(And How to Know Whether Your Agency is a Good One)

The best SEO company that will meet your needs will offer more than campaign development and deployment; they will offer a full suite of best practices that build and maintain momentum for your campaign. These best practices lift your bottom line and the make your life easier, too. Let’s review these 5 factors and weigh these versus what your agency offers:

1) Stellar communication: The best SEO companies meet your schedule for status update meetings. They keep in touch regularly by email and phone. They send fact sheets about the latest search trends. Awesome communication means that your SEO agency is always looking for ways to provide valuable information beyond what you would expect.

2) Extraordinary Content: Creating content that delivers value is what the best SEO companies do. Fluff never enters into it; they write incredible how-to pieces, in-depth articles that explain technical processes, and can also whip up outstanding graphics and video to add to the mix. The best agencies know where your audience likes to congregate, so they know where to share the content they create for you. And even better: The best SEO companies know when to share content to maximize response.

3) Social media expertise: It would almost stand to reason that most SEO companies these days would offer at least some social media knowledge. The best ones go far beyond that: They know that social media and SEO are no longer distinct disciplines. They create campaigns that synergize both and deliver the most eyeballs for your content and to your website. The best agencies share all the knowledge, too – they use the same key phrases within your social messages that they created for your SEO.

Another top skill that falls under social media is the willingness to experiment. The best SEO companies are not afraid to push the bounds of whatever the current rage is. In fact, they often don’t follow the trends on social media; they are the forerunners…they create new trends. Use this yardstick when measuring the effectiveness of your own SEO company: Does it drive new visitors to your door with unconventional creativity? Does it use longer form video, infographics, Vines, and other content formats besides the typical message with an image attached?

Also look for simplicity. Sometimes one or two words with an incredibly evocative image can result in a viral social media post. The best SEO companies know how to make this happen.

4) Extensive key phrase research: To qualify as the best SEO company, a firm won’t give key phrase research short shrift. This data forms the backbone of your entire campaign. The SEO firm needs to use top rate tools and their knowledge of user intent to create a list for your approval. They then must be adept at eliciting additional information from you to refine the list. The final list that you approve will provide a gold mine of opportunities at every step of the campaign.

5) Only the best reporting: If you aren’t getting reporting from your agency that helps you make great decisions, then it’s time to either demand an evolved report, or time to sign up with one of the best SEO companies to get that type of reporting. The best reports start with a short executive summary that explains this month’s data points, and compares them with last month and last year at this time. The reports illustrate gains in sales and new opportunities. The reports conclude with recommendations for action on your part. You can feel confident reviewing the data and the recommendations and know that your SEO firm has proved its worth. It has positioned you to become more valuable to your customers and also to generate more revenue.