How to Choose the Right SEO Agency for Your Business

March 14th 2023 | By Emma Grant

You’re keen to get started with SEO so that you can boost your online visibility and drive more sales. But how to choose the right SEO agency? Or more to the point, how to choose the right SEO agency for your individual business, and what are the key considerations for your specific industry sector?

Join us as we take a look at what dictates the need for an SEO agency in certain business sectors and what to expect from your chosen agency, and answer the question, how do I find a good SEO company in London?

What is an SEO agency and why do you need one?

Whether you’re launching a new business and just starting to grow your customer base, you’re an established brand seeking to stay ahead of the competition, you’re keen to win a higher proportion of your industry’s market share, or you simply want to get more people flocking to your physical location, search engine optimisation is a must-have rather than a nice-to-have.

The trouble is, when considering how do I find SEO services in London, there is an abundance of choice, and finding the best SEO agency for your business really can be quite a challenge. But you’re going to need one, because if you do your own SEO, you’ll likely lose out to a lack of specialist expertise and up to date knowledge, and not enough time to focus on getting the results you need in a reasonable timeframe.

A good SEO agency will be persistent when it comes to getting you a decent return on investment. Because they are specialists in enhancing online visibility and getting websites into more prominent positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs) – and boosting those websites’ chances of being clicked on once they are there – SEO agencies will be able to get you the right results, much faster than you could ever do yourself.

An SEO agency combines a range of skillsets, from technical development and web design to online PR, user experience and content marketing and, crucially, strategy planning. They study best practice techniques and stay up to date with all the latest algorithm updates to make sure everything they do has the very best chance of driving your website up the search rankings and attracting good quality leads for your business.

Some marketing or web design agencies offer SEO as a side-line. But a specialist SEO agency will be a true expert in the highly complex, multi-faceted business of search engine optimisation.

What are the benefits of working with an SEO agency?

Working with an SEO agency, or rather working with a good SEO agency, should bring a continuous stream of benefits. More appearances in the search results for your target keywords, increased organic traffic, boosted leads or sign-ups, enhanced revenue and greater brand visibility are just the beginning.

But an SEO agency at the top of its game will have so much more to give.

Provable results – there’s little point choosing an SEO agency just because you like the amusing way they wrote their team profiles or because they’ve got a cute office pet. In search engine optimisation, it’s all about the results. And a top flight SEO agency will be able to show you that their strategies actually work. They’ll have case studies that are relevant to your industry and that show tangible results.

Valuable results – an SEO agency that tells you it will get you better rankings when you previously didn’t have any at all won’t actually be offering all that much in terms of value. If you really want to make gains from your SEO investment, you’ll need a strategy that actually gets results that are aligned with your business goals. And that’s why when you work with an SEO agency, you’ll find that they take time to understand those goals, and then focus everything on making sure they happen. Whether it’s increasing revenue through boosted leads, enhancing your brand reputation or growing your marketing database, you’ll enjoy added value by engaging the services of SEO specialists.

Fast and efficient results – this is a considerable advantage of working with an SEO agency over DIY SEO or working with a solo SEO freelancer. SEO agencies employ a team of specialists in their own fields. They all have their own in-depth knowledge, which they effectively pool together to get you the results you need to achieve your business goals, all in a much faster timeframe than the alternatives.

Working with a good SEO agency should bring a continuous stream of benefits.

How do I know I need an SEO agency?

Generally, if you have a website, and you have ambitions for business growth, you’re going to need SEO so that you can boost your online visibility.

However, there are certain business types and industry sectors that benefit more than others from SEO, and a good SEO agency, because they rely significantly on digital leads.

These include:

Professional services – because people tend to research the likes of finance and legal services to a huge extent online before making enquiries
Healthcare providers – again, a large amount of research is carried out online for anything to do with health and well-being subjects
Ecommerce businesses – because the business simply wouldn’t make any money without online sales
Local businesses – because 50% of people who search for businesses on their smartphones visit a store within a day

Other red flags that signal you need an SEO agency are:

Your website looks the business, but you’re not getting any leads

A beautiful work of art is sadly wasted if it’s kept in a locked cupboard. And that’s exactly why a great looking website shouldn’t be hidden away without SEO to help get it out in front of users.

