Search Engine Optimization is no longer a do-it-yourself project unless you have a solid decade or so handling digital marketing and the latest Google algorithm changes. Making websites and web pages more relevant, authoritative, and mobile-friendly is now an essential part of any overall business plan.
Search Engine Optimizing produces better rankings on all search engines. The focus is mainly on Google because 92% of all web queries happen on Google. Followed in much smaller percentages by Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, Yandex, and Duck Duck Go. Google is still the King.
Companies seeking to compete in today’s marketplace need to understand that making websites and web pages more relevant and authoritative is now an essential part of their overall business plan. Gone are the days of taking shortcuts and using misleading titles and junk links to improve search engine rankings.
Current algorithms rely heavily on activities and accumulative quality information from billions of internet users. Google changes its algorithms daily, which is another reason to bring digital marketing and SEO professionals onboard to track and adjust to regular changes.
You know it goes much deeper than picking five or six keywords and stuffing your content with those words. Keyword stuffing is an exercise in awkward quantity over true quality. It doesn’t fool today’s search engines, algorithms, or potential customers.
As you know, there is a lot to remember when considering SEO for your website. This is why bringing in the best SEO company with the latest trending SEO services for your website is crucial to your success.
What is an SEO company, and how can they help?
An SEO Company will improve your organic traffic from search engines. More than a trillion questions are put into search engines each year. If you want to capitalize on this, you’ll want the best agency to help you stand out above your competitors.
SEO can be very complicated, but you won’t have to guess what’s working and what isn’t because a quality SEO company will be able to measure and report to you about each optimization strategy and how it is performing. From there, the agency will be able to adjust and improve its plan to get you higher rankings, increased website traffic, and a growing number of users.
Agencies that provide SEO services for your website take on multiple tasks, including ensuring your site loads quickly and contains all clean code with quality content that is the most effective at landing web searches onto your site.
Many global SEO agencies are out there, and you have probably heard of some from this list. You will want to pick the best one for your company’s goals, your industry, the country or countries where you want to attract clients, as well as whether you need better marketing, backlinks, or you need help to understand exactly what steps you need to take to grow your company and make it more profitable.
Here’s who can claim the title of “the best,” according to customers and industry experts.
List of best SEO companies across the globe
RankZ
❖ About the Company: Possibly the very best SEO company out there. RankZ goes on to provide a full array of services. It gets high scores from customers for positive client experiences and measurable positive results. The RankZ team has exceptional experience with winning strategies for e-commerce, small businesses, and start-ups. This company also offers outstanding tools for clients who like to stay hands-on in optimizing their site or content.
❖ Services: Search Engine Optimization, Content marketing, pay-per-click, web design, blogger outreach, infographics marketing
❖ Pricing – Pricing starts at $1000 and can go up to $10,000 mo based on the competition and the number of pages.
OutreachZ
❖ About the Company: Ranked as one of the best link-building companies in the market. OutreachZ is an international agency with a client list of more than 1,000 start-ups, brands, and digital agencies. It also maintains a guest posting marketplace with robust 5,000+ connections with experts in their various fields. Also on offer for clients is the premium managed campaigns feature. The team delivers the right publishers for each client based on their requirements. An excellent tool for gaining powerful links.
❖ Services: Link building platform to take control of off-site SEO. There’s a guest posting marketplace connecting to authoritative publishers. The agency handles prospecting, blogger outreach, content production, and placement.
❖ Pricing: Average Link Building budget is usually $500 but can be lower or higher depending on your goals.
WebFX
❖ About the Company: A leading digital marketing agency. Customers get a full range of services with an individual strategy tailored just for them. Growth strategies are developed for each customer based on their particular goals and needs. Along with award-winning digital marketing services, WebFX has its own proprietary technology platform. This agency focuses on successful digital marketing campaigns to increase leads, customer calls, transactions, and qualified website traffic. Company offices are all located in the United States.
❖ Services: SEO, link building, PPC, media buying ad spend, website call tracing, SMM, and web design.
❖ Pricing: SEO prices per month are $1,000+, and the average hourly rate is $150-$199/hour
Webimax
❖ About the Company: WebiMax can back up its promise “Remove the negative, promote the positive!” This award-winning reputation management company delivers year after year. This agency is results-driven. Every month SEO results are shared with clients to be communicative and transparent.
