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13 Critical mistakes to avoid when choosing the right Arabic SEO Agency
Choosing an Arabic SEO agency or an SEO expert can sometimes seem like a game of chance, much like choosing a restaurant or a used car …
It is unclear if the person in front of you is a pro, or if it is an amateur or a liar.
To answer this question, We give you 13 critical signals to detect if the referrer you have contacted may not be as good as his presentation.
After reading these 13 signals, you should be able to choose a reliable Arabic SEO services provider that can manage your marketing SEO campaign efficiently and achieve your business SEO goals and meet your expectations.
1 – The SEO agency offers you guarantees too limited or otherwise limitless
“I’m going to put your site in first place on Google or I’ll pay you back. You will be on the first page in less than 30 days or it’s free. ”
The trick is that this SEO did not tell you which keyword you will be in first position!
For example if you are a dentist in Dubai, you will expect to come out first for keywords like “Dentist in Dubai” since that is what makes sense to you.
Now, time passes, and you are not even in the first 3 pages for this keyword, you will ask your SEO to explain and he will tell you:
” Yes Yes! You are first as promised. Do the following research on Google: dentist + street + dubai + building “dentist dubai indigo icon tower”
And there you will be stuck because he has kept his word …
In fact such keyword doesn’t generate leads or traffic as the search volume could be zero.
The reality is that no organic SEO can offer a guarantee because we do not control the search results, we only “influence” by optimizing sites according to Google’s algorithm.
One can certainly have a lot of influence, but never to the point of being able to guarantee a specific result.
So if you are assured the position # 1 on Google, pay attention to what is exactly proposed.
If you want to check the volume and difficulty of a keyword, you can use tools like google keyword planner to get an immediate estimate.
For example “SEO” is 4,400 searches / month on Google and a cost per click advertising Google Ads $ 14.70 while “SEO on the internet” is 140 searches / month and a cost per click is 5 USD.
So if a digital marketing agency offered to position you on “SEO on the internet” it would have nothing to do with “SEO” .
2 – It offers pre designed packages
To understand why this is often a warning signal, you should know that Google has evolved enormously in the last 15 years.
In the early 2000s, it was possible to position a site in Google and even to obtain long-term results simply by creating hundreds or thousands of links easily obtained by automated tools (profiling software in forums, to create comments on blogs, to create profiles on Social Media …).
In other words, every month the consultant presses a button and thousands of links are created.
It was enough to repeat the process until the results were achieved …
The consultant knew exactly the work he would have to do every month, regardless of the site or the client.
In time, Google has become increasingly selective about the types of links it values and SEO techniques have obviously adjusted.
If agencies and consultants still offer these types of pre-designed packages, they often do a standard job for each company, regardless of the initial situation or the objectives to be achieved, and therefore there are at best processes (ex. : creation of X articles, X links …) and at the worst of the automatic generation of links and contents.
Nowadays, we are at a point where to achieve stable long-term results every site requires a personalized approach and content creation.
It is not enough to create links and content, you must optimize the existing and evolve.
The type of backlinks to get varies even from one industry to another (links on sites of sports for a company that is in B2B will have much less value for google).
To give you an order of ideas, in 2019 to position yourself on a keyword “SEO” in the field of digital marketing, it is no longer necessary to create an article of 500, 1000, 1500 or 2000 words … It is rather 3000 words (and often much more!) with quality links from reputable sites …
In addition, these low cost packages require a maximum of automated services (creation of links, pages …)
To give you an idea, an article of 500 words is at least 10 € just for writing.
From now on, without first knowing the client’s site, precise objectives and without having analyzed the competition, it is difficult to imagine that a good SEO consultant can give you a price.
A good local SEO must first offer you an audit of your site, improvements on the existing and a support plan over several months with a starting situation and a goal to achieve.
3 – It offers you dangerous SEO techniques…
Choosing an SEO agency should not be done lightly … by choosing a bad SEO, it can do more harm than good …
There are different ways to position a site in Google, but they are not all suitable for a business.