If there’s nothing wrong with the appeal or user experience of your website, but it’s not getting any search engine traffic, then you won’t be getting any return on your investment, which means it’s time to call in the SEO experts. Always remember that no website will ever rank just by good luck and looks alone.

You’re heavily reliant on PPC for leads

You’ve probably heard lots of SEO agencies panning PPC as the costly and short term results relation to organic SEO. But in the right hands, SEO and PPC can work together quite well.

However, if your business is relying too much on PPC alone, in other words, if you switch off your ad budget and your leads suddenly dry up altogether, then you really do need to think about getting an SEO agency on the case for you, because in the long term, organic SEO will help you build value in your website and improve its authority.

80% of traffic to websites comes from organic listings, so organic SEO really is a vital strategy. What’s more, if you’ve got a good amount of traffic coming via organic leads, then you’ll be able to reduce your PPC budget.

Partridge Muir & Warren (PMW) is a chartered financial planning specialist. When they came to us, they were spending a considerable amount on pay-per-click advertising.

But within just a few months, we’d managed to get them 169 Google Page One rankings and had increased their organic traffic by 144% year on year, which had led to a steady flow of new client leads. It also meant they were able to cut out their PPC spend altogether.

Here’s how we changed things for PMW.

You’re getting plenty of organic traffic, but no new leads

If you’re website is getting lots of organic traffic, you would automatically think that translates as enjoying more sales. But sadly, this isn’t always the case.

Sometimes, there may be ample traffic, but it’s not the right type. And this is precisely why when thinking, how do I find a good SEO company in London, you should make sure that they track a whole range of metrics other than rankings and organic traffic.

Understanding how people are using your website rather than just looking at how many people are landing on it day to day is crucial to the success of your SEO strategy and its ability to see you achieve your business goals.

Websites that are receiving high traffic but not getting any leads could be suffering from a number of issues. These might include:

Poor user experience – visitors can’t find what they want, so they leave without buying anything or making an enquiry.

Unqualified leads – visitors have clicked on your website, but it wasn’t what they were looking for, or they can’t satisfy themselves it’s what they were looking for.

Lack of trust – visitors are lacking confidence in transacting on your website, perhaps due to a lack of Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trust factors, such as an About Us page, delivery and returns information, a physical address and landline phone number or customer testimonials.

Looking at website analytics such as how visitors are landing on your website, how long they are staying, which pages they are visiting and whether they are geographically local are all part and parcel of what an SEO agency does every day.

From this data, they’ll be able to work out whether visitors can find what they are looking for and if not, how to improve their chances of doing so. If the traffic is unqualified, they’ll look at ways of bringing in the right type of leads.

Choosing the right SEO agency for your business

How affordable is SEO in London?

The cost of partnering with a London SEO agency varies widely, but the maxim ‘you get what you pay for’ certainly rings true in this industry. However, it shouldn’t be about what you are paying, more what you are getting for your investment.

If you are looking for a long term partner who can provide you with a comprehensive, all-in service from a team of in-house experts, then you should expect to pay from around £1,500 per month up to around £5,000 per month for a fully-managed, bespoke strategy-driven SEO campaign.

Organic SEO should be considered a medium to long term strategy, although a good SEO agency such as Figment should start getting you initial results within the first few months.

How to choose the right SEO agency?

The following should prove useful as you are making your choice amongst SEO agencies in London…

Check the skill set

Effective SEO calls for a diverse range of skills. Your chosen SEO agency will therefore need to have a good blend of expertise.

You’ll want someone in charge of strategy planning to make sure your campaign is correctly targeted, KPIs set and goals put in place that align with the wider growth goals of your business.

You’ll need technical experts to make sure your website is Google and user friendly, taking care of vital technical SEO aspects such as page speed, site security, structured data and generally making sure the site is compliant with Core Web Vitals.

