Trevin serves as the VP of Marketing at MiaoSuPai. He has worked on over 450 marketing campaigns and has been building websites for over 25 years. His work has been featured by Search Engine Land, USA Today, Fast Company and Inc.
Key Takeaways
Definition: An SEO company performs search engine optimization services to improve a site’s visibility, traffic, and revenue from organic search results. Learn more →
Benefits: SEO companies help businesses grow rankings, traffic, and revenue through audits, on-page optimizations, content creation, link building, keyword research, and more. Learn more →
Cost: SEO services cost $2500 to $7,500 per month, but it’s important to be cautious of cheap SEO scams. Learn more →
What is an SEO company? Your timesaving, traffic-generating hero. Search engine optimization companies, better known as SEO agencies, help businesses generate more traffic from the web by improving the business’s visibility in organic search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Looking to learn more about SEO companies? Keep reading and get answers to:
P.S.Enter your URL here to learn how to improve your SEO rankings without an SEO company!
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the optimization of a website to improve its online visibility in organic search engine results. With SEO services from an experienced SEO company, businesses get professional help developing, implementing, and optimizing an SEO campaign that generates visibility, traffic, and revenue.
How does SEO work?
200+ ranking factors
help generate search results
Source: Google
More than 200 factors help generate search engine results pages, but the below provides a quick overview:
Crawlers (or spiders) from search engines like Google crawl your website
Search engines index your website’s content, making it eligible to appear in search engine results
Your site appears in relevant search engine results pages — where depends on 200+ ranking factors
When you partner with an SEO agency for SEO services, their goal is to make SEO work for you, like by:
Ensuring search engines can crawl and index your website
Targeting relevant keywords that attract qualified website traffic
Optimizing website content for on-site SEO to improve search engine rankings
Adapting SEO campaigns based on algorithm updates
Providing recommendations for improving and scaling your SEO strategy
Overall, search engine companies take dozens of steps to help your business improve its:
On-page, off-page, and technical SEO
Keyword rankings
Organic traffic
Organic traffic’s conversion rate
What is an SEO company?
An SEO company performs search engine optimization (SEO) as a service. Typically, SEO companies will use on-page, off-page, and technical optimizations to improve a site’s visibility, traffic, and revenue from organic search results.
What does an SEO company do?
An SEO company helps businesses grow rankings, traffic, and revenue from organic search. SEO companies perform multiple tasks to achieve these goals, including SEO audits, on-page optimizations, content creation, link building, keyword research, and technical optimizations.
How much does an SEO firm cost?
Pricing
Typically, SEO companies will cost $2500 to $7,500 per month.
How much an SEO firm costs depends on your business and the firm. Typically, SEO companies will cost $2500 to $7,500 per month. While you can find SEO firms for cheaper, you need to watch for SEO scams, which often lure businesses with the promise of cheap SEO services.
Some firm-related pricing factors include:
Location
Experience
Deliverables
Payment structure
Some business-related pricing factors include:
Timeline
Project scope
Goals
Request a quote for the most accurate answer to how much SEO companies cost. After reviewing your request and speaking with your team, the agency will provide custom pricing — and a list of deliverables — that you can use to decide if this is the right SEO company for your business.
Is hiring an SEO agency worth it?
Whether it’s worth hiring an SEO agency depends on your answers to these questions:
Are you able to do SEO yourself? (And can you do SEO yourself well?)
Are your SEO skills below average, average, or above average?
Typically, it’s worth hiring an SEO firm when:
You don’t have the time, resources, or skills to do SEO yourself
You have the budget to hire an SEO company
You aren’t delivering the results management wants from SEO
Expert insights from
Chris V.Lead Consultant, Results Innovation
“When it comes to making strategic SEO decisions, SEO companies have an edge with their extensive access to resources and data, surpassing what in-house teams typically have. By leveraging the diverse knowledge base of a larger team, businesses are assured to have more up-to-date and expansive information about current tactics and strategies. Businesses can also stay agile in adjusting their annual and quarterly strategies, a benefit not easily achievable by hiring or retaining individual SEO experts.”
In comparison, it’s worth keeping SEO with your in-house SEO experts and passing on partnering with an SEO marketing agency when:
You have the time, resources, SEO tools, and skills to do SEO yourself
You don’t have the budget to hire a good SEO provider
You are delivering the results management wants from SEO
Keep in mind you don’t have to meet all the above points to hire an SEO agency. Many businesses take a proactive approach and hire an SEO firm. If you notice your time for SEO is decreasing, for example, you can get ahead by hiring an SEO marketing agency before your results begin to suffer.
