Choosing a Partner Agency for SEO?

Hello,

I run a small hosting company that serves several clients and I am constantly being approached by them to increase their ‘web presence’ via SEO marketing.

I know that scammers target this market and I don’t want to recommend anyone to my clients that I cannot closely monitor, so I am proposing to look for a ‘partner’ type solution where all the quotes/interactions,seo services etc… for their website will be pushed through me (as the middle-man) and then I will negotiate with the SEO company.

  1. How do you determine if an SEO company is legit? I’ve seen website where they claim they have sites with keywords ranked in the top 5, but when you do those searches on Google they don’t appear (even in the 1st 5 pages).

  2. Are companies willing to partner with a hosting/web design firm to provide these types of services?

  3. Anything else I should think about?

Thanks in advance,

Cheers,

~DP

The only real way, other than to personally see what kind of tactics they use, is to get some good word-of-mouth recommendations from people that have worked with them and know what kind of SEO guys they are.

If I’m honest with you, I doubt many companies would want to partner with a hosting company to get “SEO” done. I’d much prefer for my hosting company to be solely involved in providing the best possible hosting for my sites.

I wouldn’t try an SEO agency unless they were transparent about the tactics they use and have a lot of 3rd party positive reviews. I also wouldn’t recommend one that I didn’t try myself first. It’s risky to try a bunch of SEO agencies on an established site so it may be best to test them on newer sites. I agree with Ultimate that many people wouldn’t expect to get SEO advice from their hosting company but if people are asking you for advice, it’s smart to have a high-quality SEO agency in mind to recommend.

There are SEO agencies out there who are not scammers, they are just hard to find.

Distilled is probably one of the most renowned in the industry, but they are very expensive.

Your best bet when choosing an SEO company to partner with is selecting a group with a proven work history who are excited about doing the work. You should also only partner with SEO companies who preach about content marketing rather than manipulating Google’s algorithm with shady backlinks.

Because so many scammers target this industry, my partner and I decided that we would not require our clients sign contracts. We simply require payment at the beginning of the month, and as long as our clients are happy, they continue to pay us. I am sure there are other SEO companies who would be willing to work out something like this as well.

  1. Assurance: Are they really giving a guarantee that your website will be ranked for keywords or they are just giving an assurance that they will work as per SEO guidelines?
    I would advise you to ask more questions on how they can achieve this as it is impossible for anyone to guarantee a website owner a certain position in search engines.

  2. Feedback : Feedback from past clients should also help you to choose a partner agency. Ask the seo company to share their details so that you can get in touch with
    previous clients.

  3. Periodic reports: They should be able to provide you periodic reports on how they are working on your website.

This is true, anyone who guarantees first page rankings is lying. It is impossible for anyone to ever know what Google’s engineers or your competitors are going to do on any given day.

  1. Assurance: Are they really giving a guarantee that your website will be ranked for keywords or they are just giving an assurance that they will work as per SEO guidelines?
    I would advise you to ask more questions on how they can achieve this as it is impossible for anyone to guarantee a website owner a certain position in search engines.

  2. Feedback : Feedback from past clients should also help you to choose a partner agency. Ask the seo company to share their details so that you can get in touch with
    previous clients.

  3. Periodic reports: They should be able to provide you periodic reports on how they are working on your website.

I am a subscriber of Highrankings.com newsletter. Jill Whalen is the author of the site. Lot of search engine related info on that site.

http://www.highrankings.com/seo-resources

Check it out. But remember SEO services comes with heavy price.

(I am not at all related to that site.)

.

Having taken the good advice offered here, ask the company to read the article on best internet links for Google
Sarah