How to choose the right SEO partner for your business

Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 09/06/2026

Table of contents:

• Understanding your business
• Why partner with an agency?
• Using the right marketing tools
• Local, national or global
• White hat
• Why all the key components that’s, links, content marketing, technical SEO and web design all need to work together
  How our agency can help

How to choose the right SEO partner for your company

For search engine optimisation to work at its maximum effect, you need all the different components to work together.

This means that the business needs to write absolutely Brilliant content marketing, the backlinks need to be strong and the technical SEO must be improved. In order for this to happen you need to carry out keyword research, then write a bespoke marketing plan for that business. Then the hard work begins, you have to work hard to start to improve the organic rankings, in order to get that business to the top of the search results.

Now, this is not a walk in the park. In order for any business to get to the top of Google’s search results, one by one you have to prove that your businesses SEO is stronger than your direct rivals.

This is not going to be easy.

The reason that it’s not going to be a walk in the park is quite simple, some businesses are even 100% reliant on their online marketing to bring in new sales.

Therefore, your competitors, there also likely to be very busy as well improving what we call the “ranking factors”.

The ranking factors, which now total over 200 various different elements, are what the search engines such as Google use to see how strong or perhaps how weak a business’s search engine optimisation is. If for example, let’s say a solicitors practice has extremely strong backlinks, they have said a bunch of links with a high domain authority score, this will give that business an advantage.

Here’s where it gets complex

Google is constantly using a bot, called Googlebot, it’s this bot that’s used to crawl and index each company’s website. Then if that businesses search engine optimisation is deemed stronger than the company above, this is when Google then shifts that business up the rankings.

Therefore, you have to constantly work hard to improve your businesses Google EEAT as well as improving those ranking factors, such as building superb quality backlinks.

Setting clear goals and having a marketing plan

As we mentioned a bit earlier on within this article, there are over 200 ranking factors.

This means that Google’s algorithm will calculate how strong the businesses ranking factors are. You can only get to the top of Google when your business is deemed to have the strongest SEO ranking factors.

Therefore, as a business you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.

What this means is, you don’t want to put all your work and effort to say, such building NAP business citations.

You need a good and rounded SEO strategy, now in order to do that you have to have a marketing plan. We would highly recommend using a quality marketing tool, such as perhaps Ahrefs, or perhaps you like to use Moz, and then check out your direct competitors ranking factors.

Perhaps from this research you see that they have really strong backlinks. Perhaps for example Moz shows you that the competition has very strong backlinks, therefore, you have to come up with a marketing plan of how you can then also build strong links. However, to rank higher than that business, well you have to beat their standard of work, therefore your businesses backlinks need to be even stronger.

 

What would you define as the characteristics of a top SEO company?

There are so marketing companies out there, however, choosing the right one is absolutely key.

The simple reason is, well the choice of marketing company can make or sometimes break the business. What we mean by that is, take an e-commerce store, the number of sales that the company generates, well, that often boils down to how effective the organic search engine optimisation strategy.

Get it right, that the e-commerce business can be a rip-roar success.

Get it wrong, and well the business could even be impacted by a Google algorithmic penalty.

Such as a Google Penguin penalty.

Therefore, it’s absolutely key to choose the right agency, one that you know will do a really good job. This means following the guidance of

Google EEAT. It also means making sure that every piece of work, whether it’s building a new link, or perhaps writing a blog post, that every piece of work is always white hat.

Each piece of SEO work should therefore meet the following criteria:

– Be white hat
– Follow the advice of Google EEAT
– Follow the advice of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Experience

You most definitely need an experienced agency.

The reason is Google has rolled out hundreds of Google updates.

These changes to Google’s algorithms need to be understood such as the Google Penguin, Hummingbird and the Panda update.

Therefore, an agency needs to understand these key Google algorithms updates, that’s to ensure that the work being implemented in done correctly.

By correctly we mean white hat.

Expertise

We would recommend hiring either a consultant or an agency which is are experts in their respective field of marketing. For example, perhaps that’s organic search engine optimisation, or perhaps you would like a marketing company that even specialises in your chosen business sector. For example, that could be a marketing company that specialises in working with solicitors’ practices.

Long term

What’s important to remember is this, you need to hire a company that you can work with over the long run.

The reason we say that is, in regards to improving a businesses search engine optimisation, results most definitely do not happen quickly.

You can’t therefore expect results overnight.

Instead, you have to often work with the company for many months. Some of our valued clients have actually worked with us for many years.

Therefore, you need to take a long-term view, and implement a long-term marketing strategy.

