This probably strikes you as an odd topic for us to write about given that you have already arrived at our website and we provide Search Engine Optimisation services to a few clients globally. Our reasoning is simple: we like to ensure our clients and prospective clients are as clued up as possible, as that makes the job easier for us if they know what they are buying from us! See, not so daft after all.

So how can you find the best SEO Marketing Companies, and what exactly is an SEO Marketing company?

Let’s answer the second part first. Most people in business have a pretty good idea of what Marketing is all about—although, to be fair, a large number think it’s just advertising, which is but a small subset of the whole Marketing Agenda.

Advertising is about creating promotional pieces (traditionally in Print or on Broadcast media like TV or Radio). Still, these days, you could rope in any medium where you control the wording, where and how often it appears, who sees it, and you pay for the privilege. So, it could now include things like trade stands and even paid search adverts on Google.

Marketing encompasses Advertising as it incorporates anything that helps an organisation grow its customer base, promote its products and services, and hopefully make a profit from them—or some other goal such as brand awareness and recall. So Marketing in the broadest sense also includes things like Product (helping decide what gets sold), Place (as mentioned, which markets you will target), and Price, as this impacts everything. The promotion also features and looks at how it is a bit wider than just advertising.

In the good old days, the four Ps were deemed enough, but with the ascent of Customer Service and HR skills, it is increasingly common now to also include People, which will drive desired attitudes and behaviours, etc. Some people have more time on their hands than is good for them and are striving to get up to seven Ps.

So that’s traditional Marketing. The onset of digital technologies has then created a whole subset of these deliverables under the banner of Digital Marketing – too many people; this can be misdescribed as meaning web designers. In reality, to get a good business presence online, you will also need people capable of coding behind-the-scenes computer systems, hosting them in the right way, and making them visible to anyone seeking the product or service.

This leads us to the subset of Digital Marketing, which is SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation or Optimization stateside. It does precisely what it says on the tin (thanks, Ronseal); it ensures the digital content created by a business to promote itself online is optimised to be as effective as possible within the vital search engine algorithms (hidden systems) so that when prospects are searching for whatever you do, you come high up the list of search results presented as these generate most traffic. SEO delivers this traffic without paying Google or other search engines, so it is a strategy similar to paid search programs like AdWords. When your bid budget runs out, your displayed adverts stop appearing, and you get zero leads. The whole business is pushed to your competitors.

In SEO, it takes longer to get found, and you pay a fee for this service, generally monthly, but once found, all the traffic you receive is free and unlimited.

Logically, the best way to find a good SEO Marketing company is to type into a search engine “Best SEO Marketing Companies” and see who comes top. But it would be best if you still were careful – you could be clicking on a paid-for result and choosing an agency that is good at Advertising but poor at SEO.

Even if the SEO company is at the top of the results, it doesn’t mean a great result. Yes, they understand SEO, but the result could be temporary, localised and, in the worst case scenario, obtained at great effort simply because the agency puts all its efforts into promoting itself to keep filling its lead bucket but almost zero effort into client campaigns. We have seen this, and indeed ourselves make virtually no effort to optimise our business as it requires more staff than we have in our company as our sector is obviously so competitive.

To be at the top requires deep pockets, which may mean that what looks like a good agency is actually priced out of your market. You may only need to spend, say, £1,500 a month, yet their cost structure dictates minimum fees of £15,000 per month.

The best advertising agencies are generally found in big cities, and you might assume this is a requirement for good SEO. In reality, the best SEO Marketing Companies can be anywhere as their people business, generally in small teams – the UK and Australia are renowned for skills and most tools used in our industry (and thankfully, half the world’s searches for commercial products and services) are in English. So, a prominent City agency will add to costs and may be at the detriment of your ROI.

Budget is an important consideration. In our view, the best SEO Marketing companies are those that can work with your desired budget to recommend optimal results – sometimes, that will mean turning down the project, and most times, it will mean starting small on a pilot to prove the case for increased funding, and growing things together. We have even developed two unique algorithms to predict recommended budget amounts to take the guesswork out of forecasting – this is highly unusual and is part of our broader approach to being as transparent as possible.

Results are, of course, the bedrock of a good agency and require time and experience. So look for an agency with a history, good recommendations from longstanding clients and a willingness to be open about the success of campaigns. Anyone promising too much too soon is likely to be a scamster of sorts – we benchmark 2% growth in clients’ online prominence per month. It doesn’t sound huge, but as it’s cumulative, that kind of growth can double a business in three years, quicker than most companies can cope.

So there you have it – choosing the Best SEO Marketing Companies will never be easy. Still, hopefully, this guide will help you fall for a few tricks and get optimal results from your investment in Digital Marketing.

Stuart Haining
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