SEO firms offer search engine optimization services to help their prospects improve their online visibility and achieve higher rankings in relevant search results. This will increase your search traffic and revenue.
When it comes to website management, there is no finish line.
Indeed, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of clinking glasses and toasting a great-looking newly launched website.
But weeks or months later, many companies are asking the same question. Where’s the traffic?
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) companies come in.
What is an SEO company?
An SEO company can help optimize your website to improve your visibility in search engines and drive more relevant traffic to your website through search.
And it’s just one step on the long road to maintaining an influential website.
Working with a top SEO company will help your business grow continuously and generate more sales.
What is an SEO company?
The definition of an SEO company is a company that works with businesses like yours to improve their visibility in search engines.
Better visibility in search engines leads to more traffic to your website and ultimately will increase leads, calls, and sales.
What does an SEO company do?
SEO companies offer search engine optimization (SEO) as a service to businesses.
SEO is the improvement of a website and its content so that it can generate backlinks and rank in desirable Google searches.
Improving search visibility requires multiple tasks for SEO firms, including keyword research, link building, and content creation.
What should an SEO company’s services include?
Breaking down the action items an SEO company is working on can be difficult.
Every business (whether it’s a local SEO company or an e-commerce SEO agency) works differently and every campaign is unique, so many variables come into play.
However, many tactics across businesses and campaigns are similar, so we’ve put together an overview of what SEO firms do and an overview of key questions.
Research and analyze your website and target market
- How is your website currently performing?
- What works for competitors in your industry?
- What keywords is your target audience searching for?
- Given your SEO budget, what kind of results can you expect?
Make on-page SEO changes
- Are your page titles and meta descriptions optimized?
- Is your website content clear, concise, and SEO-friendly?
- Are you speaking the right language about services and added value?
- Are your pages optimized for the right keywords and topics?
Make off-page SEO changes
- Is your website worthy of links and mentions on the web?
- Is your server configuration working correctly?
- How fast is your site?
- Is your website secure and has a great UX?
Provide clear communication and frequent updates
- How often will I receive SEO reports?
- What is included in the SEO report?
- What are the agreed campaign goals?
- How does your SEO firm keep up with business changes regularly?
Creating content or working directly with somebody who is
- What content options does your website have?
- What type of content is best suited for your target market?
- How can you be sure your content is SEO-friendly?
- Does your website content contain a strong call to action?
Conduct experiments and tests
- How can data be used to make decisions?
- What areas of your website can be A/B tested?
- What keywords drive visitors to action?
- What are the new/future areas of opportunity?
Shortcode
These six areas provide an overview of the key areas that many SEO companies focus on and some questions you should discuss with your SEO partner regularly.
Six key points are useful, but campaigns cannot be summarized in a simple list.
Also, a successful SEO campaign requires continuous optimization for the best results.
You can consistently get more traffic and increase your chances of converting your existing website traffic.
A good SEO company will have a strong tracking process that allows you to continuously test, adjust, and fine-tune the strategy behind your campaigns and website.
In our experience, most companies averagely redesign their website every 3 to 4 years, so treat your website pages as living documents that can be improved or changed anytime.
Search patterns in your industry are constantly changing, and your SEO campaigns need to remain as agile as possible.
Find an SEO company that can grow as fast as your business.
The benefits of working with an SEO company
If you’re considering partnering with an SEO company, you’ve already thought about the obvious benefits.
A comprehensive website analytics strategy for tracking and adjusting your marketing efforts to better quality website traffic leads, and revenue, where necessary.
These are important overarching benefits, but there are many other tangible benefits of working with an SEO firm.
Having worked on SEO campaigns in multiple different industries over the last few years, I have seen many similarities in the customer base to the unexpected benefits of partnerships.
