You cannot start an e-commerce business without considering its online presence, especially if you depend on search engines and digital platforms for conversions. Search Engine Optimization is crucial, and outsourcing your SEO needs may increase your chances of online visibility very quickly. Finding a good SEO company for your e-commerce business will help you win half the battle in this constant rat race for online visibility.
8 Tips For Choosing The Best E-Commerce SEO Company For Your Brand
The selection process may seem a little daunting but fear not, we have your back. Here are some ways to find the best e-commerce SEO company that aligns with your business goals.
1. A Brief Look at the Brand History
Don’t get us wrong – it is possible for a new company to be excellent at what they do, however, the chances of you getting excellent results from a company that launched itself a year back, are quite slim. Companies that have been around for a long time are usually not afraid to share their rich company history either on their website or on a portfolio and are usually safer to work with.
In case you want to go ahead with a new company, do a little background research, especially on the company founder. New companies are often single person, or two people run businesses, so, more often than not, the founder will double up as your service provider. Look into their work experience, especially in e-commerce SEO services before going forward.
2. Assessing Technical Proficiency
This can be a little tricky because the reason why you are hiring someone is because you expect them to know more about SEO than you do. But how will you asses them if you don’t know much about the service in the first place? The best way to tell apart a good company from a mediocre one is to check their usage of jargon and complicated language. As Albert Einstein once said, ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough’. Someone with a well rounded knowledge will not try to impress you with all the industry jargon, rather they will be more concerned with solving your problem in the best way possible.
Ask questions like ‘How will you:’
- Research keywords
- Build links for the company
- Customize your SEO strategy for us
These questions will provide a good idea as to how the company will handle your brand. A good SEO company will tell you the platforms and tools they use for their research and even how they plan on building links – either through website content or content on third-party websites (backlink generation). They will have a lot of questions to ask you about your company and may even ask for a few days before they get back to you with a strategy. Rest assured that when you are dealing with an experienced SEO company, you will not be confused by the strategy laid out by them. They are usually open to resolving doubts too, in case you have any.
3. Specialization
SEO is so fast that even e-commerce SEO can be broken down into several subcategories. For instance, let’s say you are a local shop that also sells products online with a few shipping restrictions. You should find an e-commerce SEO company that specializes in local SEO and niche specific SEO.
Ask the company about their work history and if they have worked with a company similar to yours. Some companies cannot share client names because of client confidentiality agreements like the NDA. However, a good e-commerce SEO company will happily share past work experiences and challenges that are specific to your niche while adhering to the client confidentiality agreement.
4. Long Term and Short Term Goals
Another great way to assess if a company is legit, is by asking them what will their long term and short term goals be for an e-commerce company like yours. Usually, when companies guarantee exact numbers (like 100 conversions in 1 month, or 1000+ page visits) it is often a red flag. Even the best SEO company cannot guarantee page visits and conversions. Why? Because conversions, page visits, bounce rate etc is all led by human behavior. There are heatmaps, analytics, and other measures that can guide SEO companies as to why potential clients are behaving a certain way, but at the end of the day, no one can guarantee that people will buy your product.
If a company is guaranteeing sales or visibility they are either lying or they have black hat SEO techniques under their belt that can worsen your SEO health in the long run.
Good long term and short term goals should look something like this:
Short Term Goals:
- Building a content strategy to rank on more keywords
- Begin guest posting to build page backlinks
- Improve on page SEO for all pages by interlinking and outbound links
- Improve search engine rankings
Long Term Goals:
- Increase organic traffic by x%
- Reduce page loading speed to x seconds
- Reduce bounce rate by x%
These are a few examples of how our service provider should outline their goals.
5. Assessing Online Presence
Any other company can get away with poor online visibility and a bad website, but not an SEO company. A good SEO company understands how a good website impacts your overall ranking, hence you should expect good UI and UX design, good interlinking, and a fast-loading website both on a desktop and on mobile. If they don’t check all these boxes, it might be a good incentive to move on to the next e-commerce SEO company on your list.
Additionally, check the company’s social media profiles as well. A few years back we would have asked to check the follower count but let’s be honest, it’s a cut throat niche and even the best companies may have a few 100 followers. On the other hand, mediocre companies attain 1000+ followers through questionable means. So instead of the follower count, look at their content quality, their posting frequency etc. A brief look at their social media profiles will help you judge if the company is reliable.
6. Checking Client Testimonials
Apart from reviews on their website, check for reviews on Google, Facebook, and other online directories. If a company does not have a lot of reviews, you can ask them for a past client reference. A legitimate company would be happy to put you on a call with an existing or past client.
7. Find Out Their Range Of Services
Although this doesn’t directly impact good SEO services, a company that provides professional e-commerce website development services, for example, can quickly assist in things like website speed and design improvements – things that will directly impact SEO health.
A good digital presence requires companies to adapt services that overlap one another. For instance, SEO requires good content skills as well as good web design and development skills. Hence working with a company that specializes in SEO, web development and digital marketing may show faster results.
8. Price
Lastly, this should go unsaid, but there have been instances where novice (and sometimes scammy) SEO service providers have provided long shot or arbitrary SEO techniques at a very high price and unaware e-commerce companies have fallen prey to the strategy.
If you don’t have a budget in mind, you should talk to more than one service provider, check their prices along with their proficiency. A good e-commerce SEO company will price its services according to milestones and have a detailed payment structure.
Conclusion
We hope these tips help you find an SEO agency that aligns with your business goals. Netlynx Inc is also an e-commerce SEO company, we provide both SEO and web development services for online stores. So, if you have a requirement, feel free to get in touch with us. All the best!