WebiMax founders say they want clients to feel they’ve gained a strategic partner to help the business grow, not just hiring an outsourced vendor.
❖ Services: Reputation management, search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, social media marketing, lead generation, website design, and online public relations
❖ Pricing: Bespoke pricing.
OuterBox
❖ About the Company: OuterBox offers a suite of web services while focusing on helping companies expand and increase online sales. Its PPC management and pay-per-click services have a proven high rate of return on investment. It offers an array of digital marketing and SEO packages tailored to each client. OuterBox values the team approach and promises a cohesive approach to online marketing strategy to improve business.
❖ Services: SEO, paid search, digital marketing campaigns, web development, web design, eCommerce
❖ Pricing: SEO prices per month are $1,000+ and average hourly rates of $100 – $149/hour
SeoTuners
❖ About the Company: One of the best specialists in digital marketing. Also prized by clients for business development strategy. This company pledges never to use black hat SEO techniques. Instead, its experts promote web resources using ethical SEO. SEOTuners focus on building powerful websites to provide an increasingly successful market presence. The agency pledges an ethical approach to all work toward getting positive ranking results in search engines for client websites.
❖ Services: SEO, branding, E-commerce development, PPC, conversion optimization, SMM, and web development
❖ Pricing: SEO prices per month are $1,000+ and average hourly rates of $150 – $199/hour
Blue Fountain Media
❖ About the Company: Blue Fountain focuses on modern and emerging technology to develop successful business growth strategies. SEO changes fast, presenting new challenges almost daily, whether algorithm changes or the impact of voice search and Blue Fountain strives to stay at the head of the pack. In addition to optimizing content, this agency optimizes the technical side with reviews of wireframe mockups and redirects.
❖ Services: Website design, digital marketing, mobile app design, website development, strategy, branding, and experience design
❖ Pricing: Minimum project size: $50,000
Delante
❖ About the Company: Experienced in helping B2B and B2C businesses create and manage internal SEO strategies. They’re open to even the smallest start-up clients. Their client list includes businesses in the e-commerce industry as well as finance, automotive, SaaS, IT, cosmetics, healthcare, fashion, wellness, and more. Delante’s clients enjoy higher website visibility and rankings on the first pages of Google results. The team specializes in long-tail SEO to bring in more users ready to buy.
❖ Services: SEO, link building, SEO consulting
❖ Pricing: Minimum project size: $1,000
Mayple
❖ About the Company: One of the best SEOs for small businesses. It also offers SEO solutions to major brands. Marketing results and managing content are among Mayple’s forte. Each client receives a plan of action specific to their company and goals. The team is made up of experienced marketing experts with exceptional knowledge in specific fields to serve their clients. Mayple drills down to the client’s industry, target audience, and KPIs for measurable positive results.
❖ Services: Business consulting, digital strategy, SEO
❖ Pricing: Minimum project size: $1,000
iSynergy
❖ About the Company: Top-of-the-line programmatic advertising, inbound marketing, and SEO campaigns are all included as part of available marketing services. The focus is on data-driven design with marketing technologies. iSynergy team members take a creative approach to creating a data-driven strategy. They promise well-built websites that develop the client’s brand story by creating memorable digital experiences. The company’s strategy is quality over quantity to give website visitors the information they’re seeking without creating content overload.
❖ Services: SEO, web design, conversion optimization
❖ Pricing: Minimum project size: $5,000
What services do SEO companies provide?
Here’s what you need to know to find the best SEO agencies globally.
The best International SEO firms in the world will masterfully promote your site to ensure prospective clients and customers find it. In addition, an agency can provide a holistic approach to making your company visible and valuable by putting an experienced team to work for you. Therefore, hiring a highly rated agency ends up being cost-effective at the front end and ultimately profitable.
In addition to search engine optimization, a talented SEO Agency will create a content marketing strategy and position your company to benefit from pay-per-click marketing on multiple search engines and popular social platforms while ensuring a good return on investment (ROI).
You’ll want to ensure the SEO company you’re considering hiring is genuinely one of the best by finding out how they capitalize on the fertile ground of user intent. Of course, keywords and phrases remain important, but user intent is a recent SEO star on the scene.
User intent means your content reaches people using search phrases similar or related to your keywords even though they’re not an exact match. Think of it as creating excellent content that touches on your potential customer or client’s wants, even if they’re not using your specific keywords to find the information.
