delivered results. If a company proposing an SEO product, service, solution, or strategy can’t put in front of you clear & simple data on how it performs – do not hire them.

2. Technical Expertise

Make sure the SEO consultancy has a deep technical background including programming. The fact of the matter is search engines, search engine algorithms, & social media sites are all created and written by computer scientists – why not hire some of your own to figure out how to best rank for target keywords. It should be a red flag if any SEO company or consultant does not have a programming background or talented web developers involved at the strategic level of the project.

3. Industry-Vertical Experience

The best organic optimization is a meticulous process that is highly aligned with your specific product catalog, competitive search space, & industry differentiators. There is also a lot of initial research and keyboard legwork that goes into developing a cohesive search optimization strategy – so finding a company experienced within your industry vertical allows you to capitalize on their previous research and successes out of the gate. There is inevitably some trial & error involved in SEO – so capture this domain knowledge by hiring experience.

4. Ability to Scale & Grow

If your website optimization techniques exceed your wildest expectations – doubling or tripling online sales inside of 6 months – could this company or consultant keep up? Your expanding web business will require expertise in graphical design, online advertising, data tracking, analysis, and programming just to name a few. Will your provider be able to scale with you when their proposed strategy succeeds? Look for a company that offers a range of services & solutions within the web marketing spectrum so you can unify accountability across the board and simplify management of outsourced web marketing activities.

5. Does It Make Sense?

Buzzwords and acronyms are plentiful in the web marketing industry, be wary of any provider that use these quickly & without explanation – many players selling smoke & mirrors use this as a tactic to steamroll potential customers. By inflicting a technically superior tone to the dialog, they hope to drive a customer by instilling fear and unease. This should be another red flag – just because the marketing efforts are happening in a virtual space does not mean all logic virtually goes out the window. A solid holistic web optimization campaign should be easily understood without a Facebook PhD and trackable to the real value impact to your company and bottom line.

For more information on how atomni can help you succeed with your organic search campaign or search engine optimization strategy