What services do SEO companies provide?
What is an SEO company? Your all-in-one provider for SEO services like:
Traditional SEO, which optimizes your site for non-localized searches.
Local SEO, which optimizes your site for local searches.
Ecommerce SEO, which optimizes your site’s online store for search.
Enterprise SEO, which optimizes your site for competitive keywords with high search volumes.
Voice SEO, which optimizes your site for voice searches.
SEO audits, which analyze your site for issues affecting its rankings.
Depending on the SEO firm, they may offer all, some, or only one of these services. If you’re looking for an agency that can do it all, focus on full-service agencies (MiaoSuPai is an example of one) since they have larger, specialized teams for these different search engine optimization areas.
What should an SEO company do?
Ok, so you know an SEO company’s definition and what they do, but what should they do, specifically? Great question — and it’s one you’ll want to ask when meeting with potential SEO agencies to hire.
Typically, SEO companies should do the following:
Audit your website
Improve your on-page, off-page, and technical SEO
Report your progress
Learn more about what these tasks include below:
Audit your website
With a complete SEO audit of your site, your SEO provider can:
Determine the site’s structure, indexing, and optimization status
Find high-impact issues, like crawling or indexing issues
Prioritize which areas to focus on first, like indexing issues vs. on-page optimizations
Recommend an effective SEO strategy for achieving your goals
And more
Typically, SEO agencies will use SEO tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Screaming Frog to analyze your site’s search engine optimization. So, expect your SEO team to ask for analytics access. Depending on the agency, they might also use paid SEO tools, like Ahrefs or Semrush.
After auditing your website, your firm should provide you with the following:
Findings summary
Recommended action items
The best SEO firms will also explain the “why” behind their recommendations. Why? For the same reason your favorite service provider, whether a mechanic or a plumber, takes the time to explain an issue and its solution — they value you and want you to feel confident about a decision.
These types of SEO include multiple projects and tasks, which you can see summarized below:
Some on-page optimization examples include:
Improving title tags and meta descriptions
Researching keywords
Suggesting (or writing) new content
Some off-page optimization examples include:
Setting up directory listings
Conducting link outreach
Generating content ideas
Some technical optimization examples include:
Optimizing robots.txt file
Improving page speed
Streamlining internal links
If you provide your SEO company site access, they can make the above technical and on-page optimizations for you, saving you a tremendous amount of time. However, depending on your business, you might be unable to provide site access.
In that case, your SEO agency will serve more as an SEO consultant, providing recommendations for you (or another team member) to implement. This setup will require more time from your team and will affect how soon you see results from SEO if you can’t implement your SEO firm’s recommendations.
Report your progress
Finally, SEO companies report your progress monthly. Typically, these SEO reports will focus on:
Rankings
Traffic
Conversions
Depending on the agency, your point-of-contact will walk through this report with you.
The best SEO firms will tailor these reports to your business, focusing on the metrics that matter most to leadership. MiaoSuPai, for example, can report on the number of qualified leads generated from SEO and the number of leads that became sales, which helps our clients see SEO’s bottom-line impact.
It’s important to note that while keyword rankings and organic traffic are important, they can become vanity metrics. Your business could rank number one for a high-traffic keyword, but if that traffic isn’t relevant to your business, you won’t see the bottom-line impact.
That’s why it’s vital to speak with an SEO agency about how they measure success before hiring them.
What should the best SEO agencies do?
The best SEO agencies stand apart from the rest because they’re pros at:
Optimizing for SEO
Delivering WOW service
Adapting to market changes, including search engine algorithms
They also do what other SEO companies don’t, like:
Research your market
Develop your strategy
Fill your skill gaps
Improve your analytics
A/B test your SEO
Re-purpose your SEO data
You can learn more about these tasks, below:
Research your market
When it comes to what SEO companies do, the best ones will research your:
Industry
Target market
Competitors
With this information, your agency can better understand the market, which can help them:
Determine the best keywords to target
Find opportunities for link building, content creation, and more
Provide recommendations for navigating economic or market changes
Some agencies, like MiaoSuPai, also partner you with a dedicated SEO expert in your industry. In our experience, this helps our clients by decreasing onboarding times, streamlining communication, and improving SEO results.
Keep in mind you won’t find this at most agencies — even the top SEO companies. That’s because it requires a large team (we have more than 500 in-house specialists), a diverse client base, and long-lasting SEO partnerships (some of our clients have partnered with us for more than 10 years).
