What Is an SEO Company?
(And What Do SEO Companies Do?)

By Trevin Shirey | March 24, 2023 | 7 Minutes to Read

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 questions like:

What is an SEO company?

What does an SEO company do?

How much does an SEO firm cost?

What should an SEO firm’s services include?

When should I hire an SEO agency?

How do I find a top SEO agency to hire? and more

P.S. Enter your URL here to learn how to improve your SEO rankings without an SEO company!

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 firmcost?

How much an SEO firm costs depends on your business and the firm. Typically, SEO companies will cost $1500 to $5,000 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. 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 make your decision.

Is it worth hiring an SEO agency?

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?)

Do you have the budget for outsourcing SEO?

Is your SEO strategy over- or underperforming?

Are your SEO skills below average, average, or above average?

Typically, it’s worth hiring an SEO agency 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

In comparison, it’s worth keeping SEO in-house when:

You have the time, resources, and skills to do SEO yourself

You don’t have the budget to hire a good SEO firm

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 agency before your results begin to suffer.

What services do SEO companies provide?

SEO companies provide several services, including:

Traditional SEO, which optimizes your site for non-localized searches.

Ecommerce SEO, which optimizes your site’s online store for search.

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 (iTransparity is an example of one) since they have larger, specialized teams for these different 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 company can:

Find high-impact issues, like crawling or indexing issues

Determine the site’s structure, indexing, and optimization status

Prioritize which areas to focus on first, like indexing issues vs. on-page optimizations and more

Typically, SEO agencies will use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Screaming Frog to analyze your site’s search engine optimization. So, expect your agency 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:

Recommended action items

Finding Summary

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Improve your on-page, off-page, and technical SEO

What else do SEO companies do? They focus on improving your on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. These types of SEO include multiple projects and tasks, which you can see summarized below: Some on-page optimization examples include:

Researching keywords

Improving title tags and meta descriptions

Suggesting (or writing) new content

Some off-page optimization examples include:

Conducting link outreach

Setting up directory listings

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 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 the recommendations.