Your SEO company is probably a major contributor in generating leads for your business. If your SEO company disappeared what would you do? The business environment in 2012 has been quite volatile and 2013 looks like it will be the same or perhaps worse. This means that a lot of SEO companies, like other businesses, are struggling to survive.
As in any major market, in Atlanta, there are a handful of truly competent SEO companies. The past few months we have noticed many SEO companies are using PPC advertising to solicit new business. This may be a signal that these companies are bleeding financially and having to go beyond their own skill (SEO) to stay afloat. My personal belief is that any SEO company that uses PPC to offset poor organic rankings is screaming that they are in dire straits. This should be a red flag for their clients. Again, what would you do if your SEO company went out of business?
Does a good and stable SEO company REALLY need to use PPC advertising for their most important terms? If they are using PPC advertising services to solicit SEO clients you need to ask "why?". Do they know how to get business or not? Are they desperate?
Finding Security in the SEO World
Evaluate Your SEO Company
Because you run a business you can take a look at a business and make a read on their health. We are in an economy where finding new business is not alwyas easy, retaining clients can be tough and expenses need to be held to a minimum. If your SEO company is in high rent office space, has a bloated and overpaid staff, and spends too much on frivolous expenditures they are ripe for failure. In this day and age a very conservative structure means lean and in control, whereas living the high life conveys more risk than success. How do you see your SEO company?
Who Are Their Clients?
As a business owner you understand the critical nature of both cash flow and profit. If your SEO company has a few large companies that represent a significant part of their monthly income they could be devastated if the average age of their receivables on their large accounts goes from 17 days to 90 days. What is the health of their client base? You might be interested in knowing the average days of their receivables. How much do you know about their financial stability?
Did you know that the SEO, website design and internet marketing industry has a particularly high rate of non-pay and charge backs? It's a fact and THE reason that most companies in this industry have only PayPal to process credit cards. If your internet marketing company cannot accept credit card payments they probably are unable to prove financial stability to their bank or a credit card processor.
Where Are You In The Pecking Order?
If you are a B2B or industrial company you can appreciate the value of your national accounts and major accounts. Most companies dedicate their best people and strongest resources to supporting their "bread-and-butter" accounts.
So what happens during financial hardships? A business in decline begins to layoff people and cut expenses, right? This means that whatever personnel or material resources that remain are typically applied in majority to support the major accounts (big money). If your SEO company is struggling you need to think about where your company sits in the priority scheduling. Is your company going to be silently ignored as your SEO company struggles to stay afloat? Are you just a monthly payment or a valued client?
Develop A Backup SEO Company
In uncertain times you may need to develop alternative sources for everything - from professional services to the raw or finished products you need. When it comes to SEO services it is much easier to bring on a back-up vendor and quietly engage their services. If you choose a good alternate supplier, the worst thing that can happen is your online marketing results improve. If your primary SEO company should falter you can make a near seamless conversion and maintain your progress in developing a stronger search engine presence.
In all honesty, I'm sharing with you what I have learned from over 30 years of business experience. When times are good it's easy to laugh, go out for drinks and enjoy your business. When times get tough you need to be far more diligent in protecting your business. This means knowing that the vendors that support your business are stable and committed to providing you a high level of service - exactly what you need you make it through these tough times. So how well do you know your present SEO provider?
If you own a business in Atlanta, and have a website, you understand how important it is to hire a good Atlanta SEO company. Over the years we have a heard a lot of horror stories from clients about their experiences in trying to find a real Atlanta SEO expert. This article is written to help companies who are in search of an Atlanta SEO company.
How To Hire A Good Atlanta SEO Company
The first rule of thumb is to see how well they are ranked for the best SEO terms. If an SEO company can't get themselves ranked well, then they probably won't make it happen for you.
The Typical Types of SEO Providers
The SEO Freelancer is definitely the worst option for any business. You can find these people hawking ridiculously low prices and making their "guaranteed first page of Google" claims all over Craigslist and similar sites.
Freelancers
Freelancers are almost always people who are trying to make a little money on the side. Let's face it, if they were any good they would be doing SEO work for a real SEO company or have their own full time SEO business. Freelancers work on your site when they feel like it or want to ask you for money. Freelancers are working without a business license, often have bootlegged software, don't subscribe to necessary services, and rarely work from any sort of plan or strategy.
