This is a guest post by Mark Barry from Integrity SEO, an SEO Agency based in Egglescliffe.
With so many online marketing agencies out there, all vying for your business, how do you decide which is the right one? Well, a good place to begin is by making a shortlist of all the potential agencies you like the look of. If you are a small business or start up and you think you might prefer a one-to-one relationship, small to medium size agencies should be considered. If you are already a well known brand, you may well want to opt for one of the equally prominent marketing agencies.
Avoid Shady SEO Agencies
Either way, the very first step in choosing is to take a long hard look at each one and the way they market themselves and how much traffic they are attracting to their own website. If they are going about it correctly, they should already have a well optimised website with great, lead generating content, a blog and a social media marketing campaign which includes an active presence on the main four social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
If things still look promising after your initial scrutiny, then it is time to meet up with them. One word of warning here, if your prospective agency arranges a meeting with a ‘sales’ person then beware. Unless you are talking to someone who actually does the marketing work themselves, they will promise you anything you ask for, irrespective of the practicality of it. That is what reps do!
Make sure that you know exactly what you want to find out during your meeting. What you should be looking out for is an agency which can present clearly to you the methodology and processes they will follow to go about developing your individual marketing strategy. Do not expect them to tell you every detail, but a good agency will describe the order things will be done in and the expected timescale for each, as well as demonstrating how these methods have worked well for other clients.
Remember that you are looking for an SEO agency which is going to do marketing for you, not one that wants to redesign your website. If that proves to be the case you may well be barking up the wrong tree. Good web designers are rarely good at marketing and vice versa, you need to be absolutely certain that the agency you contract has the right skill sets to achieve your marketing goals. They should be knowledgeable in areas such as benchmarks, metrics and analytics and be able to demonstrate how they will include them in your marketing campaign.
So now have you satisfied yourself that the online marketing agency you prefer is displaying all the right signs by showing professional and successful characteristics? Before you make the final choice, remember that they will be working closely with your business for a long period of time, so you have to make sure that you are able to get on with them and not feel afraid of questioning what they are doing at any point.
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