Picture this: your business is important to you and offers amazing services and products but for some reason you can't get people as excited as you are. It's not because you don't have anything worth buying but it's probably because people don't know who you are yet and they're not sure they can trust you and what you are selling. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to spread awareness of who you are and what you offer. However, it can be complicated to get started and know what the effective methods are to properly apply it to your site. That's where a marketing agency comes in. You want to make sure you pick the right agency that will give you the best results. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice. 

Have A Plan Of Your Business's Needs

Have an idea of your needs. Are you needing more links on your website or do you have too many, do you need to build or rebuild your reputation or are you looking for someone to manage you ongoing SEO. According to Forbes, "Have a goal in mind by which you will measure the success of your engagement with your SEO firm, and make that goal the center of your communication with who you plan on hiring." If you can’t measure how successful your SEO efforts are together, you’re less likely to be successful with them. Have a mutual relationship knowing that they are doing the best they can to help with your needs and you are providing all the necessary information. If you don't have an idea of what direction you want to go in it might be a little difficult for the company to effectively give you what you need without circling the wagons first wasting time that could have been used to generate more people to your business.

Know That SEO Takes Time

If a CT SEO company offers you outstanding results very quickly, be cautious. An honest agency will work with you and provide the facts about the process they are going to use. Typically, results will start to arise within four to six months provided the fact that they were able to receive the correct information to move forward. Agencies that do not tell you how they are going to get you customers and promise results too quickly could be using tactics that eventually will get you penalized. Tactics such as excessive link building and over use of certain keywords can knock you down like your spam and once that happens it's hard to pick your reputation back up. Understand that a successful business will take the time to build relationships with quality customers and in turn will boost awareness of their professionalism. These quality customers will grow overtime and as long as you show appreciation for them, they will show the same appreciation back by spreading the word about you. 

Get To Know Who You Are Hiring

Get to know the team. A good agency will take the time to get to know you and you should do the same. Talk with the team and talk on a more personal level. This will help you get an idea if they have the creative and professional qualities you are looking for. Can they take certain aspects seriously and provide quality answers to your questions? Can they let loose and joke around a bit? These questions are important because you are going to want an agency with creativity as well as professional skills. Creativity will play a huge roll. You want to stand out from the rest and come out on top when people search for your products and services. The agency should have their own creative ideas on how they can do that for you and get you the traffic you are looking for. A good relationship with the agency will make it easier to communicate with one another and for both parties to understand the information that is needed to have an effective SEO strategy. 

Ask For Statistics

As said before, it takes time for them to get you traffic and put statistics together to show progress but that doesn't mean you can't ask to see the progress and work they did with other businesses, especially the ones that may be similar to yours. They should be able to pull up other clients and explain how they got started, what they did to improve traffic and if it was successful for them. See if they can explain in detail the SEO process and what they think is the most effective way to go for your company. Don't judge the agency by it's size thinking that a larger building with a larger team will be more successful. That is not true, base off your decision by their work portfolio, quality of work, knowledge, creativity and professionalism. 

They Should Do More Than Just SEO 

Any agency that can offer you more than search engine optimization can be a huge benefit. You may find that your company needs more than just SEO alone like social media, blogging, website design and video production. An agency that can do all of these will help build up your traffic and they'll have skills in several different outlets to offer you a wide variety of techniques to get your business growing. A strategy that doesn’t integrate with your website or a development plan that doesn’t build in room for SEO is going to be counterproductive and confuse prospects. Try to find a company that can integrate several aspects together to fit your needs.