SEO agencies tend to get a bad reputation. This of course doesn’t mean that every SEO agency out there is bad but the reality is that there are agencies out there that haven’t done the right thing by their client, hence the bad reputation. It is quite common to find several people who have had a bad experience with an SEO agency. However, some of us are still good and in this post I’ll be explaining what to look out for in an SEO agency.
Just a quick tip, if you hear an SEO agency tell you any of the following things in this post then you need to stand up and walk away because it’s a major red flag.
Number and Quality Of Links
Number of links and quality of links is one you need to look out for. When an SEO agency begins to explain to you their link building process they may tell you something like they’ll be able to get you thousands of links back to your site. If they do then get up and walk away. Yes, they can get you thousands of backlinks to your site but to get that many backlinks they’ll need to go to article directories, forums, low quality guest posts, etc.
All of these are going to hurt your website and get it penalised by Google. Now if this happens it will be bad for your business. Pay attention when they talk about linking because it’s a very important piece of the puzzle.
Re-using Content
You can have an SEO agency write you a great piece of content but if they go and syndicate it on ten other websites then it’s only going to hurt your business. You may see you have ten links but the reality is that those links mean nothing and if their anchor texts are the same then it’s only going to hurt you in the long run. So make sure they are not going to be syndicating content on other websites.
Owning Content and Links
Make sure to ask straight up if you will own the rights to the content and the links back to your site. There have been incidences in the past where clients have paid for a year’s worth of SEO agency only to discover when they leave the agency at the end of their contract that their traffic and sales suffered. What happened was that the agency owned the rights to the content and links and took them down once the client left that agency.
So bottom line is make sure that you clarify ownership before any work is done.
Guarantees Of Sales or Traffic
If you hear them guarantee you traffic or sales then leave right away. In the world of SEO you just cannot guarantee something like that and that’s because we don’t know what changes Google could make at a whim. They can forecast targets, which is great but never guarantee them.
Black Hat Techniques
Some of the agencies that give the rest of us a bad name can have a tendency to engage in what we call black hat techniques. Trust your gut on this one. If you have a feeling that they’re engaging in a black hat technique it’s probably because they are. If you are still unsure then it doesn’t hurt to ask a friend who knows SEO reasonably well or someone else in the industry.
With that being said most SEO agencies are great but like anything, it only takes a few bad one’s to ruin it for everyone else.
In Conclusion
There you have it, some simple things to look out for when hiring an SEO agency. As has already been mentioned most SEO agencies out there are reliable but there are ones that have mislead and given the rest of us a bad name. Easiest thing you can do is look out for the things in this post and make sure that any agency you hire is being transparent with you, giving you solid breakdowns of the time spent on each task.
What kind of experiences have you had with SEO agencies? Have you experienced any of the above from an SEO agency?
Christian Michaels
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