If you are looking for a new SEO or digital marketing agency to take over this aspect of your business, help your brand grow online and boost ranking and brand awareness, then looking for the right one is important. Sadly, there are lots of scams out there involving companies that look legitimate and promise you a lot only to take your money and deliver nothing. If you are worried about the risk of losing money or worse, having your business website penalized as a result of working with a scam SEO agency, then the good news is that there are several things that you should look out for in order to help you avoid this.
Guaranteed Results
The truth is that no SEO agency, no matter how good they are, will be able to guarantee the results that you can get from working with them. A good SEO agency providing legitimate digital marketing services is not going to promise you the world. You’re not going to hear them tell you that you will be on the top spot in Google search results after a month or that you are going to be able to increase your traffic by a certain amount in a week as they know it’s not possible to guarantee this. They might be able to give you a rough idea of what they can help you achieve, but there won’t be any false promises.
No Transparency
When hiring an SEO or digital marketing agency to work with your brand, transparency is key. If you are sizing up an agency that doesn’t seem to be very forthcoming when it comes to providing you with more information on what they can do for you, then it might be best to steer clear. When working with SEO professionals, you should have no problem finding out what the SEO strategy is, how it will be implemented, and how it’s going to work to help you get the results that you need for the site.
Toxic or Spammy Backlinks
Before you decide whether or not to work with an SEO agency, it’s a good idea to ask them more about how they plan to build backlinks for your brand. Backlinks are a hugely important ranking factor for SEO, so you can expect any SEO agency to put time into building them – but how they do this can either make or break your brand. Ideally, you will want an SEO agency to build backlinks through things like reputable guest posts or news articles. If they are using spammy forums, blog comments, or other low quality backlink types, stay away.
Super Low Price
Finally, while you don’t want to pay through the roof for SEO, a seriously low price may also be something to be suspicious of. ‘Buy cheap, buy twice’ really does apply here, so don’t just go for the cheapest SEO agency you can find. While they may not all be spammy, super-cheap SEO isn’t usually the best quality.
Working with the right SEO agency can do wonders for your brand. Keep your eye out for these scam artists during your search in order to avoid getting burned.