How to Determine the Best SEO Agency

You are tasked with outsourcing the company’s online marketing activities and efforts to a reliable SEO (search engine optimization) company. Sounds simple? Maybe so, but the task is not that simple. And this is because there are just too many of them offering a myriad of online marketing services that makes it quite difficult to pinpoint on a single entity that would best suit or respond to your requirements. Try searching for an SEO Agency via Google and localize your search. In all likelihood, you will be looking at more or less 300 SEO firms.

Each one of these SEO companies you find on the World Wide Web can lay claim to their capabilities in guaranteeing top page ranking on Google’s organic search. As to who can genuinely deliver the promise, it would take some serious analysis to identify that SEO agency.

What to Look For in an SEO Agency

Beautiful Website

Should you gauge their expertise with their visually-appealing websites? The answer to this question is “yes” if you are looking at hiring an SEO that can also handle website design issues. The answer is “no” if what you want is an SEO company that only focuses on optimizing the website with organic-based strategies. The best SEO company in the Philippines, for example would be one that can offer both services. Having a visually appealing website with quality and well-crafted and optimized contents will be a sure formula for improving business’ revenue-generating activities.

Top Ranking in Localized Search

This maybe a bit tricky. Of course, you would want an SEO company that ranks or appears on the top page of the organic search results. But not all SEO websites that you see on the SERPs are there because they are the experts in the field. There are SEO websites that consistently rank high in SERPs, mainly because they have been running their websites for a specific number of years. And search engines like Google, put a lot of weight on this. If you have identified a high-ranking SEO website from the results page, you must do some research or due diligence to find out other possible reasons why said site is ranking on the SERPs.

Determine What You Need for Your Website

It will make a difference if you know exactly what you want done on your website – link building or link removal, content marketing, PPC management, social media exposure, etc. Depending on your target online marketing goals, you should be able to narrow down your selection to the SEO agencies that cater to your specific requirements.

Check SEO’s References and Case Studies

Ask the SEO agency on how they can help you achieve your goals. Ask what tools they have used to track and analyze links and campaigns. Have they used tools such as Majestic SEO or the popular LinkResearchtools? If they don’t show you documented proofs of what they have accomplished with real customers, don’t bother calling them again. The best SEO agency will not have any problem or issue showing you what they have done for other clients like you. They may not have clients that are big brands like ebay.com or samsung, but their clients should have stuck with them for quite some time. If you are running a self-storage company, you should look for an SEO agency that has done work with 10 other self-storage companies, with good and acceptable results and recently – not ten years ago. Such would be a good fit for your SEO requirements.

Make the SEO Agency Tell You Stories

Some SEO firms approach the SEO task tactically and there’s nothing wrong about that. But there are SEO agencies that would use the same approach and sprinkle it with a lot of creativity. If an SEO agency can tell you more than what you have read on their social media profile, chances are they know what they are doing and should be good at it. But that’s not to say that they only tell the success stories. You would have a better insight of their strengths and weaknesses if they are able to account for their failures as well.

The selection process should include setting clear objectives, getting bids from multiple SEOs, doing due diligence and analyzing gathered information. These should be enough to lead you to the right and the best SEO agency that will help you achieve your specific online marketing goals.


How to Know if You’ve Been Hit by Penguin

The world of webmasters is abuzz with chaos and confusion on the most recent effects of Google’s Penguin 2.0 update. While there is an upward trend on sites that are likely to be hit, some webmasters are not quite sure if they have indeed been hit by the sweeping Penguin update, which had only one purpose after all – and that is to get rid of spammy link building practices with the corresponding punishment or penalty.

It’s one thing to know that you are using some dishonest link building in an attempt to improve search engine rankings, and it’s another thing to know for sure that your site has been captured by Penguin 2.0 to be a black hat activities advocate. But whether or not you’re sure of your offense, Google undoubtedly has you on its watch list and just waiting for the right time to make your violation known through a warning.

But instead of waiting for such warning, which you know will be coming in any time, there are some ways you can check if you have been hit by Penguin 2.0. How? Read on below:

penguin attack

  • Check analytics for a sudden drop in traffic. This is a clear indication of Penguin’s punishment if your analytics showed a plummet in your site traffic.

  • Monitor rankings and turn off location settings and personalization by adding “&pws=0” to the end of the query string in the address bar to get to the nearest truth possible.