Google’s criteria vary, but most the SEO is influenced by:
- External links that point to your site
- The anchors of the links (without being over-optimized)
- The optimization of the page (keywords, titles …)
- The structure of the site
- Time spent on the site
- Links on Social Media
- Page speed
- Brand authority
A good SEO knows how to flirt with the limits of Google without ever crossing them so as not to risk seeing your site penalized by Google.
There are 3 types of SEO:
- White Hat SEO who knows Google’s policies and respects them to ensure long-term growth of your site.
- The Gray Hat SEO who flirts with the white line and takes reasonable risks
- The Black Hat SEO who take all the risks, the shortcuts … like a web hacker, and sooner or later will be caught by Google.
SEO Types
A risky method that runs counter to Google’s guidelines (the Black Hat SEO) may be a good approach for an affiliate site or for a site with a very short life span (promotion of an event). limited time for example), but in general it is not appropriate for a company.
You will therefore want to avoid SEOs that offer an approach based on:
- The pyramids of links in questionable sites (= no quality) or networks of private sites that are not qualitative (just have to read them to see the quality of the content written quickly)
- Submissions from your site in tons of directories,
- Duplicated press releases on dozens of sites (not bad in itself, but it has no direct impact on SEO)
So how do we get inbound links without getting in trouble?
- By writing a guest article
- Creating an infographic
- by creating a white paper
- having established partnerships with quality site publishers or having a quality network of sites without links to “harmful” or toxic sites
In any case, it is necessary to vary the techniques to obtain links of quality.
4 – It does not ask you anything about your site, your priorities …
He should also discuss with you the keywords that interest you in priority.
It is impossible to refer to all the keywords (it is necessary to prioritize traffic and targeting), and often it is the company, its salespeople, its technicians … who give the right list (and not Google Keywords Planner or SEMrush which give lists that are there to complete a priority list).
In the same way sometimes a company wants to position itself on new key words, and thus it requires to review the strategy.
The goal of search engine marketing services is not limited to improving the positioning of a site, the goal is to sell to users who come to visit the site!
This is done primarily for the purpose of increasing website revenue, and to do so, we need to position the site for the keywords that are most valuable to the customer, and often improve site conversions.
It should also ask you if an SEO job has already been done on the site in the past.
He may not need all this information at the beginning of the term, but if after 1 or 2 months he still has not asked anything ask you questions because he does not have the profile of a consultant who has the interest of his clients at heart.
5 – A price too low
Have you been offered a SEO service at a price as low as € 300 per month?
Most SEO consultants charge between 75 € and 150 € per hour (ie in the 600 € to 1200 € / day).
So, even taking the smallest hourly rate of this range, 75 €, this means that it would work only 4 hours per month to reference your site.
Even if you do not know much about SEO, you probably know deep inside yourself that it’s not a half-day of work each month that you will be ahead of all your competitors on Google, right?
An SEO consultant will charge you a minimum of € 1,000 per month for 6 to 12 months.
And 1000 € every month is not huge, it corresponds to 2 days of work on your site.
SEO is understanding the client’s business (at least 1/2 day of discussion and validation with the client), it is working together on the site:
- Find new keywords from customer research, new competitor keywords, new trends …
- Create content
- Write content for each of the keywords (1 keyword = 1 page)
- Promote your site to known sites, influencers …
- Get links from quality sites
- Analyze the evolution of your SEO and take action in case of fall of a keyword
- Constantly optimize the key contents of the site.
- Making regular technical SEO audit
- Makin regular content gap analysis.
And in the case of sites targeting more competitive keywords it can easily be a few thousand euros a month.
A price that is too low often hides something.
This may be for example that your consultant:
Just modify the technical elements of your site, create social networks accounts, add to your site in sites, blogs, directories … low quality and often automated.
Uses black-hat SEO techniques such as private site networks, link farms or link pyramids that are sold to anyone (both serious companies like yours, poker sites that Google will not like …) ..
Poor link buying can work, but only in the short term.
