It’s important to check if your SEO company is helping or killing your site because you don’t want to waste your money on people who are not doing a good job. Checking your SEO company to see the progress is not something you will be doing once or twice. Yes, they are the experts (at least they ate the SEO experts) but the website is yours and you are the one pulling the shots.
The good the bad and the ugly
This is not rocket science. Everybody can become an SEO expert, you too can become an SEO expert if you want to all you need to do is put on some work. This is the only thing necessary. Some SEO companies are good and some are bad. Just like anything else in this world. You are the one who needs to separate good ones from the bad ones. Don’t worry even if you are not in this world and don’t know much about SEO you will be able to check if your SEO company is helping or killing your site. We will show you how.
Red flags you shouldn’t ignore
Here you can see some signs that will show you that your SEO company is not doing something right, don’t ignore them because your website will suffer the damage :
- If you hear your SEO expert saying that they’ll build “X backlinks from PR2+ sites” fire them on spot – Google ditched Toolbar PageRank almost four years ago and if your experts didn’t know that well are they SEO experts at all?
- In case you start hearing about 100+ powerful directory submissions – start firing, it sounds like a lot of spammy content and Google can punish you now for that.
- They guarantee a number one ranking for your primary keyword or claim they have a special relationship with Google – that smells like a fraud (no one can guarantee that because Google uses over 200 ranking factors).
- This one is obvious but still, we should mention – if you are approached by an SEO company with a spammy email you shouldn’t trust them.
- If they start asking you to link to their site or other sites chances are they are scammers.
- Being secretive is always a red flag.
- In case you find out that your SEO company has a blog network and builds low-quality links rethink them (twice).
- And lastly, if the content they write is not for people, but rather for search engines that is a big red flag.
Reading webmasters guidelines will give you a better picture and you will be aware of all dos and don’ts.
What could go wrong?
Everything can go wrong. Your website can perform worse than it once was. You can even get punished or banished from Google. Yes, there is such a thing. The more you know the harder it will be for others to fool you. That is the reason why we suggest Link Department. You can find a lot on this topic there, and the more you know…
Outsourcing SEO
Outsourcing SEO is actually a good thing. We are not trying to scare you into thinking you need to do everything by yourself. If you find a good SEO company to help you – you will benefit greatly. Your website will improve and you will start to see differences very soon. Reach will be improving week after week if good strategies are being used.
But just because you are outsourcing this part of your business to someone who’s more experienced doesn’t mean you should trust them completely. Or even think that now that you hired someone you have no responsibilities here. You still do. After all, this is your website – not theirs. But, if something happens and they fail to deliver results (or even worse) get your site penalized you are the one who will be left with a site that’s performing badly and the punishment.
Tools to measure the success of your SEO
You don’t need to check them daily. But you can take some time and once a week check how your SEO is performing. There are some great SEO tools that can help you. Here are a few things you should do while checking if your SEO company is helping or killing your site :
- monitor your website’s organic traffic
- often check your keywords ranking
- frequency of getting new backlinks is also important to check
- check for bad backlinks
- dofollow and nofollow links need to be checked also
- overoptimizing website – yes some SEO companies do that and its also bad so you need to make sure that this is not the case
It is not easy, we will give you that. But don’t worry. Using the tools you can see above will help you to check everything quickly. We also understand that sometimes time is a luxury not everyone has. But, you really need to make sure that you are content with the company you chose.
If you are not happy
When you check if your SEO company is helping or killing your site and you find that you are not happy with results you should act quickly. There is no waiting. Your website is too important. Waiting to see if they will improve will not give you any results. Giving second chances is always nice but this is your business. You are not here to be nice but to succeed. That’s, why we wrote this so we can help you on your road to success, and finding the right SEO company, can be the key.