Finding the best SEO company for your needs

SEO is not something you “do” to your site.

SEO is the backbone of the content marketing world and provides insight to paid efforts too.

Lets get past the idea that you need to “SEO your content” and instead focus on where SEO fits into an organization. Because the answer is: almost everywhere.

From your content creation team to analytics, email marketing, social media, and paid – all the way to sales, support, and product development, the information that SEO can, and should, provide is useful throughout the business.

Here are three things we’ll outline on this page and provide deeper resources for in each section:

1. How do I add SEO to my organization the right way
2. What’s the right SEO solution for me
3. How do I get started

The reason for SEO: Understanding your audience and delivering what they need

That’s the whole point of SEO. You need to understand what your audience is looking for, why they’re looking for it, and then how your business can get it to them.

To integrate SEO properly into your team(s) you need to consider who all cares about answering those questions. Some tips for the best possible outcomes with a search solution:

Get your marketing team on the same page

Your marketing team, or teams, need to all be on board with any integration or initiative that will be successful. When you’re thinking about the best SEO company to meet your needs, that may be a single tool, a full platform, integrations across BI tools, an agency, contractors, or a combination of those.

Your marketing team can give you insight into their workload now so they’re not being overwhelmed with new tasks, what efforts they’re already doing around SEO, and what metrics will matter to them. This initial conversation isn’t going to solve your search and organic issues, it’s to do fact-finding so you can choose the best SEO company and solution.

Do your research

Before you “add SEO” to an existing agency relationship or team, figure out if they’re really going to be able to tackle the challenge. Are they specialists in that area? Do they have resources to make it work properly? Can they integrate the data and findings across all areas of marketing? Do they know how to gather data from all other channels to use for SEO?

All of these questions should help you solve what the best SEO company for you will be. Again, if you do have team members that can tackle it – the right solution may be a tool or platform they can really power use. If you don’t, a consultant, agency, or hybrid model may work best for you.

Start small

If you already have an SEO platform or team, and are just looking to integrate them more effectively into your organization, start with a few areas where SEO can inform other marketing channels. Also include places where your other marketing efforts like email, social media, and paid efforts can give SEO a better understanding of target keywords and content priorities.

If you’re looking to get started with an SEO integration, work on a roadmap (a good SEO company can help you with this) that will outline reasonable achievements. That may include a site audit (see below) and technical site fixes, it may be keyword research and then creating target keyword and content pairs, or it may be adding schema.org to your site and updating for mobile-first SEO tactics. The sky is the limit but you are starting on the ground – so pace yourself

Different from just spotting errors, a good site audit done by the best SEO companies or teams will highlight opportunities. They will conduct good competitor research and analysis for shared content and keywords, they will understand the optimization options for you, and explore things like SERP structure and trends.

Site audit series

1. SEO audit and website content tuning guides 101: A marketer’s guide
2. What should I expect from my site audit deliverables?
3. Site audit strategy: Who should do your SEO audit and when?

What is the best SEO company for my business?

This is where the majority of the struggle is. How do you know what the best fit for your organization is? Will it be a tool or set of tools that team members internally use? Will it be a large platform that integrates several things? Will you pull data into a BI tool or other platform? Do you need an agency, a contractor, a new hire? There are so many options!

The best SEO company for you may be your own! You may be able to use your own team and existing tools to get your search data integrated across your marketing ecosystem.

Chances are though, even the best SEOs are going to need tools or platforms to get their job done. So how do you know what will work best for you?

Here are a few things to consider when deciding how to structure your search team and toolset.

Do I have the right set of tools and how do I know what is best?

We put together a checklist of things to consider in your current tool(s) and the best SEO tool for your needs. This checklist cheatsheet is a great place to start when discussing how you feel about your current resources and what could be missing.

Getting started with an SEO solution successfully

Figuring out how to get started can often be the most complicated part. If you’ve got existing tools or agencies you may be considering how to integrate them successfully. If you don’t have a solution you may be confused as to where to start.

Below, we outline a few steps to make sure you get off on the right foot with your SEO and content marketing tool or team.

Survive, and nail, the SEO and content marketing demo or interview process

Getting through platform demos or agency reviews is never anyone’s idea of a good time. (We know… and we hear you!)

If you have your checklist in hand and have an idea of what type of solution will work for you, you’re already on your way. You will want to be sure to arm yourself with questions and have certain things nailed down. Here are a few things we think you should be ready to share.

What you should share with an SEO company at the start of the process

How much you’re willing to spend

Yes, you need to share budget. If you don’t know, you’re not ready to start the process or you need to be up front that you’re not sure what solutions cost. Any good SEO company will be able to tell you whether or not your needs fit into their offering or whether they can give you what you need for your budget. If you have $5K per month to spend but you’ll only get keyword monitoring for that and you need more – it’s not the right solution for you.

Your timeline

Be prepared to tell someone if you’re just doing discovery or if you’re ready and need a solution ASAP. This will help them know how to move you through the process correctly. (Or to not bother you to too much because you’re still just finding out what’s available.)

Who the stakeholders are

If you’re not the person making the decision, or there are several other people who need to be involved – tell the companies you’re talking to that. They can prevent repeat information or useless meetings if they know this up front. If you’re getting an overly sales-y vibe from them or they start bothering your team – they’re also not the right solution for you.

Want to get to know DemandSphere’s SEO and content marketing solutions and see if we’re the best fit for your company? Get started with a 20 minute discovery call.