Keeping it Local: How to Choose the Best Local SEO Company
August 22, 2019 Comments
People perform billions of searches on Google alone each year. If you know what is good for your business, you’ll make sure that you show up as high in the search engines as you can.
Instead of trying to do everything on your own, you’re doing the smart thing and looking for the best local SEO company to help you in your quest. You know you’re good in your profession but you don’t want to take away from your business to learn SEO.
Before you get started, there are some things you need to know about SEO and about hiring the right SEO company. Continue reading this article to get the information you need to make the best decision for your company.
Choosing a reputable SEO company, like https://www.seoexplode.com/, will allow you to get the best results. If you hire a company that doesn’t operate to the highest standards, it could actually damage your website rankings.
Before we get any deeper in this article, it is important that we make sure you have a basic understanding of what SEO is.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the act of working to get your website to the top of the search engines. Most people focus on getting to the top of Google search rankings because it is the search engine that serves about 90% of the searches done online.
When you’re working with SEO, you need to keep in mind that there are over 200 factors that go into Google’s search engine algorithm and no one has the secret sauce.
Many SEO guess at what Google wants and Google even tells you the best practices to show up in the top of search results but no one will know exactly what needs to be done.
The best thing you can do when you’re trying to rank in the search results is to provide the best content on the web. When you provide the best content on the web, it is easier to get links and social shares for your website.
One of the things you need when you want to rank for local SEO is having a Google My Business page. There are a lot of different features you can use to promote your business with GMB.
While having a website is important and you shouldn’t go without one, the same goes for GMB. GMB structures your information in a certain way and you’re going to show up in the local map pack much easier if you have a GMB listing.
The good news is that your Google My Business page is free. You can update your photos, hours, and even status with a few clicks.
When you’re choosing an SEO company for your local business, you need to find a company that specializes in local SEO vs. national SEO. National SEO will help you show up in the organic search results but you want to make it to the coveted map pack.
People trust websites that show up in the map pack and it is easy to click and view your website or give you a call.
Companies that understand how to do local SEO work know how to give you the best chance to show up in the map pack as well as the organic search results. Ideally, it will be great if you can show up at the top of the map pack and the top of the organic search results.
The only real difference between local and national SEO is the focus of trying to get people to a location vs. national SEO, it’s more about website visits and phone calls.
The best place to start vetting your potential new SEO company is by reading online reviews. Check Google reviews on their Google My Business listing and also look at sites like Yelp.
If the SEO company doesn’t have many reviews, it is obvious they can’t get people to leave them reviews and you might need to take a hard pass.
If you find an SEO company your considering, the next step is to speak with a few references. Ask them to put you in contact with a couple of other business owners that have had good results working with them.
A good company will have at least a couple of people that are willing to say nice things about them.
An easy way to see if they practice what they teach is by finding them in the search engine rankings. If they are in the top results for search engine marketing in your city then they at least know how to get results for themselves.
Just because they’re ranking in the search results, that shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all for your decision to work with them or not. It’s a good factor but you need to make sure it’s not the only thing on which you base your decision.
If you think you’re going to work with a company then you need to speak with them directly about their link building strategy. If the SEO company has a spammy way of building ranks, this can hurt your website.
Make sure they are building links in an organic way by doing outreach and securing guest posting opportunities and other white hat SEO tactics. If you ever hear an SEO company say they’re going to use a PBN (private blog network) or other link building scheme — run the other way.
A healthy link building strategy is essential but you never want to sacrifice quality for quantity. Quantity isn’t as important as having a link from a highly respected website that has a high domain authority and good readership.
One of the important factors of ranking in the map pack is having a lot of good reviews. The company should have a strategy in place to help you get more reviews from your customers.
They might set up an email marketing campaign that asks customers to leave their honest feedback. There is even software they can use to help them campaign for more reviews for you.
The SEO company should be more than happy to share their strategies and how they are going to help you get more reviews. You never want to work with a company that pays people to leave reviews or that uses fake accounts to leave reviews for your company.
Black hat SEO practices never end up well and can get your website penalized. There have been multiple animal-themed SEO updates that penalized websites for doing less than ethical.
Not all SEO companies rates are the same and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for a breakdown of what you’re paying for. If you’re paying a flat-rate fee, you can ask what it includes so you know what you’re getting.
You might ask them to list how many hours of time you’re getting from the SEO team, how much they’re charging you for content creation and more. They should be able to give you a clear itemized list of costs so you can make your decision easier.
Speak with more than one company and compare their itemized lists. You can even play them against each other if you want. Some companies don’t like to negotiate and you could lose a google company if you’re not careful.
When you’re looking at rates, see if you believe they will get your company the results you want and if it is worth the rate they’re quoting you. If you believe it is worth it then that’s what is most important.
Now that you understand how to choose the best local SEO company, why not keep learning? While it is great to know how to hire the right people, it can help to have some basic understanding of SEO.
We have many articles that can get you up on the latest and greatest with SEO. Navigate through our site, find your favorite section, drop a bookmark, and come back soon for more great reads.
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