Interview with SEO Image

Please begin by introducing your company and your role there.

Our company is SEO Image. I’m Alan Rabinowitz, the CEO. We’ve been marketing websites since 2003. We’ve served a mix of small and enterprise level clients. We’ve been known for getting our clients ranked for very competitive keywords.

We’ve put people on the map for terms like ‘SSL Certificate’, ‘Apartment Rentals’, ‘New York City real estate’, ‘steak’, ‘NYC steakhouse’, and more. We’ve been known for our real estate work as well, but we don’t really specialize in any one specific niche. We’re moving into more social media, which is part of SEO, so there are different types of marketing strategies that we incorporate now. We’ve evolved with the way the search world has evolved.

What goals should a business define before looking to hire a SEO partner?

They should have a good idea of what keywords they are focused on, what their industry is about, and who their audience is. Are they B2B or B2C? Who is their customer? Who is looking for them? What are their goals? How do they plan on noticing the benefits of an SEO campaign? They should have an understanding of most of this and be able to convey that before approaching an SEO firm.

In your opinion, which factors should be the weighted most heavily when hiring a SEO company?

A company having a good reputation, the company being effective with other clients, having good case studies, having at least one or two enterprise level clients or a known brand.

You want to find companies that have a good mix of clientele and don’t specifically cater to only large jobs, and you’re just another notch, and they don’t care once they get the sale. A lot of times it’s very ‘sales-y’ like that. Avoid companies that offer you a discount rate if you signup today, that’s a sales ploy. Most of our competitors and most of the industry is just sales. I would question companies that basically say, “We’ll give you a special deal if you sign up with us today.” That’s not a good strategy for dealing with an SEO vendor. An SEO Vendor should present information on the services, deliverables and stand firm on their pricing as the industry pricing is all over. Anything under $500/month is likely done offshore. So avoid those companies as well unless that’s your budget.

What should companies look for in terms of price?

If they’re trying to compete with competitive search terms and they’re expecting to do that on a $3,000 annual budget, it’s not very likely that it’s going to work for them. When you think about it, you couldn’t hire an employee at that rate nor get a quality employee for $4,000 a year. So, it doesn’t make sense to think that the cheapest price is going to be your best result. Usually those are the campaigns that cause you more harm than good and put you in that hole that you can never get out of.

Saving that extra money is not always worth it. They should be expecting that, if there are major competitors for their keyword, like big retailers, they’ll need to spend a decent amount. Enterprise SEO can start at $10K per month. We’ve had some of the largest name brands balk at $10K/month campaigns yet they spend 10 times that in PPC and organic brings in 70% of their traffic. It makes no sense.

What are some red flags to watch out for when evaluating a SEO company?

Avoid people who don’t have a good explanation of what their services are, what’s involved in the services, and what kind of reporting is to be given. You want to make sure that there will be transparency and an understanding of what’s going on every month.

Some companies charge for in-depth reporting. If you’re looking to get more advanced reporting or more detailed reports, you can request that and make sure that’s either included in the campaign, or something that you might have to add-on. It all depends on how transparent you want the campaign.

Most companies today try to be as transparent as possible, so people have an understanding of what’s going on. Seeing a monthly ranking report and improvement month on month is the end goal. If you’re not seeing an improvement, and you’re not seeing that growth, then you’re in a bad campaign. Keep in mind SEO is NOT overnight; it can take over a month to start to see results.

Does SEO Image have any specific requirements for a potential client, such as a minimum budget or project length?

We have campaigns starting at a minimum of about $800 per month. We will sometimes work, give or take, with companies whose goals may be smaller but that’s rare. It also depends on what kind of campaign they are looking for, how many keywords they’re after, whether they’re looking for reputation management or not, and then the scope of that work.

What unique value does SEO Image provide compared to others?

We have a lot of experience. We have clients that are eight or nine years old which is older than most of our competitors. So very few firms have case studies spanning major Google algorithm changes. We’ve been able to maintain client rankings for eight or nine years, which a lot of people cannot do. It’s hard to keep clients, and that’s a sign of being responsive to clients and being able to perform well, and that’s something we’ve been able to do for quite some time.

We’ve definitely been good at getting very hard to get keywords across the board, in multiple industries. We also have a very good team as far as SEO auditing goes. We have a unique way of presenting to the client what work needs to be done and how to do it. The language and vocabulary is very important - putting it in layman’s terms; trying not to use too many technical terms that a web designer or a client would not understand, and instead being very simple about, “Here’s what we need to do for your site. Here’s how you do it. Here is what this means. Here’s what you could do better. Here’s an example of how you could do better.” Being able to put this down and present things properly can be very effective for companies.

I can’t tell you how many people call and they tell us they’re not happy with their current SEO vendor. That’s the majority of the calls that we get. There are so many people contacting us saying, “We’re not happy. We want to move.” A lot of these companies are just not seeing results they simply lead by salespeople. That’s the hardest thing to get in this current era, because it’s more content marketing than it is just simply going after and targeting keywords the way you had done a few years back.

About the Author

Natalie Craigmile Marketing Manager

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