Selecting a great SEO agency for your marketing campaign can be a tough task. There are many of agencies available who focus on Search Engine Optimization, but how can you trust that each will really push your Google rankings to the top?

It always pays when searching for an SEO agency to not simply look into their past and current clientele, but also to inquire about their achievements. What Google rankings have they attained for past clients? How long did it take? And how much did the site traffic increase? More often than not, it may take around 3 months or maybe more for rankings to improve on Google and traffic should increase from about 50% upwards. At this stage, you may also want to inquire if the agency offers any subscriptions for post-optimization maintenance. An excellent company should, since maintaining high SEO rankings requires ongoing care.

It also helps to look for an SEO agency that offers a full variety of services. 'On-page services' like website analysis, content optimization, page optimization, internal link building and ranking and traffic management should be offered. 'Off-site' SEO services should include keyword research, competitor analysis, external link building, and off-page promotion. It might also help to ask your prospective company for anybody who is required to approve anything before they go ahead with it. Should they say 'yes', it's really a good sign they are honest and ready to work closely with you. To increase your rankings, an SEO agency needs to employ many different tasks, not simply one or two, so be wary of businesses that just offer limited or dodgy services.

The right SEO company is essential to provide the right SEO services and features to the business. Not every SEO can handle all of the several types of businesses within the market. Hence, some SEO agencies often specialize in certain niche markets to hone their skills and creativity. There may be special requirements from certain niche markets which only skilled and creative SEO agencies can handle. These may cost a little more than the other general SEO company operators. It depends upon the SEO industry vision and modus operandi.

Every SEO company will operate differently according to their modus operandi and business objectives. Although most have similar offerings and services, some may stand out more than others when it comes to service standard and creativity.

Something else to be aware of is any agency that offers to increase your rankings through suspect methodologies like spamming, keyword stuffing, hidden text, high-ranking doorway pages and link-farming. They are often referred to as "black hat SEO" as well as can get you banished from major search engines, which may be hugely detrimental to your business. Also keep an eye out for automatic, bulk submissions to search engines. Automatic submissions are not considered best practice and it is must more good for you if a company conducts manual submissions. Always make certain that an SEO agency is open about their methodologies used - any secrecy could mean they're using "black hat" techniques.

You need to keep in mind that high prices within an SEO agency do not necessarily mean the best quality SEO agency. Instead, choose a business based on their client base, reputation and their very own site optimization and Google rankings. Similarly, if a business is offering you "guaranteed" #1 rankings for a ridiculously low price, it's probably too good to be true. Collecting several quotes is a great way to start and always ensure quotes are supported by a contract, so you know precisely what you're getting for your money. It's going to also help to ask what their payment terms are and if they have any fees for early termination.

Lastly, a dependable SEO agency should offer and conduct thorough and specific keyword research as a part of their SEO services. Most businesses shall include keyword research as a given, but be wary of any company that asks you to provide the keywords for their work. While they might ask for your opinion, the keywords used should be according to their research, analytics and competitor scope, not about what you tell them. Keep in mind, they're meant to be the SEO experts - not you! "Guessing" your keywords is just not efficient and also a great SEO agency will research your keywords completely before recommending them.