How do you compare results using different tools?

[davidgjacobs]

We are looking  at SEO as ways of promoting our online flip page travel magazine but its really difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and the downright ugly in terms of agencies to use. For example we are proposing to use an SEO agency who have come up with a long list of interesting keywords. The problem is that the degree of competitiveness which is listed alongside each keyword varies dramatically from the results I achieved by keying in the same keywords into the moz keyword tool. The agency says their results are achieved by using Google tools.

Any advice on what to do would be really welcome.

The website is www.eurotravelmag.com and the flip page magazine can be reached here:

www.eurotravelmag.com/current

Thanks

David

[seanmccauley]

Have you had a look at this blog post?

<a>http://moz.com/ugc/the-beginners-guide-to-keyword-research-using-free-tools</a>

Also I would suggest you mine your adwords account for keywords which actually convert and bring you revenue.If you don't have an adwords account then it will be worth creating one if only just for the purpose of keyword research. You may find that keywords of medium competiveness and relatively easy to rank for  are higher converting than keywords of high competitiveness as by their very nature lots of companies are competing for a slice of that pie.

[MickEdwards]

Sean gives some good points.

What I would also suggest is look for not just fancy keyword sales stuff, but what are they going to do with you under the hood, what's currently wrong with any of the on-page elements, how are they going to fix those, what impact are those changes likely to have on organic ranking.

Having a list of keywords and saying here are some keywords, here are the monthly search volumes, if you get to top 3 for x,y and z you will be getting 'this' amount of traffic is not enough.  There is so much more, what strategy do they have for content development and more importantly how do they approach link development - what is their overall philosophy in these areas.  Can they show you any evidence of overall growth of sites.

Easy to be seduced by keywords, but far more difficult to start over or come back from an algorithmic or manual penalty.

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Find an SEO agency can be terrifying. This link to the best SEO companies of 2013 still has Blue Glass listed as number 4,and they collapsed months ago. http://www.bestseocompanies.com/top-50-seo-company-rankings/

I have two suggestions for how to go about hiring a respectable SEO agency.

1. Spends some time educating yourself. Go buy an SEO for Dummies book, look up whatever SEO 101 material you can, browse this forum to glean whatever buzz words you can, and (depending on how much time you spend on it) you should know enough to at least evaluate the ugly ones.

2. I'd consider hiring someone's inhouse SEO to help you pick an agency. It's probable one of your business contacts or partners with your magazine is using one. If you can get that person or someone like that, then you can have an unbiased person to assist you in the decision for whatever fee you'd agree to pay for the help. I'm sure it'd be less than hiring an employment agency.

Food for thought...I hope it helps.

Ruben

[Everett]

Hello David,

There are several great answers here, and I'd like to add one more option. The inbound marketing companies on the Moz Recommended List have all be vetted by Moz.com and should be reputable.

If I were going to hire an agency one of the least of my concerns would be which tools they used. Do your research to find out what kind of reputation they have in the industry and trust that they know what they're doing.

Good luck!