With SEO Company
- Spend time running your department
- Partner with experts in each area of SEO
- Have a marketing partner to help you
- Discuss changes to the site with a seasoned expert
- Archive long-term growth in business KPIs
Without SEO Company
- Spend time learning or monitoring SEO
- Teach yourself all things digital marketing
- Slowly learn SEO through online sites
- Second, guess if you made the right changes
- Achieve minimal or variable results
How does an SEO company work?
Every SEO firm is unique, but worthy SEO firms have similar goals of growing your business.
Ultimately, an SEO firm’s job is to work with you to generate leads, It’s about generating calls, store visits, purchases, etc.
Partnering with an SEO company in the same way you hire an accountant to tweak and improve your book or a cleaning company to declutter your office each week.
Suppose you own a painting company in Cape Town.
You are a color expert and you spend the day discussing shine, finish strength, and more.
You’ve heard from your customers that they can find local painting companies on search engines like Google, and you want to increase your business prospects.
Spending time learning, implementing, and customizing SEO campaigns is not an option for you.
So find a trustworthy and reputable SEO company to help you manage your web presence on search engines.
A few months later, your website will appear at the top of search results such as “painter in Cape Town” and “exterior painter in Cape Town”.
A beautiful partnership is born! You are more occupied than ever thanks to leads flowing in from search engines.
Partnering with a quality SEO company will give you the expertise you need to drive more business from organic search.
The good thing about working with an SEO company is that traffic from Google’s organic (free) search tends to generate very high-quality leads.
A customer can find you online. In most marketing channels, companies send messages to thousands of customers, hoping that a small percentage of them will become qualified leads.
SEO works in reverse. Make your business easily searchable and discoverable when people are searching online.
Leads from organic search are inherently self-qualifying.
This means that people who are already interested in your product or service are looking for you.
What’s it like working with an SEO company?
If you’ve never worked with an SEO company before, naturally you’re wondering what it’s like to work with one:
- What can your company and team expect?
- For example, how often does an agency need your feedback?
- Or what does your team need to provide to get started?
When you work with an SEO company like Symaxx Digital, you can expect:
1. Kick-off meeting
Once you start working with an SEO company, you can expect an introduction or kick-off meeting with a team of SEO strategists.
This process varies by SEO company, but with companies like Symaxx Digital, it’s a seamless step.
A Dedicated Account manager is introduced and working with you ensures that you are always familiar with your SEO strategy.
As one of the best places to work in South Africa, Symaxx offers low employee turnover and consistent experience and partners. This kick-off meeting will enable the team to:
- Share your company’s digital marketing goals
- Highlight important information about your business, products, brands, etc.
- Learn about the next steps in your SEO strategy
- Get to know your personal account manager
Prepare for your kickoff meeting by creating a list of questions to ask your account manager.
Optionally, you can also create a list of must-read company resources for account managers, such as Brand Guidelines.
2. Audit and strategy summary
Another regular part of working with an SEO company?
SEO audit results and SEO strategies. Account managers can discuss each of these topics in separate calls or meetings, but they provide a valuable roadmap for your team.
These discussions are also a great opportunity to ask questions. This is another part of what SEO companies do, which is educating their clients. At least you should.
This is why you want to work with an SEO agency like Symaxx Digital which cares about information sharing.
When you chat with your dedicated account manager, you’re encouraged to ask questions.
If you have any questions about words, strategies, or decisions, our award-winning team will be happy to explain them to you. Use audits and strategy calls to your advantage.
3. Routine check-ins
Meet with your dedicated account manager to review and approve your SEO strategy, then schedule regular check-ins.
Chat with your account manager weekly or monthly depending on your strategy and service package.
Most of the time the team has to spend 1 hour on these check-ins. This gives you plenty of time to ask questions, check dates, and chat with the account manager about everything else.
Apart from these meetings, the business can work hands-free on SEO.
However, in some cases, your account manager may need your input, approval, or assistance to advance their strategy.
For example, if a business prefers to upload or add content to its website rather than leave it to an SEO agency, it should play a more active role in its strategy.