If you try to take short cuts, implement low quality work, then what will happen this that Google’s algorithms will deem that work as spam.

Many businesses have been impacted by two types of penalties they are algorithmic and manual penalties. Your business most definitely does not want either, therefore make sure that you hire the best agency, which implements very good quality work.

The right tools

We would recommend either subscribing to Moz Pro or perhaps subscribing to Ahrefs.

Our agency then uses these tools to analyse our competitors backlinks. We want to see what backlinks our competitors have. We then have high experienced staff who can build quality links.

A strong backlink profile, which has a mixture of do-follow and no-follow links, what this can do is give the website more authority. When the website has more authority, this will mean that the website can rank higher.

Adhere to best practices

Best practices are using white hat methods, and fully understanding Google EEAT. This means that you need to show that whatever advice you are offering that you are an expert on the subject. Therefore, whether it’s a 10,000-word piece of evergreen content marketing, or just a simple product description, make sure it’s well-written and white hat.

Reporting and Analytics

Sometimes agencies offer SEO reports which are simply overly complicated.

Instead, what you need often a simple report, with accurate data taken from Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Therefore, our clients, whether it’s for a large e-commerce business, or perhaps local business, they know that the data that we offer in our reports is accurate. That’s because the information can be cross checked with Google Analytics.

 

Continuous learning

It’s important in this type of marketing not to get lazy and complacent.

The reason is Google is always changing and improving its algorithm. Therefore, your agency should be looking to keep their methods up to date.

For example, if you use the wrong methods, which are deemed as spammy then the business could get a penalty.

Therefore, for example, some marketing agencies don’t keep up with current best practice, building spammy links.

This is then a surefire way of the business incurring a penalty.

Tailored SEO Strategies

No two companies are every the same.

Therefore, no two marketing strategies should ever be the same either.

You have to really get to know the business, it DNA and the heritage of the brand. This way then you can better understand the target market.

Once you understand this, you can start to understand the customer. And then you can start to write helpful advice and build quality links to get more visitors coming into that page.

 

The Google Helpful Content Update

Google actually rolled out a really significant and large update, it was called the Google Helpful Content Update.

This was massively important, because it actively rewarded those businesses which had put the hard work into creating truly helpful content marketing.

For example, many businesses, and they still do, is write advice and articles just to try and grab more visitors.

However, these visitors often quickly discover that the work is not helpful, it doesn’t help provide an answer to a question they have.

Therefore, the customer just leaves, because the work is trying to forcefully sell a product or service.

However, when the business writes truly helpful content marketing, then what this can do is that it can attract a lot of visitors.

Dwell time

When you offer really and truly helpful advice, say via a well written article, often the reader will take the time to read the entire article. This means that the visitor to the website is simply spending longer reading the work, which will result in a higher dwell time.

Leading SEO businesses now realise that websites which have high dwell times means that they are keeping the visitor on the page for much longer. They are therefore holding the visitors interest for a longer period of time.

Now, many leading SEO experts believe that this means that Google will notice that those pages have a higher dwell time.

Meaning that more visitors are reading the work for longer, therefore because these pages are holding the shoppers interest for a long period, therefore this means that these pages often rank much higher.

You need an agency that’s quick to adapt to algorithm changes

What you will often find with the best marketing companies in the world, is that they employ SEO consultants that quickly adapt their marketing strategies. Because Google rolls out so many updates, it rolls literally hundreds every year.

Therefore, the best SEO consultants in the world, what they detect is what changes Google have made to their algorithm. They then make the necessary changes to there marketing strategy. For example, perhaps a large Google core update is penalising and removing content thin pages, therefore the marketing company should be fast to adapt to this change.

Continuous learning

This is actually one of our main tips when looking for a brand new SEO agency to partner with.

That is are they committed to continuous learning?

I Ryan Walsh, the author of this work, actually have over 11 years’ experience as a senior SEO consultant. Now, what I would say is that everyday I am finding new ways of building new links, and how to better write content marketing. I am also regularly solving technical SEO issues with numerous clients’ websites.

Therefore, I would say that a key skill that any good marketing company needs is the ability to adapt. That’s to stay on top of the current SEO guidance, this means fully understanding Google EEAT as well as also the hundreds of main Google algorithm updates that have been implemented.

Do you actually enjoy working with the business?

What’s important to understand is that your business, and many of your staff should be working closely with the actual search engine optimisation business.

Therefore, what this means is that you should enjoy working with that team.
If they are slow to respond to messages, or you simply just do not like working with them, then this makes the whole process an uphill struggle.