The Me Too Web Designer
The Me Too Web Designer is another dubious player in the SEO marketplace. The me too web designer recognizes that pitchng SEO services is a way to make more money. These people have read just enough articles and forum content to talk a good game. It has been a rude shock for many business owners when they realize that their SEO is being farmed out to India or Romania, and that the web designer commits more effort to invoicing than staying on top of the SEO work.
The me too web designer is typically someone who is slightly smarter than the freelancer and has cobbled together just enough skills to look somewhat legitimate. Signs of low skills are pushing you into only website platforms like Wordpress, an inability to show live examples of client sites with excellent rankings, and not having an office, staff or an appearance of financial stability.
Established and Credentialed SEO Companies
There are probably only six to eight Atlanta SEO companies that really know what they are doing and are worthy of your consideration. These companies are obviously ranked well on Google for SEO terms, and probably for other related areas such as website design, internet marketing, social media management, ppc management, etc. Because your internet marketing needs will change over time you should establish a relationship with a company that has the capabilities to provide whatever you may need.
The truly legitimate Atlanta SEO companies have a business license, office, staff, client references, a strong presence on search engines, and have been in business under the same name for at least five years. A legitimate SEO company is not going to be cheap because they are good business people with overhead costs, well payed professionals and they do top tier SEO work that requires a considerable amount of time. The best SEO companies can provide you with expert consulting on various forms of internet marketing, develop fully integrated programs and will keep you out of trouble with search engines.
SEO Prices
If you run a business then you understand the costs of running a business. Proper SEO requires planning, implementation, measurement and adjustments. Using paid research softwares and services are necessary expenses. Hiring only skilled professionals is your assurance of getting optimal results. Thus when you compare SEO prices it's easy to understand that cheap prices cannot support quality work.
Prices depend largely upon the number of hours that are needed to achieve your objectives and sustain your upward ranking development. Obviously your starting point (existing ranking placements), the level of online competition, and the size of your marketing area are the benchmark metrics to assess what your SEO program requires.
A small business might get satisfactory results with monthly fees about equal to what they might pay for yellow pages ads. A larger industrial company or larger service company may realize a very substantial ROI from investing several thousands of dollars each month. It is reasonable to set your expectations in line with your monthly budget.
Dont' expect to own Google for cheap monthly rates. Just like athletes that spend countless hours training are top performers, the legitimate SEO company that puts in the most hours is going to overwhelm the competitors that devote very little time to their SEO efforts. The good news is that the services provided by the top SEO companies are almost certain to provide you with a multi-fold ROI.
In any event, the worst thing you can do is to NOT hire an SEO company. Even if you have only a very small budget you need to make every effort to at least not fall behind in search engine rankings. Invest whatever budget you have with the best possible SEO company that shows a sincere interest in helping your business.
Asking For SEO Guarantees
Google clearly states their opinion that no SEO company can promise any level of ranking results. SEO companies cannot buy organic rankings and certainly do not have the ability to control how search engines rank websites. Any SEO provider's guarantee is nothing more than the boastful promise of a politician seeking a vote.
The legitimate SEO companies can provide you with an educated guess on what to expect but even this is highly speculative. The SEO world is a horse race of sorts. Even if you hire a good SEO company your competitors may spend more money on their SEO program and get ahead of you. Because the SEO environment is so incredibly competitive and unpredictable you'll have the best odds by choosing one of the top SEO companies and betting on their proven expertise.
SEO Companies To Amend Ranking Losses
If you are one of the unfortunate business owners who have been struck down by Google algorithm changes such as Panda or Penguin, or had Google take manual action against your site, then you are in for a rough ride. Certainly hiring one of the top SEO firms is a step in the right direction but don't expect immediate miracles.
The process of correcting SEO generated ranking problems requires a meticulous and paced process. Implementing rapid, vast changes is reckless and can lead to more problems. Trust your newly hired professional SEO company to handle the job as quickly as possible but maintain a reasoned implementation process.
Sites that have been harmed by black-hat SEO people or people who really do not understand SEO will need to undergo a thorough evaluation process. Even a Baton Rouge SEO company can use whatever information you can provide on previous SEO tactics to assess the causes of your problems. Additionally the good SEO company will need to do a line-by-line review of your website code, run backlink checks, and run your site through professional SEO software to identify problems.
