This can be a tricky question to answer. 

Standards and techniques are different for each service provider you’ll ever encounter, and this is as it should be. How else would we experience the wonderful variety of services and styles without this freedom?

As a rule, SEO providers are looking for clients with websites that need to be optimized.

The best SEO service provider for your business will be able to provide you with the following things:

Honesty – If your SEO service providers cannot provide you with an honest look at how they do business, leave them alone and get away now! If they can, then you have found a keeper. While they might not be able to tell you everything about how they works (after all some things are trade secrets) they should be able to give you a general idea of how they work and how they will use their methods to optimize your website.

Standard services – SEO service providers can do a lot of different things to help your website rise in the rankings, but there are some things that have almost become standard requirements. Things like content marketing, social media activity, networking, and increasing general brand awareness are essential in today’s market. Some SEO companies are even extending their services to include reputation management. If the company your considering doesn’t offer these sorts of services, it’s time to say goodbye and move on the next candidate!

Sensible payment models – There are going to be a lot of SEO providers out there who want to be paid up front. This isn’t something that works for everyone because of the ever-shifting and changing nature of SEO, and as such pricing models will vary. If you aren’t sure of the benefits of SEO or if you have been burned before, who not choose a company that operates on a pay for performance model? This means that once you have agreed to the results you want, the SEO provider doesn’t get paid until you get those results. This is an ideal set-up for most businesses because it removes the up-front risk that can be involved in other payment models with other SEO providers.

In order to find the best SEO provider for your business, see if you can find someone who either works with a broad spectrum of industries, or someone who specializes in your industry. Sometimes a specialist is the best way to go because they are aware of the kinds of things that appeal to buyers in your industry, and in other cases a broader approach might benefit you more by bringing in traffic form a verity of audiences and not being limited to just your industry’s typical target audiences.