What signs can tell me that I’m truly receiving expert SEO services?

It's a pretty obvious thing that earning good customer trust becomes especially important when it comes to online business. After all, what makes the clients fill in their personal information on a would-be “faceless” website? Can anybody be actually following any “expert tips & tricks” doled out by some not fully trusted websites, for example on a certain key search phrase? Certainly not.

Search engines like Bing and Google work hard to evaluate every website and decide whether to call them trustworthy or not. This ensures that anybody who uses the search engine is happy. It turns out that you too can use the same tactics as search engines to evaluate an online business before engaging with them. Today we are going to see how Google is dealing with E-A-T website practices (Expertise, Authoritativeness + Trustworthiness). Next, we will see if the same approach is still useful for selecting an SEO agency.

The current online world is materially spammed with fake issues far away from expert SEO services, you should be cautious with! Without doing so,  one is most likely to get burned up by some fraudulent SEO agencies. What can I say? First, don't leave anything to chance. In the last decade, the Internet got filled with the myriads of SEO expert services offered by different agencies. After all, most of such promises proved to stand far away from being a bed of roses.

Online business guidelines by Google make up the foundation for the algorithms updated by search engine databases. And there are some special pages it refers to as “Your-Money-Or-Your-Life” pages (YMYL). These webpages are put under a brisk evaluation, given that they tend to interact with the real lives of the users. Wait, how - you may ask - can it possibly relate to the process of selecting the right SEO agency? Well, almost any business decisions on having some tasks outsourced can possibly bring a heavy impact to the customer database, as well as the entire business of yours.

Evaluating notoriety of the agency offering expert SEO services

Considering evaluation and rating manual, Google points out that while browsing a website, you are actually rating a real business of brick-and-mortar. From the one hand, the websites usually represent the real organizations, companies, etc. All the same, some of these companies may finally prove acceptable for doing marketing, sometimes even very good kind. But in the majority of cases, SEO companies that promise quick and cheap promotion, are mainly driven by the lack of either talent or resources to deliver more practical, long-term results. These are the ones you should stay away from. They say they are one thing online but actual business entities who have used their services state otherwise.

Evaluating expertise and center stage

Malcolm Gladwell, a well-known author and the genius behind the bestseller, "Outliers" said that it took 10000 hours for one to become an expert at something. Naturally, if an SEO agency has been in operation for years, it commands authority, right? Well. That's not actually the case every time.

While it's good to be experienced, there are other factors that also come into play when it comes to asserting the expertise and authoritativeness of the agency dealing with SEO expert services. To vouch for this, check the agency's website: if the content, articles, publications, live presentations and other materials are of high standards then you're in for a good deal.

Seven questions you should ask an SEO agency:

1. How long have they been operating in the industry?

2. How qualified and competent is the crew?

3. Are there any true testimonials to show for their actual achievements?

4. Can they show the outline of white-hat strategies in compliance with Google's guidelines?

5. In what way are they going to rank for SEO services, for example when you got a key in a phrase “SEO Kansas”?

6. With what customer categories have they been cooperating before?