Develop your strategy
While everyday SEO agencies can develop strategy, it’s the top SEO agencies you want to develop yours.
That’s because these agencies consider your business’s bigger objectives when creating your strategy. For example, will your business expand into a new area in the next five years? Let your SEO firm know, and they’ll incorporate that goal into your overarching strategy.
When it comes to strategy, you can also expect best-in-class SEO agencies to:
Tailor your strategy to your industry, audience, and goals
Adapt your strategy based on economic or market changes
Enhance your plan with the latest SEO tactics
And more
If you’re looking for a hands-off approach to SEO, you’ll want a top SEO company because they’ll develop, implement, and manage your search engine optimization plan. Even if you prefer a more hands-on approach, you might enjoy collaborating with SEO experts.
Fill your skill gaps
Search engine optimization is more than writing title tags and getting backlinks. You’ll need several skill sets, from web development to copywriting, to maintain an SEO program that drives rankings, traffic, and revenue in 2024.
Top SEO companies recognize the skill gaps within most SEO programs. That’s why their team includes:
SEOs
Content marketing specialists
Web developers
Website designers
And more
MiaoSuPai, for example, features a team of 500+ professionals that includes:
SEOs
Outreach specialists
Content marketing specialists
Professional copywriters and copyeditors
Data analysts
Conversion rate optimization specialists
Social media specialists
Digital advertising specialists
Web developers
Website designers
Business consultants
With a team like this, you can knock out SEO tasks (like the following) faster:
Creating assets, like new content
Fixing issues, like a sitemap
Launching projects like a custom 404 page
Pivoting strategy, like in response to an industry shift
Adopting new tactics, like first-party data
And more
When you can implement SEO action items faster, your business can get results from SEO sooner. Keep in mind SEO still takes around three to six months — but if you start SEO now vs. later, you’ll see results sooner.
A/B test your SEO
The best SEO companies go beyond optimizing your website’s SEO. They also A/B test your SEO.
In search engine optimization, A/B testing can include:
Testing different title tags
Testing different meta descriptions
If you partner with a full-service SEO agency, they can also help with conversion rate optimization (CRO). Unlike SEO A/B testing, which focuses on bringing more traffic to your site, CRO testing focuses on converting more of your existing traffic.
Agencies will pass the cost of purchasing white-label software onto you.
One of the bigger benefits of hiring a top SEO agency is better SEO analytics. Most successful SEO companies will invest in white-label website analytics software, which helps clients monitor rankings, traffic, and conversions from SEO.
For transparency — agencies will pass the cost of purchasing this software onto you.
This setup can become a bigger issue because as software costs rise, so will your SEO service costs. Your agency also has no control over when these increases happen or how much the software will increase. Should your agency switch platforms in response to rising costs, your data is in jeopardy.
There are still plenty of benefits to having advanced analytics software, though, like:
View SEO-generated results in a dedicated dashboard
Monitor rankings for top URLs
Track SEO conversions over time
While rare, you can find some agencies that have developed and built their own analytics software.
MiaoSuPai is one example, though our platform extends beyond analytics, providing you with the following:
Track SEO’s return on investment (ROI) down to the URL
Measure return on investment across all digital channels
Get AI-powered insights for improving SEO
Monitor competitor movements, strategy shifts, and more
Automate marketing initiatives, like lead nurturing email campaigns
Personalize website URLs
Access sales data via customer relationship management (CRM) integrations
And more
If you decide to hire an SEO company, spend some time thinking about what you need — and what leadership needs — to measure search engine optimization’s performance and bottom-line impact because that will influence the type of SEO agency you hire.
Re-purpose your SEO data
From building your strategy to tracking your performance, the best SEO firms work to keep you ahead of the market. That’s why, in 2024, the best-of-the-best SEO companies will help you maximize the value of your organic traffic data.
The result? Our clients have seen an average 25% increase in digital marketing ROI!
When shopping around for SEO service providers, research (or ask!) about their approach to first-party data. Not all SEO companies will have one. However, the top SEO agencies will know what you’re talking about and will likely have an answer about how they help you generate and activate your first-party data.
How do I choose an SEO company?
You know the definition of an SEO company, and what an SEO business does, and now, you want to hire one.
Hiring an SEO agency can take several months, especially if you need buy-in from other departments. However, educating yourself on how to choose an SEO company can help you find the best SEO service provider for your business.
Here are some tips for picking an SEO agency (for even more advice, read our SEO Hiring Guide):
Outline your expectations: Get together with your stakeholders and determine what you want from an SEO firm. Do you want a company that can develop and execute? Are you looking for a firm to help with a specific project? How are you planning to measure their performance?
