You have most likely already heard more than enough about SEO itself, and how it is the undeniable “way to go” for any modern company looking to establish itself and survive in our digital world.
At the same time, it is almost guaranteed that a few of the sites promoting SEO have told you how to actually hire an SEO company. This article will give you some hints and guidelines about hiring a proper company, specifically focusing on hiring an SEO company in Toronto.
Most websites promoting their own SEO services or highlighting the necessity of using SEO services leave it at “you need SEO”. None of them actually cover the prioritization – should you hire a company? What steps do you need to take before considering a company? What do you need to consider for SEO Toronto?
And—most importantly—what do you need to look for in an SEO company, so that you can rely on them and trust that they will get the job done right?
Should you hire an SEO Company?
For any location, the first question to ask yourself is about the resources you have to dedicate to SEO – how much money or time is available?
Generally speaking, most companies should currently have a serious sum set aside for SEO, as an optimized website will guarantee more traffic than a simply well-designed one.
If you have a lot of time but not a lot of budgets, learning SEO yourself and implementing some basic strategies is the way to go, but that may take quite some time and effort; on top of that – it’s not guaranteed to be as effective as a professional. Moreover, it’s not guaranteed to last.
If you have a professionally made website that you invested time and money into, you should absolutely hire an SEO company. Well-done SEO work will last you a long time, essentially makes sure you get increased traffic, and will also sow the seeds for further growth.
How to Hire an SEO Company in Toronto
So how do you hire an SEO Company? With our core example and this article’s target — let’s take the search term “SEO Toronto”. Searching for the term “SEO Toronto” returns about 17,000,000 results, assuming you live in Canada.
What do you do next? The following steps will guide you in hiring an SEO company in Toronto.
Step 1
Narrow down your search: before even starting to sift through the top results, make sure to narrow it down further. Let’s use the medical field – specifically a dentist’s office. 1,730,000 results — with several specialists for dental SEO.
Step 2
Review the service pages: The next step is to take the first 10 results – and look through their websites. Make sure to look at the pricing, reviews, testimonies, and how specialized they are. More often than not, an SEO company will add a specific page to target a niche. This isn’t actually a bad thing – in fact, it means that you are one of their target customers. However, what you’re looking out for is whether that page has things that are actually relevant to you (dentist’s office) and not just a page with a list of keywords.
Step 3
Evaluate the design and structure of the website: based on the pricing, the reviews, and your personal, overall impression of the website – narrow it down as much as you can step by step (for example, first 5, then 3). At each step, think about the website and what you look for in marketing and design; it is important that both are also in-tune with SEO, so a well-designed SEO website is often well-optimized, too.
Step 4
Pick three websites and ask for a Free Website Audit: Once you pick two or three companies that caught your eye in terms of budget, services, and presentation – get in touch with the companies and ask for a FREE Website Audit! If any of the companies don’t offer a Free Website Audit, take them off your list and continue your search. It’s as easy as that.
Step 5
Detailed website audit report: Once you get an audit report of your website from i.e. two companies. Compare the audits and select the company that has a more detailed report. How do you know a detailed website audit report? A detailed website audit report will have an in-depth analysis of your website regarding your website’s performance on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Step 6
Keywords and duration of campaign: Contact the company and ask the following questions:
- How many keywords will they rank your website for?
- How much it will cost and frequency of payment (monthly or yearly)?
- How long will it take to start seeing results?
If the company says they will rank your website in one month for all your keywords, that should raise a “RED FLAG”. Why? It means they would use an aggressive SEO strategy (black hat technique) in ranking your website for those keywords, which may get your website penalized (a penalized website can loose ranking or completely removed from the search engine database).
Step 7
Negotiate and agreement: Once you are satisfied with everything, it is now time to negotiate (if you can) and sign the agreement. Remember SEO is not cheap, so beware of falling for cheap SEO campaigns. Quality should always be your number one priority in selecting an SEO company.
Final words
I hope this article has answered your question about how to hire an SEO company in Toronto? If you have any further questions, please let us know in the comment section below or contact us.