Avoiding Black Hat SEO Agencies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is difficult to understand for many B2B companies. Understanding SEO is made even more difficult when there are SEO agencies over promising and practicing “Black Hat” SEO. So, how do you know if you have a good B2B SEO agency? 3 steps that you can take that will hold your B2B SEO agency accountable are:

1. Make Strong Keyword Choices
2. Watch and Follow More Than Rankings
3. Research ROI

Strong Keyword Choices

A strong B2B SEO program is built off of a platform of good research. The research will go to good use when selecting keywords that will help increase search engine visibility.With that said, do you know what criteria your SEO agency had in place when choosing your targeted keyword phrases?

It’s very important that your keywords match audience or searcher’s intent.When a user searches using keywords or phrases you are optimizing for, they ought to be looking for your company’s service.

Do the chosen keywords have good search volume figures (the average number of monthly searches for that keyword or phrase)? Your B2B Search agency should make their keyword recommendations based on search volume, level of competition, and applicability to your service. Keyword research tools such as the Google Keyword Tool are free and can be used to determine search volume data and PPC competitive data. In addition, your SEO agency should also analyze your online competition and get to know your services.When they combine all of the data and research they should be able to recommend the best keywords and phrases to incorporate into your SEO program. It’s important that you’re involved in this portion of your SEO program, don’t get left behind! You’ll want to understand why keywords are being chosen, jump in and ask questions.

Rankings Are Great…But I Want Traffic

Your search agency should be tracking the results of their efforts as part of your B2B SEO program.This means more than just rankings should be reviewed. Although better rankings is a good first step in SEO success, the data is not 100% accurate because of factors like localized and personalized search.Search results will change from location to location, when you search from your office and your home the results will be completely different, you can imagine what happens when customers move.

A better measure for SEO success is an increase in organic traffic. Assuming your company has in fact set up analytics, organic traffic can be monitored through any analytics program. If your B2B SEO agency has done everything correct and has recommended the right keywords and implemented your program than analytics should show increases in traffic via search engines. This stat should be increasing and you should also see traffic coming from the selected keywords and phrases.

Can You Really Track ROI?

One of the biggest challenges in finding success in B2B SEO programs is determining whether or not you have received a Return on Investment (ROI).While analytics give you a lot of data, tracking your organic traffic to the final conversion can be hard because B2B companies have such a long complex sales cycle. Most end conversions happen off-line rather than on your website, so how do you hold your Search Marketing Agency responsible for your ROI?

Conversion objectives!B2B companies will find the value of a lead and then use that to determine the success of their off-line marketing like print and television advertising. The analytics you have in place should be set to track the actions of your users , like filling out a contact form, reading a case study, downloading a whitepaper, or signing up for a newsletter.

These actions don’t actually convert users into clients, they do participate more with your company and can be considered a prospect.Give every unique action that provides a prospect a value and then you’ll be able to analyze if you’re getting an ROI on your SEO investment from your B2B search agency.

Use this guide to hold your agency accountable for traffic quality as well. Determining the targeted keywords and phrases that are driving high quality traffic can be filtered through goal conversions.

Holding Your B2B Search Agency Accountable with Proper Expectations

You can hold your B2B SEO agency accountable on delivering results even if you don’t know every detail of your SEO program. Any great search marketing agency starts every project by setting proper expectations. Consideration for program goals should extend from those expectations.How will your company benefit?How can you track your success? It’s important to insist that your agency gives you the data and thinking for selecting your keywords.You need to make sure that when it comes to getting results you see more than just search rankings as an indication of success. To ensure you’re getting ROI track your site activity and assign a value to prospects. By becoming a client that’s in the loop you will have no problem holding your agency accountable.

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