How do you choose the right SEO Agency

1. Short or long term collaboration

Let's be clear right away: if you want to be at the top of Google in two months, we would like to refer you to a colleague who is willing to do this for you. But be prepared that your success is temporary, that you sometimes even experience a negative impact, and that after four months you can start all over again with your website optimisation. Google's algorithm quickly notices when SEO agencies engage in unnatural 'link building' by placing lots of links on their own websites, or Google's web spam team intervenes manually. And then you suddenly lost all your positions in Google, just after you paid the SEO marketing agency for their fast services...
However, if you want to build a stable business for the long term with your SEO marketing agency, then it is important that you arrange links with link building that are not on a network of own websites, but on external websites, preferably with a high authority. This of course takes more time, and a greater investment, and requires more patience, but also gives more authority to your website, and is therefore more profitable for you in the long run. So first and foremost choose an SEO agency that is honest and goes for the long term.

2. SEO marketing agency: specialist or generalist

If you want to grow your business and increase your sales, ranking in Google's unpaid results is the most efficient way. That is why a good SEO agency masters all kinds of marketing that can positively influence the results in Google. In this way, we take into account the strategy that we have chosen together with you in everything we do. Our SEO specialists ensure that the correct search terms are processed in your vacancies (after all, Google also reads and scans them). Or that if a customer shares something on social media, Google receives a signal about which search term is relevant to which page. And we distribute press releases containing the right search terms, for example. In short, as a specialist agency for SEO, we use an integrated approach, in which all our actions are aimed at that one goal: raising your company in the search results and ensuring that visitors to your site actually become your customers!

And don't forget the impact of SEA (Search Engine Advertising); after all, this allows you to advertise very specifically online with exactly the target group that is important to you. We help you use your advertising budget optimally, so that your advertising campaigns support and strengthen your SEO efforts.
The third pillar on which your online efforts are (or should be!) based is your own website. After all, attracting more visitors to a website is pointless if the website is poorly put together or does not match the message you are conveying with SEO and SEA. A good SEO agency will therefore help you with, among other things, website optimisation and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation), to actually turn visitors to your website into customers who place an order or submit an information request.

At upMention we therefore pay a lot of attention to integration and coordination of all disciplines of online marketing that help a company score higher in Google. SEO, SEA and website optimisation connect with each other and form a consistent approach.
And if you decide, for example, to tackle your technical infrastructure or to give your website a new look, we have an extensive network of reliable partners, of whom we have experienced that they deliver fast and good work. Partners with whom we can switch quickly, so that your project runs efficiently, and you do not have to worry too much about the details.

A second important factor in choosing an SEO agency is therefore: does the SEO agency only deal with SEO, or does it use a generalist approach, in which 1+1+1 yields 1 as a result, namely the first position in Google?

3. Uptempo or dosed

In short, there are two types of SEO agencies: the agencies for the big ambition or the 'mass = cash' agencies, which will start working for you with just a few hours per month. In practice, this choice mainly has to do with margin and cash flow. And although a low price may seem attractive at first glance, we often see that the SEO marketing agency that dares to demand a sufficient margin can often also spend more on advertising and marketing, and thus also attracts more visitors via Google and achieves better results.
A third factor in choosing a suitable SEO agency is that you have to determine where you stand when it comes to the P of Price. Are you satisfied with small steps, or do you go all the way? Then choose the SEO agency that best fits your budget and ambitions.

4. Creative or structured

Do you mainly want to be inspired and motivated by your marketing agency, or do you want to roll out a solid and systematic growth strategy for your search engine optimisation? The contrast is not as black and white as stated here, but in general you can see that every optimisation agency tends in a certain direction. For example, our SEO company in Nairobi already has a draft plan for the first year, without us having spoken to you. This plan is based on our specialist knowledge and more than 20 years of experience, and very systematically creates a snowball effect. This also has to do with the 'dedicated' manager of your project; depending on the situation, we always make a conscious decision whether to opt for entrepreneurship or more for strict project management in a new relationship.
In the first meeting we discuss your ambition and level of knowledge. Do you want to be actively involved in the process, or are you mainly interested in the result? Based on this, we set up our collaboration and adapt to your wishes.
A fourth factor in the search for the best SEO agency for you is the question of whether the SEO agency takes your knowledge level and desire for involvement into the overall process serious. Does the SEO agency really take you and your wishes into account?

5. Content- or sales-oriented

You pick them out right away! Does a salesperson want to make you a customer as quickly as possible, applying all the associated sales tricks, or does someone mainly want to see to what extent you can jointly come up with a suitable growth plan for SEO website optimisation? You can often see it in the relationship between salespeople and technical specialists in an agency: there are even SEO agencies where more than half of the employees have a sales position. But there are also agencies where an SEO professional immediately joins the conversation, who immediately goes into depth with you and wants to know everything about your wishes.

Finally, the fifth factor in the search for a suitable SEO marketing agency is whether the SEO agency is mainly focused on sales, or mainly on content. If the first conversation with a company is directly about rates, and afterwards you get a contract pushed under your nose, then the name of that company is certainly not upMention… We would first like to get to know you and what your wishes and ambitions are, before we even talk about rates.
And if this way of working suits you, there is even an SEO agency - we won’t mention its name - where you can schedule an appointment in the agenda of one of the owners directly via the website...

Summary

In short, the choice of the SEO agency that fits you best depends largely on your budget, your ambition and your wishes. upMention makes clear choices in this regard: we are not the cheapest, and we do not promise instant results, but together with you we go for an integrated, structured long-term approach to website optimisation that will allow your company to be successful in the long term!