Maximize the results of your planning by deciding early how many roles you want to play.
Some SEO companies also allow you to monitor the direct results of your SEO.
For example, Symaxx offers all its clients access to a marketing dashboard for ROI tracking.
When should you hire an SEO company?
Regardless of the size of your business, it’s important to recognize when you need to hire an SEO agency.
There are many reasons to partner with an SEO firm, but the right agency can have a big impact on your bottom line.
A few reasons to hire an SEO company include:
- Grow your business in a competitive niche or industry
- Support recent expansions or product launches
- Increase revenue, sales, and conversion rates
- Improve the ranking of valuable search results
Now, when should you hire an SEO company?
- If your company does not have the expertise
- When your team doesn’t have time
- When your business is unsuccessful
- When you’re trying to stay ahead of your competition
Also, it is cheaper for many companies to hire an SEO agency. Depending on your industry and location, building a team of digital marketers can be difficult and expensive.
Using an SEO company gives you direct access to an experienced team but without additional in-house costs.
8 Tips for Choosing Your Next SEO Firm
Making the right decision when choosing your next SEO company can have a huge impact on your business and bank account.
The difference between a surge in organic traffic and a drop in Google rankings can be the difference between a good SEO or a bad SEO specialist.
But with the right SEO partnerships, businesses in all sectors can increase revenue, reduce advertising budgets, and improve user experience.
Here are five tips every entrepreneur should keep in mind before signing a deal with his new SEO firm.
1. SEO is not magic, so avoid people who talk abstractly.
SEO, the process of optimizing a website to increase organic traffic, is difficult and often misunderstood.
Those who claim to have special insight into Google’s algorithms or who emphasize the mysteries surrounding SEO are usually lying.
Rather, good SEO requires a deep understanding of how search engines work, attention to detail, and constant change as Google’s algorithm changes almost every week.
Additionally, shortcuts such as link buying, keyword stuffing, and cloaking can cause search engines to downgrade your site.
These techniques are called black hat SEO because they violate search engine rules.
When Google’s bots discover that you are using these tools, they will demote your website in rankings and reduce your organic traffic.
SEO specialists who claim to have expertise may be using black hat SEO practices, which ultimately pay a heavy price.
2. Be specific with your goals and find a company that can achieve them.
Whatever you do, don’t hire an SEO company with the vague goal of “increasing organic traffic.”
First, there are many different types of organic traffic. In other words, increased traffic does not automatically lead to increased revenue.
To avoid confusion, you and your team should state exactly what you want to achieve with your SEO:
- Do you want to increase product sales by ranking certain keywords?
- Are you struggling to reduce your website’s bounce rate or increase your conversion rate?
- If you want to increase your ad revenue, do you want a large audience or a small audience that spends a lot of time on average on your site?
- Are you looking for help building a social media following, creating sponsored content, or other services that go beyond SEO?
No matter which SEO company you choose, you should be clear about the kind of results you’re looking for and the services you need.
3. Don’t just search Google for “Best SEO” company lists. Go by word of mouth instead.
Why not choose a search engine optimization company based on how it ranks in search engines?
You can’t waste your time, the best companies tend to have a large number of longtime clients who have referred their peers to the same service.
For example, only a company that needs new clients would go out of its way to rank “best SEO company in Cape Town.
This also applies to other keywords such as “best SEO services” and “best SEO tools.
Also, don’t assume the list is fair. In general, the companies on this list paid a premium to be added to the list.
This doesn’t mean that there are no lists you can trust, just that you should trust one “best SEO companies” list just like you would a “best restaurants in Cape Town” list.
This means that the best way to find qualified SEO companies is the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.
Instead of using Google, ask people in your industry who they recommend instead of your direct competitors.
It may also be helpful to ask other companies in your industry which services they recommend as they already have experience in that area.
