If you are having a business, you must be having a website. Although many businesses in India are still lacking the web presence, the awareness of website, internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is increasing rapidly. Everybody wants to jump on this huge market that no other medium can offer, but just having the website is not enough. Just like in offline business, having the shop is not enough; you have to advertise for your shop to increase the sales, internet marketing is must for any website who wants to increase their sales through internet. Almost 80% of internet users use search engines to research for their desired products or services (According to GVU 10th User Survey). This is where SEO Consultants come into play.
There are so many SEO Consultants available that it really confuses the company about choosing the right SEO expert. In my career, I have worked as both independent SEO Service provider and as part of SEO Company. Choosing the SEO Company or SEO Consultant highly depends on your situation, requirements, budget, time frame etc. Here are some of the quick guidelines that you can use to select the best SEO Consultant or SEO Company.
Type of techniques used to achieve rankings
It is very important to know the type of techniques used to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Some black hatters can give you quick results, but once search engines find out the malicious technique, it can get your website banned in search engines. Make sure the SEO Consultant is using all the white hat techniques which will be helpful to you in the long run.
Ask for past experience and work done
It is always good to see the previous work and achievements before you finalise the project. You need to make sure that the SEO Consultant is capable enough to get you the successful rankings and sales or not. By looking at the previous achievements, you will get the idea of the calibre of the SEO Expert.
Ask for previous client references
Previous client references are the best measure that can be used to show the efficiency and quality of the work. If his/her clients were happy with the work and results, it is highly possible that SEO Consultant will be able to deliver the same. It also gives you a chance to enquire about his customer service and turnaround time.
Improvements to expect in terms of traffic and rankings
You should know what kind of improvements to expect from the SEO Expert in terms of traffic and rankings. We all know that SEO is a long-term process, and you can’t see the results overnight, but you need to have some sort of assurance.
Timeline to see the results
You need to make sure that SEO Consultant gives you a rough idea about when you start to see your website ranking on the first page for at least low competitive keywords. We can understand that highly competitive keywords can take real good time but at least you can go for some low competitive keywords and mix it within your campaign to start getting some traffic. Beware of the SEO guys who tell you to get quick rankings as they might be using some black hat technique to get the rankings.
It is not 100% sure that you will get the best SEO Expert after checking him / her on these parameters, but at least you won’t get some so called SEO who doesn’t even know the basics. Also it is very important to check the language proficiency of SEO person when you are outsourcing your SEO Work to countries like India, China, Philippines, Russia etc.
I hope this post will help many of the companies select the best SEO Consultant or SEO Company according to their requirements.