How to Choose an SEO Agency: A Guide for E-commerce and SaaS Businesses

E-commerce and SaaS businesses find themselves in a very unique position when it comes to attracting new clients and selling their products as they rely primarily on their online presence. Hence, strategies aiming at elevating their digital footprint prove to be the most beneficial for those types of businesses.

That’s why, in this article, we will explore the various questions surrounding the choice of the right SEO agency and how employing one can help your e-commerce or SaaS business thrive.

Contents:

1. Why would e-commerce and SaaS businesses want to employ an SEO agency?

2. White and black hat SEO: What impact do they have on choosing the right SEO agency?

3. The characteristics of good SEO agencies

4. Are there any types of SEO companies that are better suited for e-commerce and SaaS businesses?

5. How our SEO agency has helped e-commerce and SaaS businesses thrive: real clients examples

Why would e-commerce and SaaS businesses want to employ an SEO agency?

As mentioned above, e-commerce and SaaS companies’ relationship with the online medium is a strong one, since that’s where their business happens. Optimizing your store and/or website for search engines is oftentimes a necessity for online presence nowadays. Hence the question is not whether you need SEO but rather whether it’s better to employ an agency, take care of it in-house, or maybe a combination of both.

Let’s look at how those few approaches can help your business grow.

Employing an SEO agency: why might it be a good choice for your business? 

In the initial stages of your business, you naturally don’t have as many resources so different jobs from SEO to basic bookkeeping fall onto you. But as your business grows, you probably realize that you can’t do it all, and it’s best to delegate the tasks that others can do better and faster, SEO being one of them. 

Having an SEO specialist is a great way to elevate this crucial element of your business. So how can an SEO agency fit into this picture? You can either choose to outsource all your SEO work to an agency or employ an in-house SEO specialist and lean on the agency in times of need.

The crucial advantage of an SEO agency is its industrywide knowledge, and a toolkit full of various software that lets them build the entire custom SEO strategy for your business. Hence, collaboration with the SEO agency is able to set you up on a course of accelerated growth.

What SEO agency has to offer e-commerce and SaaS businesses?

An SEO agency possesses the expertise and experience to help organizations improve their rankings on Google or other search engines. That means that they can make it easier for a company’s target market to find them using relevant search queries. Making your website or social media content go viral loses its purpose if it’s directed at the people who aren’t likely to buy from you. So the key here is to concentrate efforts on bringing your products and services to the right audience.

For example, if you’re an e-commerce website that’s marketing “clothing for small dogs,” an SEO agency can help you optimize your website’s content, structure, and backlinks so that when people interested in your product search for related keywords on Google, your site comes up in the results.

Because e-commerce and SaaS businesses rely heavily on their online presence to generate leads, acquire customers, and drive revenue, employing an SEO agency is crucial. Their work can aid in boosting brand visibility, improving organic traffic, and, ultimately, increasing sales and profits. Speaking of online presence, it’s essential to be aware of the trusted link building companies, as they play a significant role in enhancing a website’s authority and reach.

What challenges do they face without a proper SEO strategy?

Without a proper SEO strategy, e-commerce and SaaS businesses may face low online visibility and reduced traffic. They may be forced to rely on paid advertising to reach potential customers, which can be costly and less effective in the long run. 

Furthermore, if competitors have a strong SEO strategy in place, a business without one will be at a great disadvantage, since other brands will be more well-equipped to attract their target audience. That’s sometimes a reality that’s difficult to accept: if your competitors are taking bigger and bigger portions of the market share that means you are left with smaller and smaller ones. But having a robust SEO strategy can put your products and services in front of your potential customers, bridging the gap between you and your competitors.

White and black hat SEO: What impact do they have on choosing the right SEO agency?

White hat SEO and black hat SEO refer to two common search engine optimization practices. The terms were coined from movies in the early 1990s, where heroes and villains were often distinguished based on the hats they wore.

In this vein, white hat SEO refers to legitimate and ethical SEO techniques that are approved by search engines, such as creating high-quality content, building natural backlinks, and improving a website’s user experience (UX). Conversely, black hat SEO refers to practices that are considered unethical as they intend to deceive search engines and manipulate algorithms to improve a website’s rankings. These include strategies like keyword stuffing, link schemes, and cloaking.

When choosing the right SEO agency, it’s important to look for one that practices white hat SEO techniques since these ensure that you’re rising in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) in an honest way, while keeping your website and goals protected. On the other hand, black hat SEO strategies can result in a penalty, or even a total ban, from search engines, which could significantly harm your site’s online reputation and destroy your potential for success.

So when reviewing potential SEO agencies, look not only at their experience but also at customer reviews, testimonials, and their understanding of Web Master guidelines to ensure that you hire the agency that’s reputable and trustworthy.

The characteristics of good SEO agencies

We’ve already explored some of the aspects of a good SEO agency. Now let’s dive into this topic more and see what other key characteristics you should look for:

SEO expertise

Good SEO agencies have a team of search engine optimization experts with a good track record of helping businesses improve web rankings and achieve their business goals. They have a deep understanding of search engine algorithms and optimization techniques.

