SEO services are the safest and most sustainable way to get your website to the top of Google. SEO services help increase your website's visibility in the top positions on search engine results pages. This is also an indirect sales method for reaching potential customers who are searching for products and services that meet their needs.
What benefits do SEO services bring to a business?
In reality, visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo is extremely important and effective. Thanks to these tools, your website can significantly increase its traffic, which not only positively impacts brand awareness but also helps boost revenue and profits.
But appearing in just any position doesn't guarantee good results; you need to be in the top spots. And SEO services will help you achieve this by optimizing your website according to Google SEO standards as well as improving your website's ranking. Although these tasks require more time and effort compared to advertising methods that instantly propel you to the top, in return, SEO services will help you save a significant amount of money and ensure your keywords maintain top rankings for a long time.
However, sometimes the SEO services you choose may not deliver the results you expect. This can be due to many factors, such as your market already being saturated with businesses performing Google SEO so it takes more time and effort to achieve the desired ranking. Or the provider of SEO services or the SEO Agency you've chosen lacks solid expertise, technical proficiency, professionalism, or a true understanding of your needs! This article provides 10 questions to help your business evaluate and select the agency that is the best fit for you.
10 golden rules to help you choose the right SEO service
Choosing a provider for SEO services is like "entrusting your reputation to someone." At this point, the agency will hold and be responsible for your brand's face on the Internet—your business website. This alone should help you understand the importance of this choice, right? But don't worry, because today Markdao Agency will share 10 rules to remember, or rather 10 questions to help you find the right partner for your business.
Markdao has categorized these 10 questions into 3 main groups: Assessing the agency's professionalism; Aligning the working relationship between your business and the agency; and What happens when the SEO service contract ends.
Assessing the professionalism of an SEO service provider
1. Can we see a list of clients who have used or are currently using your SEO services?
A professional SEO agency will always be willing to provide a list of past and current clients for all their services, including SEO services, along with their contact information. Furthermore, reputable agencies usually update their client list on their website under the "Projects" section, so you can check that beforehand. Why do you need to know this?
By knowing the clients who have worked or are working with the agency, your business can evaluate their level of professionalism, work style, and project execution methods. While you may not know exactly what SEO services have specifically delivered to those clients, you can certainly verify some of it by checking their website rankings on search engine results pages, as well as their traffic and conversion rates. That is part of the effectiveness of the SEO services provided by the agency.
SEO services should have a unified working method between the business and the agency
2. How will the agency improve our website's ranking?
If you ask this question and the agency cannot explain their methodology, you should be wary! According to digital marketing experts, an agency should clearly outline the strategy and plan they intend to implement for your project. SEO services to improve website rankings, as well as provide an estimate of the time required to achieve those goals.
Furthermore, a professional agency will proactively offer to audit your website to check for issues like broken links that could negatively impact how search engine bots crawl and rank your site. This is typically done completely free of charge. Based on their findings, they will present an On-page optimization plan to make your website as search-engine-friendly as possible for Google and other platforms. To better understand what On-page optimization entails, you can refer to our article Guide to SEO website optimization by Markdao here!
In addition to On-page SEO, you should also ask if the agency provides an Off-page SEO strategy to promote your brand and product content on other websites, such as through blog posts, forums, satellite sites, social media, and press releases.
3. Does the agency comply with Google's guidelines?
Google uses various criteria to evaluate your website and has its own set of "rules." If a website violates or intentionally breaks these rules, it will face severe consequences. In fact, there are 12 SEO tactics that are strictly prohibited, including creating spam content, generating automated content, and using hidden text or links. When choosing SEO services, your business must ensure the agency follows Google's guidelines and avoids "black hat" tactics. Otherwise, your website could see a sharp drop in rankings, or worse, be removed from Google's search results entirely.
4. Will the agency get my website to the #1 spot on Google, Yahoo, or Bing?
If you receive a "Yes" answer, you should be cautious. Reputable agencies typically only guarantee that their SEO services will get your website into the top 5 or top 10, and rarely commit to the number one spot. If an agency insists they can achieve this, experts suggest they may be unreliable and could be using unethical tactics to force your website to the top at any cost.
It is a major red flag if an agency claims to have "insider" connections or a special relationship with search engines that will give your site priority. Only Google, Bing, and Yahoo determine your website's ranking based on their own established criteria.
5. Does the agency have experience with local SEO?
Why should you ask this? Because local SEO services are crucial for small and medium-sized businesses to attract customers in their immediate vicinity. If your website is optimized for local SEO, it will appear at the top of local listings when someone nearby searches for keywords related to your business.
To achieve this, SEO agencies should include your business's city/province in your website's meta title and meta description so that your address appears in local listings on Bing, Google, and Yahoo.
For example, if you search for the keyword Digital Marketing Agency, you will see Markdao Agency as the first result in the local business listings.
6. Will the agency notify the business of all changes made to the website?
SEO services consist of two phases: On-page and Off-page. During the On-page phase in particular, the agency will need to perform various actions on your website to make it more search-engine-friendly. This includes modifying code, especially when editing HTML tags (meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, etc.). Therefore, it is safer and more secure if the agency informs you in advance of what they intend to change, which pages will be affected, and obtains your approval before making any code modifications.
7. How will you evaluate the success of the SEO campaign?
To evaluate the effectiveness of SEO services, you can track traffic to your website and identify where that traffic is coming from. A professional agency should be proficient in using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor website rankings on search engines, the number of backlinks directing traffic to your site, and the specific keywords users are searching for to find your website.
You can ask when the agency will send you quality reports on their SEO services and how they use this data to adjust and improve the campaign (e.g., improving rankings, increasing traffic). Typically, Markdao sends statistical reports to our clients 1–2 times per month.
8. How will the business and the agency communicate and stay in touch?
Regarding communication between the agency and the business in SEO servicecontracts, agencies usually accommodate the client's preferences. It is best to ask about their preferred communication methods—such as in-person meetings, phone calls, Skype, Zalo, Viber, or email—and decide on the method that is most convenient for your business. Additionally, you should agree on when the agency will contact you to report progress. Professional firms typically send reports to clients for review before holding meetings to propose the next steps.
9. What are the costs for SEO services and the payment terms?
It is important to know the costs you will be paying for SEO services, which includes the agency's billing structure, such as whether you will be charged hourly, per headcount, or per project. Project-based billing is the most common model in the SEO industry, though it can sometimes be adjusted based on the scale and complexity of the project.
Another important question to ask is: What are the payment terms for invoices—are they due in 30, 60, or 90 days? Will there be any penalties if the business pays late?
What happens when the SEO service contract ends?
10. What happens after the SEO contract ends?
When the SEO service contract ends, or if you wish to terminate it early, you should retain ownership of all website content optimized by the SEO agency. You must ensure that upon contract termination, the agency will not alter or delete any content they have created, modified, or optimized for you.
Additionally, you should ask the agency upfront if there are any fees for early contract termination. If so, ensure these are clearly stated in the contract.
That concludes the 10 essential questions from Markdao - Digital Marketing Agency to help you select a reputable provider for SEO services. We hope this article is helpful for businesses, especially those looking for a partner to help them promote their brand identity online in the most effective and successful way.
