How to Detect a Bad SEO Company?

Well, no matter how much the online tutorials say that SEO is very easy and you can start doing it on your own in no time, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Thus, many companies at some point have decided to outsource their SEO work.

So how does one go about differentiating the good guys and the bad guys?

Recently, Hubspot published a guide explaining how to spot a bad SEO company. Details about their ebook can be found out here.

To summarize, the guide provides you with 5 questions to detect a bad SEO company:

1. Q1 – Are the promises too good to be true? Just watch out for the catch phrase when they say they can guarantee #1 spot on Google. No one can and you shouldn’t believe anyone who says that.
2. Q2 – Targeting wrong keywords, they do not provide you with the relevant suggestions and instead give you a broad list of many keywords or a lot of narrow keywords which have no competition at all.
3. Using automated techniques like 100’s of submissions. That should be a strong indication of their bad practices as quality of links matters and not the quantity of links.
4. What is their client portfolio? Do they have some experience or they are just talking about everything in the air.
5. Did they ask you about your target audience, did they do any demographic or market research? Search industry today is not driven by just the number of backlinks and pagerank. It is very important to be ranked on right terms depending upon the audience and in the right verticals as well.

The key in any search engine strategy is to be able to provide quality information to the web users, something which makes them find you.

Lastly, I would say just one thing, if any company is making fake assurances without evaluating your market and industry, avoid it. A company that analyzes your audience, creates and markets content to the right people and is able to build your brand and credibility in the industry is the right choice.