Comparing SEO Proposals
Because business owners do not have a good understanding of SEO methods, tactics, processes and terminology they often make decisions on price alone. When you compare SEO proposals you should look for specifics on tasks and ask the bidder to elaborate on the purpose of each task. Ask about how they might adjust their services if there are difficulties in obtaining results. Ask about progress reports and how you will be able to measure their progress. Sure price matters, but knowing what is included and what options you have are what really matters.
If you are getting several bids it is always interesting to ask a bidder, "if we did not choose your company, who would you recommend?". By having all of your bidders answer this question you've gained the insight from peers on who they respect the most.
In summary, hire only one of Atlanta's top SEO companies and use these tips when choosing your Atlanta SEO company. The SEO world has changed a lot in 2012. If you need a new SEO company to move your website forward in 2013 call us for more information on our services.
Google SEO in 2012 has changed for the better. While many people complain about the Panda and Penguin algorithm changes, the net results continue to improve. With current alorithms the ability to create and publish quality content has leveled the playing field. Paying attention to simple basics can improve your Google SEO in 2012.
Domains and Hosting
Domains have taken on a greater importance. Registration length is not a huge SEO factor but it is a good idea to have your domain registered for at least 5 years to show stability. The pronounced change is that exact match domains are now seen as being spammy. Having an esablished domain is better than newly registered domain.
Hosting selection remains a minor consideration but still should be respected as influencing SEO. Your website hosting should be in the country where you are located. Using a large and established hosting company is vastly superior to small companies that offer in-house hosting. In-house hosting means using servers located within the web company and should not be confused with website companies that resell hosting services provided by providers such as GoDaddy.
SEO Link Building
SEO Link Building has changed substantially to nullify previous benefits from link farms, blog wheels, mass link building and other black hat practices. In 2012 links should be from sites that are relevant to the target site. It is much better to have 10 links from relevant sites than 200 from random websites. A good way to think about it is to ask, "is it logical to think that someone on Site A would link to Site B?". Be very selective in where you seek to gain a backlink.
Link velocity, the volume of new links gained in a specific period of time, is a key signal. When a small local business gets 1000 links in a week, or normally gets 2 links a month and suddenly gets 500 links, it looks very suspicious. A good link footprint reflects a normal pace and logical backlink sources. The days of acquiring links in mass are over, and it will now hurt your rankings.
Other link building factors to watch are:
- Domain diversity; meaning too many links from a single domain is not good.
- Natural anchor text; means anchor text that people would normally use such as "click here" "learn more", etc. Most people linking to your site are not going to use perfect SEO phrases.
- Anchor text diversity; means having anchor text that varies. If your backlink footprint shows certain phrases, especially perfect SEO phrases, as being a large percentage of your overall link footprint it looks very unnatural.
- Bad link neighborhood; means having links from sites with questionable practices. In our business, SEO companies with backlinks to blackhat services will hurt their SEO results.
SEO Coding in 2012
SEO Coding is really nothing more than doing things in an ethical and logical manner. Write code for optimal page performance and informing users. Don't write code to manipulate search engines.
Title tags should be no more than 70 characters. Repeating words in your page title is not recommended. Dashes and vertical pipes remain good dividers.
Page descriptions, title attributes and alt tags should be accurate and not used for keyword stuffing. Page descriptions should be less than 150 characters.
Page load time is now a very critical thing to improve. A page should load in less than .5 seconds, and ideally will be far less than this time. Use external stylesheets and keep an eye on the file sizes for photos and graphics.
SEO Copywriting
This subject could be expanded into several articles so we will address only primary points here. Keyword density is no longer something to max out, but is instead a figure to keep relatively low. Search engines utilizing latent semantic indexing can identify "word groups" meaning word families that are related. Subsequently, using many related terms and "partial SEO phrases" will be much more beneficial than repetitive use of 1-3 keyword phrases.
The bottom line for Google SEO in 2012 is to focus on website users and visitors. Improve the user experience with rich content, minimize promotional language, eliminate spammy practices and your site is more likley to achieve and sustain top search engine rankings.
