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All over the world, in America, Europe, Asia the Philippines and in Singapore, businesses tend to hire SEO Companies to help with promoting their businesses on the web. The fact that business men continue to look for agencies that offer SEM or SEO services until today means that it is truly worthwhile to do so. Their businesses improve, they get more customers and they get to sell more. All thanks to search engine optimization.

 

However, if in case you’re new to the game, a business owner should be very careful in picking which company or agency to hire. Today, there are a lot of “agencies” that offer fantastic services and most times, some companies really aren’t up to date with proper and more modern SEO techniques. If you’re about to decide on picking the right SEO provider for your business, here’s a few clues to help guide you.

 

They Do Automation

If a company you’re looking at is adamant that they will automate the campaign for your business, be warned. In the world of website optimization, there’s no “one size fits all” type of approach. Every business, every niche, every industry requires different techniques and plans of attack. Also, learning that they wouldn’t be hands on with your account and just letting it be automated should already throw you off.

 

They Buy Links

Google penalizes link buying. This is an automatic nope on your list. If an agency or company tells you this, this already is a bad sign. People that buy links usually end up with very low-quality links and most of them will be a mix of unrelated links. Unrelated to what your industry is related to.

 

They Promise Overnight Success

This is an obvious clue that the agency you’re in negotiations with, don’t know what they’re doing. Any callused and experienced professional SEO knows that correct SEO actions will only take effect after a long period of time. This also has more long term effects. If they’re still adamant that they can deliver overnight success, this is also a bad sign. This might mean that they’re practicing Black Hat SEO. Something you wouldn’t want your business’ website be mixed in with. Black Hat SEO usually involves automation of link building and more dubious ways of manipulating search results. So yes. They do give off overnight success. But it will never last long.

 

They Will Use Keyword Stuffing On Everything

Keyword stuffing might have worked in the good old days, but we’ve come so far already. Search engines have evolved in such a way that they take out things that are over the top. Content that has no value what so ever and has too many keywords in it or has keywords that are only there just for the sake of being in there, will definitely be taken out by algorithm updates targeting content that has bad quality. (Panda) Also, let’s say that these keywords have links to them, these will also be flagged by another algorithm update by Google, Penguin. (This algorithm update targets bad linking)

 

Content these days that are successful usually utilize keywords in a very natural manner.

 

They Have Yet To Have A Long History As A Business

Nothing against, start ups. There are a lot of newly made agencies that can offer SEM services out there today. Yet, if you want to have proper results, it would be better to just opt to hire a more experienced group of SEOs. Even if a start up has promising individuals in it, it would be safer to hire an agency that already has years of experience under their belt. They usually can handle anything that start ups might not be able to.

 

They’re Not Really Into Mobile SEO

Companies like these are people that are stuck in the past. The world outside has changed drastically. People walk about and always have access to the internet through their mobile devices. Not using this for the advantage of a business is a missed opportunity. Google has already made changes that further prioritizes mobile friendly sites and let them rank higher in a search.

 

They Don’t Have References

Again, the main problem with start-ups is that they might have no references yet. Also, this can be a bigger problem for older agencies. Because they’ve been operating for such a long time already, they should have at least a few lists of past customers. Preferably, very satisfied customers. Asking for an agency’s lists of past customers helps you gauge how good their services are. Thereby helping you decide if you would be hiring a particular agency or not.

 

With these, you might be safer when choosing an agency that will handle your business.

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