Ask around in your company network to find out if any of your industry peers can recommend a good search engine marketing firm to you. It’s in their best interest to refer you successful and trustworthy companies to you, so you can do the same favor to them the next time around. You’ll find plenty of search engine marketing firms willing to help their clients. However, the fact is that they are all different. Finding a firm that is right for your business requires a bit of research.
Find and read reviews about the various firms in your industry. Find out what their strengths and weaknesses are. Look for recommendations from industry leaders like your CEO, CIO, and senior managers. If your industry peers have nothing but good things to say about a particular search engine marketing firm, there’s a pretty good chance that they can’t be too pleased with another. That said, however, you should be able to at least get some referrals from them, anyway, since they would be unhappy with just any firm.
Once you’ve found some reviews, double-check to make sure they’re not coming from the actual optimization firm itself. For instance, search engine marketing firms could be completely separate from search engine optimization firms. Also, a search engine marketing firm could be selling a separate product or offering a completely unrelated service. A truly holistic SEO firm, on the other hand, will take the entire scope of an online marketing campaign and create a strategy that works for the business. They will have created a thorough plan that considers not only keywords but the page content, image placement and other factors.
Another important consideration when choosing a search engine marketing firm is whether or not they’re certified. The Internet savvy public has learned to distrust any sort of advertising or marketing agency that doesn’t come with some kind of certification. If an SEO firm isn’t certified by an independent third-party organization, you should know that it probably isn’t as good at what it does. Just because an advertising or marketing agency has gotten certification from an independent group doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best option for your company. In fact, the best agencies will be those that have been approved by the larger SEO community.
If the agency in question is a search engine marketing firm, it’s always a good idea to ask for some kind of proof of their capabilities. While it may be perfectly fine if they provide you with a list of testimonials, this shouldn’t be the only factor that moves you to make a decision. The company should also be able to show you a portfolio of work, whether it’s from previous projects or from current clients. A portfolio can be the key to verifying the quality of work provided by any given agency.
In addition to having verification of their abilities and their reputation within the search engine marketing firm industry, you should be sure that they’re trustworthy. This can be determined by looking for any sort of accreditation, certification, or licenses. There are a few non-profit organizations out there that specialize in monitoring whether particular individuals and firms are trustworthy. Most of them require a membership to use their services, which could mean that an SEM agency with such accreditation would be trustworthy. When looking at different SEM agencies, you might need to call the Better Business Bureau to find out more information about them.
It’s a bit harder to gauge how trustworthy a search engine marketing firm is without having access to testimonials, but there are a few things that you can do to get an idea. Ask the agency for a list of past clients, and see whether or not they provide any case studies. These are usually the best source of information about how their services are used, and you’ll want to see how other clients have benefited from using their services. If you don’t have access to these testimonials, you might want to consider hiring someone else to give you this kind of information.
Finally, make sure that your search engine marketing firm provides excellent service. If they fail to get your website high rankings in search results, it won’t matter how many services they provide. The bottom line is that your website will never be successful if no one knows it exists! Make sure that the SEO company you choose provides excellent service in all aspects of search engine marketing, not just in search engine optimization. When you choose the right provider, you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: increasing your online presence and increasing your profits!