Your site will eventually be penalized for having links from “toxic” sites (sites that have poor content and full of links to poor sites) and you will have to create a new one and hire another SEO.
Or simply basic and standard services (create accounts on social media with automation tools, get some easy links, create a few pages for a few keywords …), but it will mathematically not have the time to you get results
6 – It only talks about the technical elements of your site … and proposes you to create a new site from A to Z
The technical elements such as site structure, meta data and URLs that need to be analyzed by a SEO, but these elements alone will generally improve your positioning very little, unless targeting very low keywords competition.
Since this is the most important step in your SEO, he should talk to you about it quite quickly:
Could you create new quality content (eg studies, drawings …)
Can the “experts” of your companies help to create expertise content
Even if he says he must turn again with his own platform (WordPress …), it is sometimes true but it is not always a good idea, especially if the site is old and he already has many external links (changing everything can be a big challenge!).
Similarly, if you do not have a Blog, and it does not propose to create one, it should make you ask questions:
how does it create pages?
with which tree?
who will create the content?
who will validate it?
7 – He did not make any suggestions for improvement to your site after 1 month of work
Just as some agencies and consultants will focus only on the technical aspects of your site and neglect the user experience with your site, there are others that go directly to the stage of creating links and content without even having to first perform an audit of your site…
8 – He does not tell you clearly what he is doing or you can not understand his explanations
SEO may be a technical discipline and even complex but the main factors are:
- Analyze your site
- Do some keyword research
- Analyze the competition
- Modify some technical elements on your site
- Write / edit content
- Promote to get inbound links
…
You should at least always know what stage it is, what keywords it is working on, what keywords it’s already positioned on … and have a minimal understanding of why it does what it does at every step.
You must demand an explanation of the methods used.
SEO is not a solo job but it is a teamwork between the company and its SEO.
9 – He says he can get you thousands of incoming links quickly
In this case, be aware that it creates these links in an automated way and it does not take him more than a few minutes to do (either with software or by assistants …).
In both cases, it is spam links that will most often give no results, at best give results in the short term (a few weeks), then your site will be penalized and Google will never send you traffic again. You will need to create another site and start from scratch.
It’s the same for Twitter accounts, YouTube videos, Facebook pages … a SEO can pay to have more fans, more followers, more views but there is no real engagement.
10 – He promises you thousands of visits in a few weeks …
A “normal” site or page is usually referenced within a few hours … so you can potentially get visitors very quickly.
But Google has a very high latency … get more SEO traffic follows “steps”.
For example, a new site at the start will not, in natural referencing, not more than 50 visitors … then 500 … then 1000 … then 2500 … then 5000 … then 10 000 … and so on!
Indeed Google does not trust in a day to a site that comes from nowhere … he trusts the sites of reference, and it is only gradually that he grants a little traffic (on merit!) To new site!
So an honest SEO will tell you that the traffic will grow over the months, and that it is over time.
11 – He came to you with a generic email
I think it’s obvious, but just in case: a real good consultant does not spam the whole world with this kind of generic message looking for customers.
These are “volume spam” strategies, so you can imagine what this will give as a SEO practice …
The best way to know a good SEO is to ask your network of contacts (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook …), if they are happy with their providers.
12 – It offers a lot of automation without costing anything!
Google does not tolerate automatic actions to deflect its algorithm: if you get 1000 links in 1 day then you are trying to manipulate google algorithm.
13 – It does not communicate with you the work progress
Two, three or even four months after the start of your service agreement, it is possible that it does not have many concrete results to show you, such as a significant improvement in your positioning or a significant increase in your traffic.
But he should be able to show you the work he has done so far and you should ask if he does not do it.
For example, he can show you:
- An SEO audit report on the evolution of the ranking of your site on different keywords
- An analysis report of your incoming links
- A list of articles written for your site or other partner sites
- A list of backlinks he got you
- A Technical SEO Audit outcome
SEO is not magic … it’s not “Give me X € per month and trust me, I take care of any site.”