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

It always pays while searching for an SEO agency to not just look into their past and current clientele, but additionally to ask about their achievements. What Google rankings have they attained for past clients? How long did it take? And just how much did the site traffic increase? All too often, 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 could also want to inquire if the agency offers any subscriptions for post-optimization maintenance. A good company should, since maintaining high SEO rankings requires ongoing care.

It also helps to look for an SEO agency that offers a full selection 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 if you are necessary to approve anything before they go ahead with it. Whenever they say 'yes', it's really a good sign they're honest and prepared to work closely with you. To improve your rankings, an SEO agency needs to employ quite a few tasks, not just one or two, so be wary of businesses that just offer limited or dodgy services.

The correct SEO company is necessary to provide the right SEO services and features to the business. Not every SEO can handle all the different kinds 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 will depend on the SEO industry vision and modus operandi.

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

Another thing to watch out for 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 generally known as "black hat SEO" and can get you banished from search engines, that may be hugely detrimental to your business. Also keep an eye out for automatic, bulk submissions to major search engines. Automatic submissions are not considered best practice and it is must more beneficial for you if a business conducts manual submissions. Always make certain that an SEO agency is open about their methodologies used - any secrecy could mean they are using "black hat" techniques.

It is important to bear in mind high prices within an SEO agency do not necessarily mean the very best quality. Instead, choose a company according to their client base, reputation and their own site optimization and Google rankings. Similarly, if a company 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 make certain quotes are backed by a contract, so you know just what you are getting for your money. It's going to also help to ask what their payment terms are and whenever they have any fees for early termination.

Inevitably, a dependable SEO agency should offer and conduct thorough and specific keyword research as a part of their SEO services. A lot of 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 based on their research, analytics and competitor scope, not on the you tell them. Simply, they are 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.