We’re sure you’ve heard the words like content SEO, technical SEO, and many more. A good SEO agency has separate teams devoted to all those key areas, so their expertise is deep and focused. This lets them finetune a lot of aspects of your online presence that could otherwise be lost in the pool of data.

Current trends

The world of SEO is constantly evolving and to stay on top of it, there is a need for constant learning and updating your information about changing algorithms. It’s the SEO agency’s job to be up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in the industry so that they can always deliver timely advice.  

Ethical customized strategies

As mentioned before, a good SEO agency always employs ethical and sustainable techniques and never engages in activities that could harm a client’s website’s reputation and rankings. What’s more, their strategies are always created with the customer in mind, tailoring them to the business’s unique needs and goals. 

They take the time to study their client’s industry, target market, and competition to create strategies that will deliver positive results rather than supplying every business with a template plan. 

Good SEO agencies assess clients’ current online presence and build an entire strategy around that. This customized approach to work is what sets them apart from those agencies that might not yield great results for your business.

Results and support

That takes us nicely to a results-oriented approach. Reliable agencies focus on delivering measurable results for their clients and can provide relevant case studies and references that prove their ability to achieve a business’s SEO goals. They also keep clients constantly updated about any progress, as well as this agency workflow keeps focus on the efficiency of each project.

They’re always ready to provide support by continuously monitoring and analyzing their client’s website performance and adjusting based on performance and feedback. So, you’re never left alone in the process of SEO optimization at your end, they will always support you and guide you through it.

Proven content SEO tactics

We’ve tested many approaches over the years, and when it comes to content, two of our favorites are strong siloing and compound content. Let’s look at them more closely.

SEO Silo – The act of interlinking the existing content together with other pages to help search engines crawl and connect relevant content and topics. Users and search engines want to find the relevant content on your site as simply as possible. By interlinking these pages together, you make it easier for search engines and users to find your best content. 

Compound Content – Every site has a trust level in a search engine’s eyes. Figuring out what that level is and then building content around it will help new terms index faster in the SERPs as well as increase the keyword net of the site. It’s one of the most effective ways to force Google and other search engines back to your site on a more frequent basis, increasing your opportunity to rank. 

Are there any types of SEO companies that are better suited for e-commerce and SaaS businesses?

There are SEO companies that specialize in working with ecommerce and SaaS businesses, and they can be better suited to meet the unique needs and challenges of companies in these industries.

E-commerce SEO agencies possess the expertise to optimize online stores and increase web traffic and sales. They know how to address the specific challenges of e-commerce SEO and have the necessary skills to optimize product pages, manage product descriptions, and build high-quality backlinks. E-commerce SEO companies will also often have experience working with popular e-commerce platforms, like Shopify, and offer additional services, such as integration with Google Shopping.

Similarly, SaaS SEO agencies specialize in fixing the websites of these businesses to increase website traffic and conversions. They can optimize landing pages, integrate with other software and APIs, and build high-quality link strategies.

When choosing an SEO agency for your e-commerce or SaaS businesses, it’s best to pick one that’s an expert in working in your industry and has experience in delivering positive results to similar companies. Also, be sure that they can customize their strategies to your specific business and goals to boost your chances of sustainable and long-term success.

How our SEO agency has helped e-commerce and SaaS businesses thrive: real clients examples

High Voltage SEO offers services such as custom search engine optimization programs, growth plans, and audits, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and content marketing. Through these, HVSEO has helped multiple e-commerce and SaaS businesses thrive by driving more traffic to their websites, increasing sales and conversions, and boosting brand visibility online. Let’s look at some of our success stories.

1. E-commerce brand selling fashionable footwear 

HVSEO has helped this e-commerce business increase its revenue by 29.83% in the last three months, with a 300% increase in website sales during the whole project duration. They also saw a 21% increase in organic traffic by 21%, over 40% increase in the top ten organic keywords, and a 26% increase in the top three organic keywords. This became possible thanks to creating compelling ranking content.

2. A global sporting retailer 

This e-commerce business enjoyed explosive growth in organic traffic and online generated revenue for their Australian website through a significant increase in keyword positions.

3. A data privacy SaaS company

They experienced a 435% increase in organic traffic and a 780% increase in the top three keywords in just six months through HVSEO’s strategy of internal linking silos and compound content. 

4. Invoicing and accounting SaaS brand

This company saw organic traffic grow from 225,000 monthly visitors to 2.5 million monthly visitors while working with HVSEO and implementing their strategy. 

For more information on some of our past successes, you can visit the Case Studies section of our website. 

Conclusion

A good SEO agency is crucial for businesses, especially in the e-commerce and SaaS industries, that want to strengthen their online presence and achieve their business goals. Improving your SEO metrics can directly translate into an increase in sales, that’s why choosing the right partner for that job is so important.

But you must choose a company that practices white hat SEO and can customize programs based on your organization’s unique needs to be confident that you’re achieving valuable results in ethical and sustainable ways.