  • Check if there’s any significant drop for specific keywords. This should be easy since Penguin skims through the pages. Don’t just check the homepage. Check your analytics and webmaster tool accounts to determine if you have lost any traffic or impressions for specific keywords.

  • Run a full Majestic SEO report so you can look through your backlinks.

  • Check for any disappearing page. Google doesn’t want to send users to a page that is inactive. Your site may have been having technical hosting problems, and if it happens when Google is trying to crawl your page, it is likely to declare it dead or inactive. This can be a serious problem if your site is de-indexed even if it shouldn’t be re-indexing can take really long time.

  • Page too difficult to navigate. Your site will get deindexed if users keep clicking the page back button to get off the site. You should make your page easy to maneuver and simple.

  • Duplication. De-indexing is almost a cinch if your site is one of those sub-shopping sites which offer what other sites are already offering. Google hates duplicate contents and if your site has such pages, you’re on your way to getting penalized.

  • Viruses and Malware. The biggest culprit could be autoblogging of content and so is unknowingly hosting virus and malware sites.

  • Technical Problems. Google’s ability to crawl and index your site may be caused by a robots.txt file that is blocking Google. To index the site, Google needs to have access on the site.

Another possible scenario could be that you have not been de-indexed by Penguin 2.0 but penalized. This means that your site is manually reviewed by a Google Search Quality Engineer and found your site to violate certain Google Webmaster Guidelines. Your site should show up if you try to search “yourdomain.com”  or www.yourdomain.com. If it doesn’t show up, then there could be other problems to your site which you need to check against.


Code of Conduct in SEO

Like in other industries, the practice of a profession is guided by specific Code of Ethics, the framework of which is based on what are acceptable practices in the industry. Doctors take their oath before they are permitted to practice their profession. Their oath sums up the principles of ethical behavior that they should adhere to in the practice of their professions.

SEO or search engine optimization, likewise has its own Code of Ethics. Unfortunately, the business has been easily tainted by the inconsiderate and unprofessional practices of some people who lack awareness in good business ethics. You’ve heard about “black hat SEO”, “spamming” or “spamdexing”. All of these terms give reference to unethical SEO practices and techniques used to advance their selfish motives and interests and defy what is required of a professional SEO.

The good news is that the people behind search engines have not stopped at finding ways to curb and put a stop to techniques and practices that are in total disregard of the SEO Code of Ethics. With the constant updates on search engines’ algorithms ultimately aimed at removing works of those who don’t adhere to the Code so that the users get genuine information that they are looking for, and not be led to sites designed to count viewership or click-throughs.

The SEO Code of Ethics, in summary are principles that enhance website usability, help search engines find and rank the sites according to their real value to the users. Those who adhere and follow the Code strive and work hard to build functional, content-rich and content-optimized websites or webpages that provide genuine benefits to the end users.

The anti-Code of Ethics practitioners produce work that has various tactics that deceive users into believing that they have the information they “promise” to have. They are the ones who abused the different optimization tools and techniques in their own “creative” and deceitful ways which are destructive to SEO functionality and effectiveness. They have utmost disregard for the future of the Internet community.

The SEO Code of Ethics include the following provisions, all of which point to implementing techniques and strategies that are beneficial to the end users:

  • No SEO professional will inflict harm intentionally to online clients

  • No SEO professionals will violate any published, circulated and enforced rules of search engine or directories with intent

  • No SEO professional will deliberately harm, deceive, mislead or offend a consumer or customer

  • No SEO professional will violate any laws intentionally

  • No SEO professional will falsely or maliciously represent the content of the client site

  • No SEO professional will claim ownership of others work not theirs to begin with

  • No SEO professional will lay false claims on their own education, abilities, training, experience, standards of performance, certifications and accreditations, trade group affiliations, and technical know-how and expertise to others

  • No SEO professional will engage in activities that have conflict of interest without prior notice to all parties involved

  • No SEO professional will set unreasonable and unobtainable client expectations

  • All SEO professionals will offer internal or external dispute resolution to their clients

  • All SEO professionals will ensure the protection of the confidentiality and anonymity of their clients with respect to privileged information and materials that imply testimonial support for the SEO professional

  • All SEO professionals will work to their best ability to increase or retain the rankings of client sites using only acceptable techniques

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