In the world of growing and ever-changing demand, the offer comes to please any taste and requirement. But when it comes to the investments into your business ideas, the worst thing to do is to trust their faith into the first offer you get. In fact, choosing an SEO partner of your eCommerce business is almost as important as the clear vision of your idea and a well-planned development strategy. Here are some tips and highlights on how to be prepared for the best eCommerce SEO agency hunt.
Nowadays, the proper online advertisement comes to replace most of the other ways to deliver information to your potential customers. Especially if you are a small business, which was founded relatively recently, chances are your success is mostly dependent on how easy it is to find out about your existence, in other words, whether it is easy to search for your products and find you on the search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, etc. Here is when Search engine optimization comes to help. But, in case, you lack resources, measures or time to promote your business, you can choose to delegate it to an experienced and reliable SEO agency. The question is how to find a trustworthy SEO agency, which is just right for your eCommerce business.
Do your homework. The communication with your future partner is, of course, very important, but you should study the case yourself, as well. Do not just google the phrases, like the best SEO agency or the most reliable SEO agencies or list of SEO agencies or who is the best SEO service provider. Instead, do it old school, ask. Ask the people, who are in the same business field as you, those, who have already turned to SEO agencies for help. Their advice can be more useful than you think and help you in the hard task of hiring an SEO agency for your eCommerce business.
Whether it comes to optimizing user experience when visiting your shop or tracking the number of site views, you should clearly envision what you expect of the company you will be cooperating with. By setting goals and prioritizing the expected results for both of you, you might be able to eliminate those agencies, which are not consistent and find a partner, who is looking in the same direction as you. This is one of the tricks on how to choose the right SEO agency.
SEO agencies usually have useful and free of charge materials that could be very useful at some point. So, why not get a bit of additional knowledge anyway?
Besides being a trust element and for you to know what does an SEO agency do exactly, free resources also give real, tangible value to the visitors and help them make easier decisions. Here is a popular one our readers like the most: completely free of charge SEO audit checklist specially designed for eCommerce!
Communication is the key. Share your vision of the cooperation, clarify your expectations and ask the team if they are willing to meet them. Besides, ask for some information on their current and past clients. This is also another way to find out their efficiency and compliance with your expectations. Choose the one, which specializes in the same type of business (or similar) as yours, as some optimization strategies, efficient for one type of clients, might be useless for others.
As simple as it may sound, this is crucial, as SEO is a service, in case of which the cost defines the quality and the results. Choose the type of SEO service you would prefer for your business and tailor your budget based on that (not vice versa). However, bear in mind, that the most expensive service, available on the market, does not necessarily mean the most suitable for your business.
SEO Audit is the starting step in search engine optimization. And if you already have an agency in your mind and you’re still not sure you will be able to commit working with them for the long run, assign a simple task of conducting an SEO Audit of your eCommerce business right away.
An SEO Audit is usually conducted by an Agency to prove their true expertise and costs little or nothing. That’s a really genuine way for a business to understand the upcoming cooperation with an agency and for an agency to be tested for their professionalism and gain trust.
It’s a win-win action. Go for it.
The timing, the reporting and the actual implementation of an audit will leave no doubt in the selection of the right agency.
Yes, and base your cooperation on it. Getting consistent feedback from your SEO agency is one of the ways you find out about your progress and the efficiency of their work. This tactic, sometimes underrated, is of crucial importance when it comes to the estimation of results and the assessment of cooperation.
The current market is filled with potential partner agencies, willing to advance your business, become a concrete foundation for your online progress and your guide towards higher SE rankings. But the thing is: how to tell the difference between the ones that are actually capable of that and the ones, that might not even provide a safe user experience. Here are some ways to find out and know how to hire an SEO agency that is right for you:
The golden rule, in this case, is: SEO is not a one-size-fits-all case. The cost of SEO for a small e-shop with the small user coverage and a relatively easily trackable site-usage is not the same as for the huge multinational companies which serve millions and millions of clients worldwide.
There are approaches to payment, and, depending on your purpose, budget and needs you can choose one of the following:
The best thing to do is to understand, which type of cooperation is more preferable for you and the most beneficent for your business and find a partner, who agrees to work under those terms.
As we have already mentioned, the firm which claims to provide you with the highest ranking on search engines, and doubling your site visits overnight is certainly a swindle. But postponing the results to the better days is also not an option. After all, one of the reasons why you hire a professional SEO firm is to progress you measurably in the market.
There is a popular opinion, that SEO results become visible within four to six months after the optimization commences. They, at least, become more obvious then, and by the twelve-month period, they get more or less stable.
The reason for this is the complicated nature of optimization, as it depends on several aspects, each of which takes time, and application of different methods to find the most suitable one.
What you need to bear in mind is that the measurable results are achieved in the course of time, and as it goes, they become more and more vivid. So, you should be persistent and expect the same from your partner.
To sum up, choosing the best SEO agency for your business might be very challenging and requires a lot of hard work. You have to concentrate all of your energy on this so you are really happy with your own selection.
Here is a list of actions you need to know and do before you actually hire an agency:
At the end of the day, the well-planned cooperation with a partner, who sees the future of your business in the same way as you do, delivers reports and communicates clear information on your progress, while taking care of your user experience and not overcharging you, will result in a prospering business. And it is definitely worth trying.