Shopping for a company that can help optimise your site? What’s the first move you should make? For most people, it’s to google something like “Best SEO Agency London.” Smart businesses, though, don’t make that move. Instead, the best companies sit down and have lots of internal discussions before they ever reach out to an SEO agency. What should you consider in-house before finding an SEO team? Take a look.
Define Your Goals
SEO can do a lot of things for companies. In fact, it can do so many things, you need to understand the power of SEO before you ever contact a company to help you optimise your site. Wondering why? SEO companies are just like other kinds of companies. They tend to specialise in one space or another. The last thing you want is to rank for a keyword that doesn’t really work for your company or to increase traffic that was never going to purchase your products or services. If you’re not even sure where to begin, start here – what do you really want when people go online to search within your industry? Maye you want traffic from certain kinds of people who are researching a product and might enter your sales funnel. Maybe you need more revenue through more sales, so you’re hoping people will discover your site. Perhaps you’re trying to boost downloads of a certain whitepaper. It’s possible you’re just trying to build brand authority. All of those are great goals to have. There are some goals you want to avoid, though. More traffic is one of them. Why? Traffic doesn’t equal conversions. Unless you have qualified traffic headed to you, you’re going to lose every time. Higher rankings isn’t really the right goal either. If you don’t want to rank for something for a specific reason (like revenue generation), a ranking is useless. Sit down with your team before you start the search for an SEO company so you understand exactly what you want and what services can help you get there.
Set Your Budget
The amount of money companies like yours spend on digital advertising is higher than ever. Its nearing $400 billion, and much of that comes from SEO budgets. Knowing how much you should be spending on SEO services is absolutely essential before you start working to find a team that can help. What’s a good number? It depends on two things – what you have now and what you want. If you have a solid site with a great architecture, a reliable content strategy, and an existing backlink profile, you may already be in a position that an SEO company can easily help you reach your goals. If, though, your site is lacking in design, you’ve never written a blog post in your life, and your backlink profile leaves something to be desired, you’re going to spend more money. In addition to knowing exactly what position you’re in now, you may also need to think about what you want. Some goals are more complicated to achieve than others, and that can drive up the price. The average price for SEO in the UK is £2500 per month. Some firms charge less, some charge more, depending on where you are now and what you want. If that’s not in your budget, don’t worry. There are changes you can make on your own. The thing you shouldn’t do, though, is jump for the cheapest possible SEO agency to get what you want. You’ll be disappointed, and you may find yourself in trouble with Google’s rankings system.
Talk To Your Network
Once you know what you want and how much you have to spend, the next step is to talk to your network. Most SEO agencies are hired because they were recommended by a third party, and that’s as it should be. Reading lists of “The Best SEO Agencies in London” or Googling similar terms isn’t going to return the results you want. Instead, talk to others in your industry, friends and family, fellow business owners, and others about the SEO company they use. It’s the single best way to select a company to meet your needs.
Finding the best SEO agency London has to offer isn’t as complex as you’d might imagine, but your search can’t actually start with Google. Instead, it should start right in your own conference room by understanding what you hope to achieve, what your budget is, and whom you already know within the industry.
