Choosing a Digital Marketing Agency

CHOOSING A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY
How to choose a Digital Marketing Company for your business.

 

Unless you have been in a cave for the last 10 years, you understand that you cannot market any business today without leveraging the Internet.  There is a multitude of options when it comes to internet marketing including:

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Paid Google Ads – PPC
  • Facebook Advertising
  • Social Remarketing
  • Google Remarketing
  • and a thousand variations of each of the above.

Most business owners understand that if they want their advertising spend to not go to waste, they need to hire a professional digital marketing firm.  Since the government shutdown is over, we expect real estate to be ferocious in 2019

Check Your Websites SEO

Unfortunately, one of the biggest scams on the internet is people claiming to “get you on the first page of Google” for $99 per month.

Digital Marketing is the use of the web to get your business in front of a targeted group of people.

Choosing The Right Digital Marketing Company

Choosing a reputable internet marketing agency can be a trying process.  It’s easy to get taken advantage of. Many unsuspecting business owners get burned when they move forward with one of those bad actors who claim to get you on the first page of Google for $99 per month.

What makes things even worse is that since organic ranking of a website takes time, sometimes upwards of over 12 months, a lot of time and money can be wasted before you recognize that you have been duped.

All search engine optimization strategies should be custom designed for your industry and business goals.  There is never a “one size fits all” SEO strategy

Digital Marketing can be extremely complicated.  If you speak with the most reputable SEO agencies, you will find out that they spend an enormous amount of resources on SEO tools and staying up to date.  It has been said that Google updates its algorithm 200 times per year.  To stay abreast of the changes in ranking factors requires someone who is dedicated to their craft.

Asking the right questions can assist you in making sure that you are dealing with a reputable SEO firm.

  • Ask how long they have been in business
  • See if they are listed with the Better Business Bureau
  • Does their website rank organically on Google?
  • Get a list of their current clients and find out their rankings

Since fraudulent online reviews is a common Black Hat SEO tactic, we recommend being cautious when leaning on reviews to prove an online marketing agencies validity.

Google Penalizes Bad Actors

Not only will a fraudulent SEO agency waste your valuable time and money, but they can cause irreparable damage to your brand and business.  If the SEO guru you have hired is using unscrupulous SEO tactics – known as Black Hat SEO – you may find that Google penalizes your website by pushing it further down in the rankings.  In the worst of cases, they may even “deindex” your website, which means that you are not able to be found at all.

Black Hat SEO Tactics

Black hat SEO tactics are maneuvers that are implemented that fall outside of the stated Google guidelines.  This may include:

  • Keyword Stuffing
  • Automatic Link Generation
  • Links from Private Blog Networks or PBNs
  • Spinning Copy as Opposed to Original Copy
  • Hacking Other Sites to Inject Links
  • Mass 301 Redirects

 

The Tools of an SEO Agency

Find out what digital marketing tools the prospective agency uses.  Some of the most common SEO tools are:

SEMrush

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the Digital Marketing Agency that you choose is an ultra-important decision for the success of your business.  Unfortunately, since most business owners are novices (at best) when it comes to the world of search engine optimization, it can be easy to be taken advantage of.  Be careful and do your own due diligence.