The testimonial below can also help:
4. Find an SEO company with metrics that suit you.
Now that you’ve outlined your goals and narrowed your options down to a few companies, it’s time to make sure you and the companies you want to work with can clearly track your progress post-launch.
In other words, what is your ultimate goal for ranking for a particular keyword?
Before committing to your next SEO company, you and your consultant must be on the same page when it comes to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
KPIs are metrics that can be applied to almost any aspect of your business and can mean many things within SEO itself.
For example, a company developing a new product has different goals than an older company with an established customer base.
But KPIs go far beyond that. In other words, we have access to so much data that it’s easy to lose track of it or track the wrong KPIs.
It also means you need an SEO company that understands the metrics that matter most to your business and can distill that information into something digestible.
Here are some of the key KPIs to consider:
- Organic Sessions: The number of users who came to your site through organic search. This is often considered the most basic and important KPI in SEO. Additionally, you can see other factors such as average pageviews, time spent per visit, unique visitors, and bounce rate.
- Conversion Rate: What percentage of visitors buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or engage with your content?
- Keyword Rankings: Since hiring an SEO firm, what keywords have you ranked for and improved your overall keyword rankings?
- Google crawling mistakes: If Google has trouble reading your site, it won’t be able to index it for you to appear in search, which will negatively affect your organic traffic.
- Page Load Time: The time it takes for a page to load is directly related to how quickly users leave the page. According to Think with Google, increasing page load time from 1 second to 5 seconds increases bounce rate (how fast users leave her website) by 90%.
5. Choose an SEO company that can communicate effectively.
You should have access to the tools you use to measure your KPIs (SEMRush, Google Search Console, Google Analytics), but most likely you don’t have time to analyze all that data.
This is why you need a team of SEO specialists to work for you in terms of communication and trust building.
SEO is a process so you can work with this company for years.
Even if you only want to work with an outside company temporarily, it takes time, patience, and constructive collaboration to reach your website’s organic traffic goals.
6. Look for companies with a strong track record
Agencies with numerous customer reviews, case studies, and verified reviews on third-party sites can help you understand how satisfied your customers are.
7. Look for companies with experience in your industry
Have they worked with similar websites before? What results have they achieved?
Are they knowledgeable about KPIs and industry-specific information?
8. Find companies that match your campaign goals
Clarify your business goals for your SEO campaign. This can be very helpful for a good SEO company and help you come up with a strategy to get there.
Do you need more leads from your website? Find an SEO company like Symaxx Digital that specializes in lead generation.
13 New Best SEO Companies In South Africa For 2024
The best SEO Companies in South Africa are:
- Symaxx Digital
- Better SEO
- BrandSeed SEO
- Ruby Digital
- Web SEO
- Code Pilot
- Algorithm Agency
- Starbright
- Mo.Agency
- SEO Pros
- Casson Media
- Blue Cabin SEO
Others would judge based on DA (Domain Authority), Others on the page quality scores, and a lot more other minor things.
You would find that some of the best SEOs don’t even have time to work on their own website and in that case, they are not even ranking
Symaxx Digital is one of the best SEO companies in South Africa because their work speaks for itself and they also have a lot of influence.
You can see Symaxx Digital online reviews by searching (Symaxx Digital) on Google. They have worked with some of the most influential companies in South Africa including celebrities like Phindile Gwala.
Are SEO Company Reviews Important?
Absolutely, Yes. Company reviews help you understand past or existing customers’ experiences. Over 80% of customers spend over 15 minutes reading reviews before they make a buying decision.
Symaxx Digital has 50+ 5-star reviews only, without any negative reviews. Reviews can help you make a great decision.
Ready to see what an SEO company can do for you?
Finding the right SEO company for your business that has proper alignment with your business can change the trajectory of your company.
Organic search is a powerful marketing channel that continues to grow.
Being educated about what an SEO company does and how to find the perfect one for your business is crucial in today’s rapidly changing advertising landscape.