You are also going to need creative experts to make sure your website and landing pages look the business so that they inspire trust in the users who land on them. And copywriters to produce high quality, keyword optimised page content, articles and blogs that will compel users to read, share and take action.

You’ll find that the top SEO agencies are always proud to make their team public, so always look for the team profiles which you’ll usually find on their website’s about page.

Scrutinise client testimonials

A good SEO agency will be proud of its client reviews, and won’t hold back in sharing them. Consider it a warning sign if you can’t find reviews and testimonials on an SEO agency’s website. Or if there are just one or two without names.

Seek out the reviews, and study them. Look for evidence of results, together with comments about the level of service experienced. Don’t be afraid to independently contact the reviewers either to ask them how they got on with the agency and what their working relationship was like. Any SEO consultant worth their salt won’t mind at all if you do so.

Video reviews are always a good sign. A client who is satisfied enough to take the time to record a video review is testament to the quality of the service provided by the agency.

Also take a look at independent online reviews away from the agency’s website, as well as their Google review score.

Review case studies

When considering how to choose the right SEO agency for your business, as well as testimonials and reviews, you should be looking for clear evidence of how the agency achieved results for its clients.

Case studies are what you need to seek out. You’ll want to see fact-based results, not just stories. How the agency went about achieving its clients’ goals. How they added value. How they increased organic traffic, increased Google positions and helped boost business growth.

If there is no evidence of success, how can you be sure of any claims the SEO agency is making?

Check for processes and transparent reporting

A good SEO agency will have tried and tested processes in place to get their clients from where they are, to where they want to be, achieving their goals with the best possible return on SEO investment, the least risk, and the smoothest journey.

When considering which SEO agency to use, look at their SEO process. Also find out how they will report to you on the progress being made. Reports are good, but you’ll want them to be clear and jargon free so that you can understand them. If you can login to a reporting platform any time, all the better, especially if it can show you how the campaign is performing in terms of meeting your KPIs. That way you can see results in real time, rather than wait till the end of the month.

Seek out a service promise, and make sure you click

When thinking about how to choose the right SEO agency for your business, of course it’s about expertise. But it’s also about finding people you can rely on. A team that shares your goals and commits themselves to your success just as they would their own.

Does the agency offer a service promise? A guarantee on how quickly they’ll return calls or emails? A support ticket service?

Is there a dedicated point of contact should an issue arise?

Definitely look for a partnership approach, and seek out evidence of such in those testimonials we mentioned previously.

You’ll need to click with the people you’re going to work with. Wherever possible, meet with them in person. Make sure you feel comfortable asking questions and voicing concerns. That there is total transparency.

SEO is a long term, ongoing strategy. So you need to find an SEO agency you can partner with well into the future.

Look for specialist expertise

Maybe you operate in a niche industry. You may run a professional services practice. Perhaps you run an ecommerce site through a specific platform, such as Shopify or WordPress WooCommerce.

If so, you’re going to need specialist SEO expertise. So be sure to seek out a digital marketing agency with a proven track record in your area. Look closely at the results they’ve been able to achieve for others in your industry, and check testimonials from similar businesses.

Make sure they’re on the ball

SEO is an ever-changing landscape. Google and other search engines are endlessly updating their algorithms, so it’s vital that when considering how to choose the right SEO agency for your business, you make sure you select one that’s totally on the ball with evolving trends. Because if they’re not, quite simply, you’re going to get left behind.

A good way to check this is to take a look at the agency’s blog, as well as their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn feeds to see if they’re in the know and consistently talking about the latest SEO trends.

Looking to choose the right SEO agency for your business?

At Figment, we offer a unique blend of skills, a proven track record of success and a host of client testimonials and case studies. We work to an established SEO process, offer a service guarantee, and are as committed to achieving success for our clients as we are for our own business.

We work with clients from a range of industries, but have specific expertise in the fields of professional services, financial services, healthcare and ecommerce, as well as home and lifestyle and local business, and can show tangible results across all of them.

If you’re looking to grow YOUR business with the help of a dependable, highly rated London SEO agency, we’d love to talk to you. Please do get in touch.