Qualities of the best SEO company
Having an exceptional SEO Company plan and carry out your web content optimization efforts isn’t an exercise in “set it and forget it.”
Markets change, and customer priorities change, as do Google algorithms. To be successful, your SEO must respond and change, too.
People on your SEO agency team should check how things are going every day by viewing keyword position analytics as well as website performance numbers. An SEO expert should also review where the heaviest website traffic originates to see what’s getting you the best results and getting your company the most attention.
Keyword research should be a regular activity. Algorithms may change, but keyword ideas won’t fluctuate as much. Your SEO expert should keep a close eye on search volume and relevance to the questions people are asking and ensure the right words and phrases are correctly placed.
Optimizing content goes beyond researching and using high-value keywords. Members of your SEO team need to ensure your site contains quality metadata with super-clean code structure and proper internal linking. This process of bringing different strategies together simultaneously gets you to a higher ranking.
Top tips for choosing the best SEO agency
The best SEO agency for your small, medium or large business will customize services to meet your goals. Ask to see specific numbers showing how they’ve performed for other clients. Ask for references and check with agency clients. Find out whether the agency feels like the right fit for you.
A quality SEO agency will be able to provide examples of their success for other clients in the form of page loading speed, number and quality of incoming links, keyword phrase usage, HTML and schema mark-up, mobile optimization, and domain authority.
The best SEO firms in the world explore the client’s goals, needs, and expectations. The best don’t take a cookie-cutter approach; each client gets their own customized plan.
The SEO agency you’re considering should be able to explain how they keep an eye out for any changes or updates to techniques and how they stay agile to tailor new information to optimize your website pages better. Identifying the most valuable long and short-tailed keywords, capturing user intent, and expert placement of excellent coverage are important pieces of the puzzle.
When an SEO agency is pitching to you, it shouldn’t feel like they promise magical results. Instead, it should be happy to share its strategies and examples of past successful campaigns for other clients.
You need to know who will be on your team within the SEO company. The very best SEO agencies encourage their employees to improve their skills constantly. Find out how often the SEO company employees conduct research specific to understanding changes in the algorithms Google and other search engines use. An expert-level company will also provide in-house training specific to new SEO tools and the ways digital media influences the overall market.
You should also be able to check out the SEO agency’s investment in tools and technology to harness best practices for its clients.
SEO for business growth
SEO gives you the power to answer the questions people ask, specifically those in your field. This increases your visibility, potentially on a global stage. As a result, the amount of traffic to your website and pages should grow. As the number of visits to your pages goes up, you become an authoritative voice in your part of the market. People will trust that voice more and more and therefore trust your brand and products or services.
Identifying relevant keywords and providing quality content (not clickbait) is essential. The meta-text is vital so search engines can hit on those as valuable content.
General SEO and local SEO
There’s general SEO and local SEO. SEO agencies best for small businesses will help hyper-focus local content to grab “in city” or “near me” searches. The beauty of great rankings from local SEO is that the majority of users who conduct city, region, or state searches are ready to do business and ready to pick a company. That’s a solid reason to anticipate higher conversion rates.
Providing specific, uniform information about your company is important in local SEO. Your business name and contact information is a simple place to get gains using Google My Business along with website information. Be sure the company name, address, phone number, and contact email address are exactly the same wherever they’re used.
Research shows that including photos on your site has been found to result in 30% more visits and higher. Active blog posts also improve rankings. Also, schema markup, which is a vocabulary of tags or microdata that can be added to the HTML to improve the way search engines read and express the page in the SERPs because schema helps algorithms recognize how pieces of content relate to each other.
You may find that the SEO agency you hire will submit your site to online directories to make your URL easier to find. For example, you may hear reference to GMB (Google My Business). This can be valuable because it gives you a peek into how users interact with your business profile and the most popular content there.
Invest in quality content creators. The content you put on your website is a service to current and potential customers. It sets the tone for your company’s professionalism and abilities. Consider blog content, videos with written text content to go with them, and photographs because the more people access your different types of content, the more heavily search engines will point to your page rather than competitors.
Hiring one of the best SEO agencies for your company means putting affordable web design and search engine optimization to work for the most profitable results.
Top 10 core elements of SEO
An SEO specialist must have significant knowledge about a wide variety of activities to push a client higher on Google search results pages.
