The Most Costly Mistakes Businesses Make When Choosing an SEO Agency – and How to Avoid Them.
Choosing the right SEO agency for your business literally can be the difference between success and failure.
Discover how to find a trusted SEO partner and avoid the common pitfalls that are often made.
Choosing the right SEO agency for your business can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. With thousands of companies promising first-page results and guaranteed rankings, it’s no wonder that so many business owners end up being disappointed, or even worse, having their website penalized by search engines.
Your website is your most valuable digital asset, and SEO done properly can be one of the most profitable marketing channels for your business, but done wrong, it can cost you rankings, reputation, and lost revenue. This is why it’s crucial to find the right SEO partner to move forward with avoiding traps that catch so many businesses.
The first thing we hear at Altitude Internet is people being offered guaranteed rankings.
If an agency promises you guaranteed first-page results, run the other way as quickly as possible!
No one, not even Google, can promise guaranteed rankings, and SEO involves many variables (hundreds in fact) from competition levels to algorithm updates and more.
Instead, you should look for an agency that focuses on measurable outcomes and results, such as improved visibility, gains in organic traffic growth, not just empty promises.
Mistake number two is where people buy SEO based on budget alone.
Search engine optimisation is not a commodity. It’s a long-term strategy, and cheap SEO often means automated link building, outsourcing overseas ,with little quality control and poor quality content. Instead, seek value, value not just the lowest price. A reputable search engine optimisation agency will explain how they achieve results and show exactly where your investment goes. As the saying goes, buy cheap, but twice.
Mistake number three is not asking for case studies or checking out agency reviews.
An agency’s track record speaks volumes, and if they cannot show you real-world case studies or testimonials from existing clients, be cautious.
Established agencies like us here at Altitude Internet would have hundreds of verified reviews going back many years and published case studies to show what has been achieved for some of our existing customers.
Mistake number four is not asking about the strategy to be adopted.
Search engine optimisation is not just about keywords and backlinks; it’s about content writing, improving the technical health of your website, the user experience, and how well your website converts.
A reputable SEO agency should be able to outline a typical SEO roadmap, showing what they do on a month-to-month basis, how they handle content, how they create a content strategy, how they handle the technical audit, and what their policies are in relation to link building.
Mistake Number 5 is ignoring technical SEO.
Because even the best content will not perform if your site loads slowly or has crawl errors, ensure that your chosen agency includes technical optimisation, Mobile first indexing, structured data, and helps to improve site speed and high-quality content as part of the service.
Mistake number six is not looking for a long-term partnership.
Search engine optimisation is not a one-time project; it’s an ongoing process that takes months, and agencies that treat SEO like a quick fix rarely deliver lasting value.
Choose an agency that works with you like a partner, not just a service provider.
Finally, mistake number six is an agency asking you to sign up for a long-term contract. Whilst you should enter SEO with a medium to long-term horizon, we never tie you into a long term contract for SEO. This means you have complete flexibility to upgrade, downgrade, pause, or cancel your SEO plan at any time with just 30 days’ notice. We want you to work with us because you want to, rather than because of a contract you have signed.
Here at Altitude Internet, we like to be seen as an extension of your marketing team, adapting to your business as it grows and helping you to evolve and navigate the digital marketing landscape.
Choosing an SEO agency is one of the most important marketing decisions your business will make. The right partner will help you to achieve page one success overtime, building trust and converting visitors into customers. The wrong one could set you back months or even years, or have you penalised by Google.
We always recommend that you take your time to do your research and look for an agency that understands your goals, communicates with you clearly, and delivers measurable, transparent reports.
The team here at Altitude Internet have been helping businesses globally for over a decade to get found on page one of the search engine results pages, generating leads, traffic and enquiries and because we have been in this industry for so long we literally have experience of almost every business sector that you can imagine; so whether you are a small independent trades related business, for example of Builder in Bromley, a medium size law firm or a large e-commerce website owner, the chances are we have worked with people in your sector and could hit the ground running with a strategy that is proven to work.
If you would like to find out more about how we could potentially help your business and to see if we are the right fit for you, click here to schedule a call with a member of our team
You can also click here to read some customer reviews which go back over 10 years
And click here to read some recent case studies
Reasons to choose Altitude Internet
- Established in 2014
- Experience of working with clients globally
- Over 1,000 Five-Star Reviews going back a decade
- Our own team of 45 digital marketing experts
- Transparent clear reporting
- Honesty, Transparency, and an open door policy
- Finalists European Search Awards
- Finalists UK Growth Awards
- Nominated as a Rising Star by Google
- Google Partners Awards Winner
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