
Best SEO Companies: 17 Qualities of the Best SEO Companies
What happens when someone runs a Google search for your brand, industry, product, or service? Which results pop up in the Google search results page? Is your website ranking in the top position(s)…or has the competition laid claim to these top results? These might sound like questions of vanity, or they may feel irrelevant in a world of social media marketing and paid traffic, but the reality is that organic traffic from search engines is still the most powerful, cost-effective, and sustainable form of traffic on the internet. And if you aren’t ranking on page one of Google for target search terms, it means one of your competitors is. And that’s bad. Because 31.73 percent of all clicks go to the search result in position number one. Another 24.71 percent of clicks go to the search result in position two. Results three, four, and five grab 18.66 percent, 13.60 percent, and 9.51 percent, respectively. If you’re doing your math at home, the top three Google search results get 75 percent of all clicks. To further compound the importance of ranking well, consider that almost nobody visits the second page of Google results. And if they do, they aren’t clicking! (Just 0.78 percent – that’s less than 1 percent – click on a result from page two.) Top Qualities of a Great SEO Company Characteristics of the best SEO companies include conducting a comprehensive website audit to identify areas for improvement, developing a customized strategy based on your business goals and target audience, providing regular and transparent reporting on your website’s performance and rankings, using ethical and up-to-date SEO techniques to optimize your website’s content, structure, and links, and offering ongoing support and maintenance to ensure long-term success in search engine rankings. All of that to say this… You can’t afford to ignore search engine optimization (SEO) any longer. And while there are certainly some SEO and link building techniques and strategies that can be implemented on a DIY basis, you’re much better off outsourcing your SEO so that you can focus on the core tasks of your business. But therein lies the problem. Your digital marketing agency is not the only one on the market, but how do you know which one to pick? In this article, we’re going to attempt to clear the air for you a bit by showing you precisely what sets the best SEO companies apart from the rest of the competition. In other words, we’re going to highlight the features and characteristics that make the top one percent of digital marketing agencies different. Then, based on this information, you can make a more educated hiring decision. How to Cut Through the Noise and Find the Best SEO Company Before digging into the best search engine optimization company characteristics, it’s important that we set the table a little more for you. Because we’d be doing you a disservice not to mention the fact that this is an incredibly crowded market. In the early 2000s, when Google was first rising to prominence and small businesses were beginning to develop some awareness for the importance of having a web presence, the SEO industry went from a simmering little industry to a boiling pot of potential. Savvy entrepreneurs and digital marketers saw an opening and they took it. With low barriers to entry and relatively few industry regulations, entrepreneurs who understood how the search engines worked started selling SEO service. And because Google was still relatively unsophisticated (compared to today), it was easy to manipulate the algorithms and get quick results for clients. A company would come to a small business and tell them that they could get them on page one for an important keyword, and within just a few weeks that’s precisely where they’d be. Many SEO agencies were seen as miracle workers…but that wasn’t the case. In reality, most of these early digital marketing services were simply gaming the system. They didn’t really understand how search algorithms worked or the understanding of developing sound digital marketing strategies that would stand the test of time. They were simply in it for a quick win here and there. They used spammy practices and took advantage of low hanging fruit. (Which Google eventually caught on to and nixed and/or penalized.) As the SEO industry has grown and matured, it’s become more challenging to rank on page one. Despite this, the number of SEO agencies, and “experts” offering freelance SEO services has ballooned. It’s become an oversaturated industry with high competition, which has simply created more noise for clients, who are uncertain of who to work with in the first place. If you want to find the best seo company, it’s almost impossible to know where to start. Do you run a Google search? Do you browse social media? Do you work your professional network and search for referrals? There’s so much noise – and so few qualified options – that many businesses give up before they even start. They push SEO to the side and continue investing in other areas, like social media marketing and paid traffic. And while there’s nothing wrong with this, it simply makes the problem worse. Now is the time to invest in SEO. It’s not getting any easier to rank for high-level keywords, but it is becoming more important. And we’re going to show you how to cut through the noise, so that you can overcome the issue that so many of your peers have: Selecting the best SEO company to work with. 17 Characteristics and Features of the Best SEO Companies What makes the difference between an average search engine optimization company and one of the best SEO companies? It’s a question that we’ve all contemplated before. And it’s a question that we’re going to answer for you in detail. In no particular order, here’s what makes up the DNA of the best SEO agencies in our industry: 1. Honesty and Transparency Let’s start with two characteristics that aren’t traditionally keystones of the