When considering which SEO agency is the best for your business, consider these top ten activities, which are the most important to you, and which agencies have the best reputation for delivering quality:
1. Build an SEO strategy with on-page and off-page SEO
2. Research and identify relevant keywords
3. Competitor website research
4. Identify gaps in competitor strategy which can be used to boost your online presence.
5. Technical audits on load times, status codes, and crawl errors
6. High-quality link building
7. Create a cooperative plan to optimize both search engines and visiting users
8. Daily review of algorithm updates, change strategy as needed and use ethical techniques.
9. Regularly monitor results of SEO campaigns with an eye for how to improve
10. Manage necessary digital tools, including Google Search Console and Analytics, and SE ranking software
On-page SEO
The code and content of your website and web pages that you control are called on-page SEO. It includes text, headings, links, and photos or videos.
On-page SEO is the vital foundation for improving search rankings. It’s what a quality SEO company will craft for the best business results, including title tag, images, keyword research and placement, description meta-tag, optimized URLs, and sitemap.
On-page SEO comprises standard technical procedures that can be studied and implemented to boost rankings.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is all the things that do not originate on your website but help your site get higher search rankings.
The primary focus of off-page SEO is getting valuable backlinks, which are links that point to your site from other high-quality websites. Off-page SEO is an open-ended process requiring creativity by the SEO specialist to make your content valuable enough that another site wants to refer its visitors to you.
Evolution of SEO
The internet became available to the public in the summer of 1991. Right around six years later, the notion of Search Engine Optimization came on the scene.
Search engines are behind almost every online destination, and they changed how we find information and answer our questions.
In modern times search engine optimization mainly orbits Google. The industry has seen other search engines come and go, but Google continues to reign supreme.
At the start, ranking high up on search engines was essentially directory-driven. Slap “AAA” at the front of your business name and see the gains.
The eternal goal of being number one soon moved beyond ranking based on domain names, on-page content, and alphabetical directories to complicated metrics and algorithms. For example, Google’s PageRank algorithm is notable for making history in the arena of information retrieval.
Social networks exploded onto the scene in the 2,000s. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn would spark many similar sites. Experts suspected social signals could impact search rankings, and it did by helping SEO and also driving additional traffic to websites boosting brand awareness and loyalty.
The next steps brought improvements in detecting user intent and a new algorithm that advanced conversational searches.
Mobile phones changed the SEO world again in 2015 when mobile searches topped the number of Google searches performed on a desktop for the first time.
SEO strategies
Start with the basics by knowing which industry you’re competing in and who your target audience is. Then it’s time for keyword research further evolve into content that satisfies user intent behind the search terms.
Accurate reporting is a necessary strategy to hit on successful SEO. Absent correct reporting results, you and your team are not able to make precise adjustments and improvements.
Google’s mobile-first index is aimed at making sure websites look professional and perform well on mobile devices. That functionality must be in addition to, not instead of, laptop and desktop search optimization.
Employ excellent contract creators either within your SEO agency or possibly bring one or more writers directly on board. These experienced professionals will easily skip over the pitfalls many lesser creators make. Mistakes that will hurt you include keyword stuffing and spammy or click-bait content. Your site loses credibility and may anger visitors and potential clients, so aim for blogs and articles that may go viral simply because the information and writing are just that good!
Linking to high-quality web pages is nearly as valuable as getting backlinks because your content is so good. Always double-check that links are working. Error 404 messages can derail your best efforts.
Beyond on-page and off-page SEO, there are good guys and not-so-good guys in the SEO world.
White hat SEO
White hat SEO follows a solid strategy that adheres to search engine rules and best use guidelines.
There’s no trickery in white hat SEO. Truly solid content and coding are used rather than attempting to manipulate or fool a search engine or the user. Think no spam, no clickbait, no loading links that point everywhere but leave the user with very little usable information.
You may also hear it called ethical SEO. It follows accepted rules and is intended to produce long-term positive results. Not just a quick hit that will fade back to or below previous sales levels.
There’s a reward for following the rules and not trying to get around regulations or trick the system. Namely, following proper policies and guidelines will push your site higher in search engine results. Combined with engaging authoritative content, you may even find yourself in the top rankings.
Black hat SEO
Then there is black hat SEO which is considered rather dirty dealings.
Black hat SEO employs techniques specifically intended to manipulate or deceive search engines and users. For example, it may try to trick a search engine’s algorithm to get good results and higher rankings without doing good content and code creation work.
