How to know if a seo company is legit and would produce results?

[MoosaHemani]

Pretty much agreed with your point! In my opinion, website owner should discuss the goals and expectations with the contractor and clear the stuff before getting started or else the investment will be a big risk!

[levalencia1]

Its probably better to have goals using different number? Like pagerank, mozrank and other numbers I can see ob seomoz pro account? Maybe its better a company who can do seo and conversion optimization at the same time? My pr is1. Increase it to 7 is it doable in 6 months? Or I shouldnt take this into account as a goal?

[MoosaHemani]

Well the reason why I might say No are due to the following two reasons!

1. PR of Google does not update regularly so even if the contractor is working it might not help in meeting the KPI!
2. Generally moving from 1 to 7 in a year is even not doable target in my opinion

I think the target should be set which are effective for your business as well as for contractor! This can be:

-          1^st Page ranking from the head keywords in a year

-          Certain amount of increase in traffic and conversions.

-          Brand Value in different online medium that include social!

And similar KPIs that can be set after the detail analysis of the project from different angles!

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

I think first you need to work out what numbers are actualy important to you, and research what is realistic.

PA, DA, PR, Traffic, Bounce rate, all are rather poor measures of anything other then 'bigger abitary numbers' without context. They're things you use as part of working out your progress towards the important numbers, not usually as goals themselves.

If your selling something, measure sales. See what else the SEO company can suggets you can measure, and see if those goals sound realistic and if they are important to you.

For us, the type of traffic makes a world of diffrence. Just the number means nothing. We were getting more and more traffic of people seeking for a very specific items, but no traffic for the general. Goal based metrics help differenciate between 'traffic' and 'People doing X which brings Y Value'

[TheGrid]

"a good seo company should be able to get to 25K in 3 months. 50K in 6 months 100K in 1 year. for my website"

That is highly unrealistic. It would be great if it worked that way though.

[levalencia1]

I am not a seo expert but I dont agree at all.

2 years ago we had a seo company, our visits were 8K, and they increased to 25K in 4 months.  SO this is not highly unrealistic.

Their job also increased sales by more than 50%.  The only caveat it was very expensive.

[EGOL]

So do you have 100K now?

[MoosaHemani]

Good services usually charge a lot but if you think throwing money will give you traffic and sales and time isn’t a factor so I don’t think this will be a legit point.

1. This example might work here! suppose you are at level 2 and to move up to level 3, you need to answer 5 questions... you answered those questions and move up to level 3 but now to move up to level 4 you again have to answer only 5 questions but this time questions won’t be as easy as it was in level 2

similarly, when there is enough space for traffic to get in EPIC you can do that but as soon as you are on top of all major keywords and enough traffic is coming in, now if you need to increase the traffic, the work load will be double or even more because you have to be extra creative, be active on other inbound areas and many more…

So, to achieve your goal one need to research and set the timeline accordingly.

Also, Search Engine change a lot in the past 2 years, Panda Update, Penguin and more… within the last one year search engine changes a lot in their approach towards websites. It won’t be wrong to say that SEO 2 years back was quite an easy job as compare it from today!

[wojkwasi]

Define your business objectives first - this should be based on some sort of conversion on the site rather than total traffic numbers. Then look for ways to get targetted traffic.

[Elchanan]

Just want to add to the above answers.

Very simple: Call (not email) their clients!

[toddmumford]

It's not about traffic increases necessarily, and although traffic is great, basing results on that metric alone will land you in trouble.

You need to know, specifically, what keywords and keyword clusters will convert with your customer and resonate with your customer when they visit your brand.

I would look at the portfolio of any SEO company before proceeding with services.

I would ask for references.

I might check the local BBB.org to see if they are listed

I might check Google to see if they are well known, have results themselves, are talked about positively.