How to choose a reliable SEO company and not overpay for promotion

The Internet has long been the main source of clients for businesses. Most companies understand that if you are not in Google search, it means that a significant portion of potential clients will simply go to competitors. That is why SEO website promotion has become one of the key areas of marketing. But along with the growth in demand, a huge number of companies and freelancers offering services to get into the TOP-10 Google have appeared. In such conditions, it is important for a business owner to be able to distinguish real specialists from those who only promise quick results. And also to find specialists who will provide the necessary services for not all the money in the world!

Testing the quality of your marketing agency

Below we will indicate 10 questions. If you get the following as a result of answering them:

• 8-10 "yes" - it means you are working with the best of the best, with the gods of marketing!
• 6-8 "yes" - it means you are working with normal advertising and promotion specialists.
• 1-5 "yes" - it means you are unlucky and it is time to look for other marketing specialists.

1. You receive a monthly report with a detailed description of what work was done.
2. The provided report contains links for viewing the dynamics of growth of positions of promoted search queries.
3. You receive a monthly report on the positions of the main competitors' sites.
4. The volume of the monthly report is more than 4 pages
5. The beginning of work on website promotion started with a full analysis of the site and carrying out work on SEO optimization.
6. Advertising agency is always "in touch", always ready to answer any questions.
7. We saw sales growth immediately after the launch of Google Ads contextual advertising and see growth every month due to the improvement of the site's position in organic search.
8. The report indicates how many sales were brought by paid Google Ads advertising, and how many sales were brought by promotion site.
9. The site is regularly updated and content is added: descriptions and pictures of products are added, articles and news are added. Work is carried out on site support.
10. There is a developed action plan for site promotion for the next month.

How to choose a reliable SEO company

The first thing you should pay attention to when choosing a contractor is the transparency of the work. A conscientious SEO company will never promise instant results or TOP-3 search engines in a couple of weeks. Real experts explain that promotion is a process that requires time, analysis and consistent actions.

A good sign is a detailed commercial strategy or at least a preliminary plan, especially a detailed procedure for promoting a new site. It should describe what work will be carried out: technical audit of the site, optimization of the structure, selection of keywords, writing content, working with links. If you are offered secret promotion techniques without disclosing details, most likely this is an attempt to hide the lack of a professional approach.

It is also useful to study cases (client portfolios for website advertising) and reviews about the company. Real results can always be confirmed by links to promoted projects, traffic growth graphs or screenshots from analytics. Of course, each project is individual, but the presence of transparent examples increases trust.

How to Avoid Overpaying for SEO

Website promotion costs can vary greatly, and an inexperienced customer can easily overpay. To avoid this, it is important to understand what the price is made up of.

Firstly, the complexity and competition of the niche are taken into account. Promoting a lawyer's landing page in a large city is much more expensive than a local online store of unique products. Secondly, the cost includes labor costs: conducting audits, writing optimized articles, setting up analytics, building a link profile. Finally, the price depends on the level of the company itself - experienced agencies with a strong team will cost more than freelancers.

To avoid overpaying, it is worth defining your goals in advance. For example, if you need an increase in applications, the contractor should explain which actions will actually lead to this result, and which are secondary. Budget optimization is possible if you concentrate on priority areas, and not scatter on dozens of secondary tasks.

The estimated average cost of promoting a website developed in the form of a landing page starts at $300 per month. For online stores (online shop), the price of monthly site promotion work starts at $500. And the maximum price of site promotion work can be different. It depends on the level of competition, the chosen strategy and the number of promoted search queries. So the cost of promoting an online hypermarket with hundreds of product categories can easily exceed $5,000 per month.

The most popular option, in which you are guaranteed to overpay for marketing services, is working with a large company. There are definitely exceptions. But often, well-known companies connect one good project manager and, concurrently, a salesperson to work on your project. Who is already overloaded with the number of projects and simply does not have the opportunity to devote more than 3-4 hours of thoughtful work per month to your project. Well, the performers, most often, are new and inexperienced employees who require regular monitoring of all their actions. This is explained by low salaries and high staff turnover. Therefore, in most cases, working with a large company is a guaranteed overpayment and not very high quality of work. Often even a ban and sanctions from the search engine for popular advertising mistakes and inept actions of newcomers in the team who were not monitored in time.

How to understand that SEO really works

Many entrepreneurs are afraid that money on SEO will be wasted. To avoid this, you need to immediately agree on a reporting system and criteria for evaluating the result.

The main performance indicators are increased visibility of the site in search, an increase in organic traffic and, of course, the number of applications or calls. It is important to remember that the first improvements can be noticeable after 2-3 months, but serious results usually come after 6-12 months.

If an SEO company provides monthly reports indicating the site's positions by keywords, traffic dynamics and specific work performed, this is a good sign. The absence of reports or unclear wording like "we do everything, just wait" is a reason to think.

A good test is to ask the contractor questions about why the site is growing or, conversely, why it has sagged. A real specialist will always be able to explain this based on the analysis of ranking factors and Google algorithms, studying the competition and the actions taken.

How to plan a budget for SEO promotion

Budget formation is one of the key steps in SEO. Many aspiring entrepreneurs make the mistake of allocating funds for only one month and expecting quick results. In reality, SEO is an investment in the long term, so the budget should be calculated for at least 6-12 months of work. Website promotion can be compared to long-term investments in your business.

To calculate expenses correctly, you need to consider:

• the level of competition in your niche;
• the geography of promotion (local, national or international SEO);
• the state of your website (a new project or an old resource requiring deep optimization).

It is also important to budget not only for SEO specialists, but also for related tasks. For example, creating quality content, modifying a website by a programmer, or buying links. If these costs are not taken into account in advance, promotion may "get stuck" and not give the expected result.

Why good SEO is expensive

Many business owners are faced with the question: why do some offer SEO for $200 a month, while others ask for 5-10 times more? The difference is explained by the quality and depth of work.

Cheap promotion is most often limited to basic website setup and automatic link purchase, which does not provide stable growth. Moreover, such methods can lead to sanctions from Google. At the same time, high-quality SEO is a comprehensive work: competitor analysis, technical optimization, creation of expert content, development of internal linking, improvement of loading speed, website usability and other work on internal website optimization.

Each direction requires time and participation of specialists: analysts, copywriters, link builders, developers. Accordingly, high-quality services cannot be cheap, but they bring results that pay off many times over.

SEO company audit: when it should be conducted, what should be checked

It is worth hiring a third-party company to conduct an audit if the result of website promotion is lower than you expected. In figures, it is difficult to say for sure when you need to order such an audit. But these are the approximate figures:

• At the beginning of promotion: growth of search queries in the top 10 less than 10% per month in the first 3 months of promotion.
• A year after the start of promotion: growth of search queries in the top 10 by less than 1% in 1 month of work.
• 3 years after the start of promotion: growth of search queries in the top 10 by less than 1% in 2 months of work.

What needs to be checked and what should be done during the audit:

• Check for technical shortcomings.
• Analyze the semantic core, correct filling of meta tags and writing SEO optimized texts.
• Analyze the external link mass: what external links were purchased.
• Analyze the usability of the site.
• Check the company reports that the client received.

Let's sum it up

Choosing an SEO company is a responsible decision on which the success of your online business depends. In order not to overpay, it is important to understand what exactly you are paying for and what results you can expect. Good promotion always costs more, but it creates a long-term flow of customers and gives a competitive advantage.

The right approach is to consider SEO not as a one-time expense, but as an investment that brings more and more profit over time. That is why it is worth carefully choosing a contractor, monitoring the process and being ready to invest in the development of the site systematically.