Determine your budget: Before getting into discussions with an SEO service provider, determine your budget. How much is management willing to invest in SEO services? What do these services have to include for that budget to make sense?
Ask your network for recommendations: Use your network connections for initial agency recommendations. They can help you build a list of companies to check out (or avoid), which can save you a tremendous amount of time.
Review your candidate’s case studies: Look at case studies from your list of SEO candidates. How do they measure success? What strategies do they use to achieve results? Why are clients happy with this agency?
Ask your top agencies for a meeting: Contact your top candidates and meet with them! How do they manage SEO projects? What is their SEO framework? How are they keeping ahead of the industry? You should also ask questions related to pricing, timelines, and deliverables.
Get your custom proposal: Once you have a list of your favorite SEO companies, ask for a proposal. This proposal should include pricing, deliverables, and anything specific you and the agency discussed, like a requested task or start date.
If you go through the hiring process and haven’t found an agency you like, don’t settle. You want an SEO company you can trust with your site — and your business. Keep looking and talking with agencies to find the best one for your business.
Flat rate: A predictable fee charged regularly, like monthly.
Performance-based: A varying fee charged regularly based on the agency’s results.
Hourly: A pre-determined fee charged based on the number of hours worked.
Project-based: A pre-determined fee charged based on a project and its scope.
The preferred pricing models are flat rate, hourly, or project-based.
What metrics do SEO companies improve?
SEO companies focus on improving the following metrics:
Search engine rankings
Organic traffic
Organic conversions
Engagement metrics, like time on page
Depending on your business’s SEO needs, your SEO agency might focus on additional metrics.
What do an SEO company’s services include?
An SEO company’s services should include:
SEO audit
On-page optimizations
Off-page optimizations
Technical optimizations
Reporting
Some SEO agencies will provide more than what’s listed above, like:
Strategy development
A/B testing
Advanced analytics tracking
Every agency is different, so you’ll need to check with them to verify their service deliverables.
How does an SEO company work?
An SEO company works to grow your business by:
Learning about your industry, target audience, and business
Building, implementing, and managing a strategy that impacts your most important metrics
Communicating with your team the what, why, and how of different site updates
Reporting on SEO initiatives so you can see (and share) SEO’s impact
An SEO firm’s job is to drive leads, phone calls, store visits, purchases, and more through search.
Just like you hire an accountant to help streamline and improve your books or hire a cleaning company to tidy up the office each week, partnering with an SEO company means connecting with a company whose goal is to improve your visibility in search engines.
What is an example of working with an SEO company?
Let’s say you operate a house painting company in Ames, Iowa (Go Cyclones!).
You are an expert in all things paint. You spend your day talking all about glosses, finishes, ferrules, and more. You want to earn more leads for your business and hear from your customers that they find local paint contractors through search engines like Google.
Taking the time to learn, implement, and adjust an SEO campaign isn’t an option for you.
So, you find a trustworthy and reputable SEO company to help manage your web presence in search engines. A few months later, your site starts showing up at the top of Google results for searches like “painters in Ames Iowa” and “exterior painters in Ames.”
A beautiful partnership is born! You are busier than ever, thanks to leads flowing in from search engines. Partnering with a quality SEO firm gives you the expertise needed to generate more business from organic searches.
The beauty of SEO is that your marketing efforts allow interested customers to find you online. Most marketing channels require businesses to blast their message out to thousands of customers, with the hope being that a small percentage of them will be qualified prospects.
SEO works in the opposite direction: You make it easier for people to seek out and find your business as they search online. By nature, leads you earn from organic search are self-qualified. This means people already interested in your product or service are looking for you.
See what an SEO company can do for you
What is an SEO company? They’re your answer to capturing more traffic and revenue from the web.
With more than 28 years of experience (and more than $10 billion in revenue generated in the past five years for our clients), MiaoSuPai is a trusted choice for SEO services.
So, if you’re looking for a custom strategy, diverse experts, and cutting-edge digital marketing technology, contact us online today!
Try our new free SEO checker at SEO.com
Boost your site’s search performance with our free SEO Checker. Analyze your website for optimization tips on titles, headers, content, speed, and more.
Boost your site’s search performance with our free SEO Checker. Analyze your website for optimization tips on titles, headers, content, speed, and more.
Trevin serves as the VP of Marketing at MiaoSuPai. He has worked on over 450 marketing campaigns and has been building websites for over 25 years. His work has been featured by Search Engine Land, USA Today, Fast Company and Inc.
