SEO companies: what they don’t tell you about positioning

What does positioning depend on?

Website visibility depends on several hundred factors, most of which are hidden. The exact working of the algorithms is Google’s secret and no company can influence it.

However, we can accurately determine the interest of the search engine: it wants to display pages useful to users. Thanks to this, it is visited more often, and with the popularity, profits from, among others, the paid advertising segment increase.

So, in general, the effectiveness of SEO agencies depends on how much they increase the usability of your website. If their work consists of using “SEO tricks”, you can’t expect optimal results.

What activities are important?

Increasing the value of the website is not easy and simple, because it depends on labor-intensive, comprehensive work carried out by professionals in their industry. These activities are by no means limited to the mentioned SEO-tricks, but depend mainly on:

• content – on which the usefulness of the information contained on the website depends. Specialist blog articles strengthen positioning, while saturation with subjective marketing content (which does not bring added value to readers, e.g. frequent phrases about the best offer, low price, high quality) effectively suppresses it. There is an important ratio here that you need to determine on your own site: how much is useful, professional information, and what part is empty, unfounded praise of your own services, etc.
• UX – on which the experience of the user who stays on the website depends. In this element, you must ensure that the structure is clear and that the desired information is easily accessible. It is worth remembering the three-click rule, which says that the user should be able to access every part of the page with three “clicks”. If some important information is buried too deeply, it adversely affects the user experience.
• credibility – other websites that link to yours give a clear signal to the search engine that the content is recommendable. At least that was the case until Google found better ways than link profile analysis to support this assumption. Doubtful, often linking websites are no longer taken into account. Natural, industry-specific websites with valuable content are still important. Let us remember, however, that the purpose of the search engine is, above all, to objectively assess the credibility of the website, hence such websites will also lose their importance along with the development of alternative analytical methods (including, above all, behavioral indicators). At the moment, getting links is still a reasonable strategy, but we can no longer consider that positioning activities are limited to this only. Google has long warned against artificially manipulating links and it is only a matter of time before it effectively draws the consequences.
• technology, security – page loading speed, SSL certificate or privacy policy are other elements that are constantly gaining in importance in the context of positioning. If you use customer data, explicitly specify the conditions for their processing (which is an obligation under the GDPR).

In a word, take care of the quality of your portal so that Google has an interest in displaying it in search results. You won’t do it with baseless boasting, complicated structure, and a slow page. Instead, share useful knowledge, provide access to other interesting content, and pay special attention to user safety. In this arrangement, your website will be considered valuable, which will translate into an increase in position.

How can an SEO companies help?

The rightness of positioning activities should be interpreted in relation to the above-mentioned aspects. Will the company, which is intended to increase traffic on your website, contribute to a real improvement in the quality of the website? Or, on the contrary, will you commit yourself to a yearly contract that will be solely about tracking results and crediting your actions as “credits”? We are not exaggerating, this is often the case, so we will discuss how to avoid it.

Transparent contract

Avoid long-term, binding documents in which the subject of the contract is the general name of “positioning activities”. In this case, you do not specify any requirements for the agency’s work, which makes it impossible to later pursue claims for improper performance of the service.

Ask for specific actions based on the list discussed above. Examples of provisions that, in our opinion, should be included in such a document:

• How much content will the company provide you with (10,000 words a month? 30,000? Will they only develop the blog or will they take your offer into account? Ask for samples in advance to assess whether the agency fits the style of your brand.)?
• What actions will he perform on the website (with how many graphics he intends to diversify the subpages? Will he perform internal linking? Will he deal with code minification?)?
• How will he obtain external links (Within what budget? Will he use his own facilities, create catalogs or outsource publications to intermediaries?)?

We already know that positioning requires comprehensive activities, so it should not be covered by any secret what the agency will do for you.

Thanks to this, you will avoid disappointment and ensure maximum results within the assumed budget.

The matter is particularly important in the case of link acquisition – we know that there are significant differences in strength here. The link obtained from the back office is much weaker than the link obtained from the publication of an article on a well-known industry portal.

Active cooperation

If you want to optimize your results, you cannot assume that the company will do all the work for you. Even when you allocate a large budget for positioning and the contract is clearly defined, as an entrepreneur you are still responsible for the overall image of the company. Reliable customer service, and with it regular users, is another signal for Google that the website is worth displaying high.

Even the best SEO company is not able to provide you with positive reviews and returning customers if you do not take care of the quality of your offer yourself. For this reason, treat positioning activities as a unified system.