How to choose the best SEO agency

Choosing an SEO agency is a key choice for any client as it will mark the success or otherwise of their online strategy. However, as it is a very technical decision, the client is often very lost and does not know what criteria to take into account. We will try to guide you in the decision making process, but we already advance that as in the choice of any agency, professionalism, technical skills and transparency should be the key.

A professional SEO agency

Although it sounds obvious, it is not. A professional agency is one that can offer a successful strategy from which appropriate and applicable solutions can be derived. To do this, the SEO agency must have extensive experience in SEO, have the right tools and a team of trained professionals.

Any self-respecting agency should first of all offer you an SEO audit of your website and your current SEO strategy. To do this, you should provide the necessary information so that the agency can analyse your service, environment, competitors and current digital marketing strategy. If the agency does not understand your business, it will be difficult for them to design an appropriate strategy.

When we talk about doing an SEO audit, it should be understood as an individual project and prior to working on SEO on a recurring basis. This is why it should be budgeted independently. Unfortunately, this is sometimes not possible, but it would be desirable.

Once the SEO agency is aware of the client's environment, the state of its current SEO and its business objectives, it is time to propose strategies tailored to the company and not generic solutions.

The professionalism of an SEO agency is also reflected by the large number of tools it works with. The use of premium tools such as ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Sistrix, among many others, implies a cost for the agency, which obviously has an impact on SEO prices, but guarantees that the agency has the right tools to work seo effectively and to be able to have a perspective of its evolution. However, a word of warning here: the abusive use of AI tools to generate content, for example, is often counterproductive for SEO. It never hurts to ask what SEO tools the SEO agency uses.

Business-oriented SEO strategy

When a client hires an SEO agency, they do so because they want to attract more traffic, generate more conversions and, therefore, more business. A solvent SEO agency should offer you business-oriented strategies. This does not mean that they promise you sales figures or even guarantees rankings in Google, this is expressly forbidden by Google and this is indicated in their guidelines.

The agency should always advise you and define a realistic SEO strategy oriented to obtain realistic and measurable results. If this strategy can be complemented with other online channels such as SEM, even better. However, keep in mind that any strategy requires a reasonable investment, that the service or product you are selling has a differential value and that you trust the advice of the SEO professionals you hire. Finally, communication must be transparent and supported by measurable and realistic results. It is advisable that the agency, of its own accord, provides clear, detailed and regular reports complemented by meetings with the client to readjust strategies and set new objectives. The use of tools such as Google's Looker Studio should be mandatory.

Here is a practical tip to assess the transparency and honesty of an SEO agency. Nowadays there are still potential clients who in good faith ask for SEO services to work searches such as "flats Barcelona" or "hotels Barcelona", be wary of any agency that tells you that you can rank yourself for these searches; why it is not possible due to the presence of large portals that you will not be able to beat. If you ask an SEO agency if they can rank for any of these words and they say yes, run away.

SEO Team

The advantage of an agency over a freelancer is the possibility of working with specialists in each area. To correctly manage the SEO of a website you need to design the strategy and implement the changes, for this you need experts in SEO but also programmers to implement it. We advise against hiring digital marketing agencies that do not have designers or programmers on staff. Unfortunately, many SEO agencies currently offer services that they cannot implement because they lack programmers. You don't need an SEO consultancy, you need an SEO agency to implement the improvements, it may seem like a subtle difference but it's not.

When evaluating the agency make sure that, apart from having a multidisciplinary team, it has a large enough team to have an advanced know-how of what works and what doesn't in your sector and, more importantly, in other sectors to take advantage of their experience. Looking at the success stories section of agencies helps a lot in decision making. Another option is to analyse objective rankings of SEO agencies, for example: ranking of best seo agencies in Spain.

Ethical SEO

A separate mention is the use of ethical SEO practices. In SEO there are shortcuts that allow rapid exponential growth but with guaranteed subsequent falls. This is what we know as black hat techniques, including for example the use of expired domains or injecting traffic to alter Google metrics.

How much does SEO cost?

And like any service, SEO has its price and you will find it difficult to value as you will find very different prices. The price should be conditioned by the agency's experience, which is always a guarantee, and by the dedication they will put into your online project. You should stay away from those SEO agencies that offer SEO packages, seo cannot be packaged and must always be tailor-made. This does not mean that sometimes, if the client has fewer resources, it is not possible to create a correct SEO strategy. The agency will have to prioritise actions and although the results will obviously not be the same as those obtained by dedicating hundreds of hours per month, correct results can be obtained. Sometimes you have to be imaginative and, for example, explain to the client that you can dedicate yourself to cover those SEO actions of a less technical level, such as writing blog content.

In short, the choice of one SEO agency or another will be key to the evolution of your online business, I recommend that you inform yourself and do not be guided mainly by price. We would like to take this opportunity to give you some recommendations from Google on how to choose the right SEO agency for you.