Such unethical methods go against search engine guidelines and could completely remove your site from the engine’s database index. So the risk is certainly not worth any possible short-term reward.
A deeper dive will show that a black hat SEO strategy may produce a sudden rise in organic listings, but the search engines will soon sniff out the rule-breakers bringing penalties to your door.
If an SEO agency proposes any of the following strategies, know they’re talking about using black hat SEO:
● Doorway pages
Pages with no real value are built only for ranking specific keywords, but ultimately the homepage or other doorway pages are basically useless.
● Hidden links or hidden text
This sneaky technique camouflages certain text or links by making them the same color as the background color.
● Cloaking
Cloaking presents a web page to search engines that are different from what users see. Cloaking tricks search engines into displaying a page; it would not show up if proper keywords and user internet were used.
● Link farms
Link farms are intended to create a large number of sites whose sole purpose is to point back to your site through links. However, this artificially inflates the number of backlinks which can throw a search engine off in the short term by masquerading as an authority site.
● Keyword stuffing
One of the original ways to attempt to spam search engines into ranking sites higher. Increasingly it’s completely ineffective because it can’t stand up to ever-changing algorithms. Seeing the same word or phrases all over a page to the point it’s completely unnatural usage; the page has been stuffed.
It’s always a bad idea to attempt to manipulate search engines with the intention of misleading users. Sooner or later, your site will be found out for using unscrupulous methods, and search engines can ban your site altogether on the basis of it using any black hat tactics.
Link building for SEO
Backlinks are a coveted SEO ingredient. They’re links from other authoritative sites that point back to you and your content by linking their web page to yours. It’s pretty difficult to fake, so having another web content creator decide to pass their visitors along to you is incredibly valuable.
Backlinks are also called one-way hyperlinks. Link-building strategies include public relations, email outreach efforts, broken link building, and content marketing.
The goal is always to improve search engine visibility.
The future of SEO
Mobile optimization, ensuring your website works and displays well on mobile devices, is now the metric that helps push your site higher in search engine results. Optimization has to include both Apple and Android products.
It’s one more thing to monitor regularly and course-correct as needed. You must still ensure your website view for desktop and laptop computers remains optimized.
SEO rankings continue to get more competitive. This is because Internet users are becoming savvier at spotting quality content and sites over those trying to beat the system for ranking.
Now SEO tactics have to evolve and improve continually. In addition to mobile optimization, matching user intent is now required for success. The idea is not just to give users a bunch of links but to actually assist them in finding the information they want.
Machine learning is now built into all of Google’s products, including Ads and Gmail. The impact of machine learning can be seen with Google’s RankBrain, which now runs on every search. In addition, intelligent searches now have to cater to visual and voice searches, chatbots, and personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
SEO specialists will have to keep up with all the technological advances to keep their skills and services top-notch.
Final thoughts on choosing the best SEO agency
The best SEO companies’ reputations boil down to whether they deliver demonstrable results. Clients are right to expect realistic results and good communication about what is happening if they’re going to include hiring an SEO agency in the budget.
Among expected results from a well-run SEO campaign include increases in your website’s visibility and results that show improvements in brand awareness. The bottom line should improve with increases in sales. It should help you compete successfully against businesses very similar to yours. New customers should be getting in touch with you to buy your products or services. You should see a higher return on investment (ROI), including higher conversions and ultimately more sales. And an agency’s deliverables shouldn’t be a short bump in traffic and sales. Done right, you should be getting long-term results, including long-term increased revenue.
Having a solid and respected online presence is the lifeblood of a successful business these days. Brick and mortar locations simply are not enough for today’s consumers.
Warning signs of SEO companies that talk a good game but may not deliver valuable results are those with aggressive self-promotion methods and aggressive marketing strategies meant to land new customers. SEO success can be measured and reported, so it’s a big red flag if a company balks at showing you their record with other clients.
SEO specialists have to juggle many tasks, even at agencies where different colleagues focus on different portions of an SEO strategy. However, most of the skills complement each other, so you can expect dependable service from any team member when you need it.
We hope this guide has been helpful in finding the right SEO company, especially with so many SEO agencies in the picture; finding the best one that fits your needs could be overwhelming.
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About The Author
RankZ is an online marketing agency with a focus on search engine optimization and content marketing.
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