Instead, for say an e-commerce SEO strategy to be successful, you have to work closely with the business. You have to have enjoyable working relationship, where you can just pick up the phone, and discuss details of the marketing campaign that need discussing.

So, therefore key before you go signing any contracts, is spend some time at the offices of the agency. Talk to the staff which will actually be implementing the work day to day. Do you think that you could enjoy working with those teams?

Low cost is often not the way to go

When you search on Google for “local SEO companies” sometimes there will be companies offering really low prices.

However, as the old saying goes, you often get what you pay for. And in terms of search engine optimisation, what you need is someone with a high level of expertise to work on building links, and fixing various technical issues.

Now, often this can’t be done cheaply.

The companies are often offering super cheap prices, well as you would expect they could be using artificial intelligence to write the text and building spam links. Now this is a recipe for disaster if we have ever heard on. That means that when Google crawls and indexes this spammy work, such having spam links, well then the business could be impacted by a algorithm Google penalty!

Commercially aware

This is another really important point that has to be taken on, that is if the agency doesn’t have a good understanding of your products or services, how can they market them properly?

How can they write accurate and detailed product descriptions?

How can they write the text about say a product, if you haven’t got a understanding of the goods the business sells.

Therefore, the very best agencies, they have staff which are good at SEO, of course, yet are also commercially aware. That is, they can quickly start to understand the products and services, and they take the time to make sure that they have in-depth understanding.

This way when Googlebot crawls and indexes that work, the Google EEAT score will be very high. Because the author will be able to show that they have expertise and a good understanding of what they are writing about.

Keeping up the momentum

What you have to appreciate in regards to your business getting placed on the first page of Google’s organic results, is that once you get there, you can’t take your foot off the gas.

Now what do we mean by that?

Well, some businesses get ranked on page one of the organic results.

Yet then, they stop investing or they just don’t do any further work.

What this often means that the company can then suddenly start to drop down the ranks. For example, after a Google core update, the business may move down not just 1, 2 or 3 places, sometimes it could move back a whole bunch of different pages.

Therefore, this is why with search engine optimisation you have to continually work on improving those ranking factors.

For example, your business may have a backlink from say The Guardian newspaper. The backlink could have a DA score of 99 and therefore, this could be helping your business to rank on page one. However, what happens when that link is suddenly deleted?

 

Local, national or international SEO experience

What you have to really appreciate is that there is a massive difference between local, national and international SEO.
The reason for this is simple, you may run a local business, let’s say it only has to compete with say 10 businesses locally. However, an international company, well, that could be competing with thousands of companies.

More competition simply means, more SEO work.

Therefore, you do have to ask, well does the agency have the necessary experience to compete at national or international level?

Because, lets just isolate one part of the SEO jig-saw, that is backlinks, well the backlink profile of a international business, is very different from a local company. A local company may just have say 10 business citations with accompanying links. However, another business, the international business could have thousands of links.

 

Frequently asked questions regarding choosing an SEO agency

What would you say is the most important area to consider when choosing a new SEO company?

The most important aspect to consider when choosing a new agency is, can they demonstrate that they have succeeded in the past for other clients?

For example, let’s say that you are a solicitors practice, have they experience of getting other such businesses onto page one of Google?

Therefore, can they show you that they have worked with other clients, to produce excellent results for their clients?

Why local, national and international marketing campaigns are very different

So, there are as the old saying goes horses for courses.

Now what we mean by that is quite simple, a freelance marketing consultant wouldn’t be able to work on an international SEO campaign, simply because there’s not enough hours in the day.

You need a whole team of experts, such as link builders, copy writers, and PR team.

Therefore, you have to choose a marketing agency that has enough staff to complete the work that is needed.

 

Why it’s important the agency follows best practice.

So, here at this company, we have written extensively about Google EEAT and Google’s Helpful Content Update. We are always writing really detailed articles about the various Google algorithm changes. The reason being, this agency stays on top of the latest advice.

Therefore, we can implement the latest optimisation methods for our clients.

 

Who is Walsh & Partners

Walsh & Partners in one of Wales leading agencies, which is owned and managed by Ryan Walsh. Now Ryan has over 10 years’ experience, that’s helping clients to obtain more sales through organic and local search engine optimisation.

We can simply make your business more visible. We can form a bespoke and tailored marketing plan. We use some of the best marketing tools, such as Moz Pro and Ahrefs. We will analyse your competitors backlinks, there content marketing and come with a bespoke marketing plan for your business.

 

How we can help:

Walsh & Partners is one of the most established marketing agencies. We can therefore help your business to generate more sales.