1) Does the company itself have organic rankings? If not, that probably means the company is outsourcing all SEO work and hasn’t invested in SEO for themselves. Do you really want to work with a company that doesn’t invest in SEO per its own industry and entity? If they don’t have any organic rankings, how are they going to get their clients rankings? You should practice what you preach in SEO.

2) Is the SEO company asking for a start up or set up fee? If so, this fee goes straight to the salesperson as a commission. Ask where the fee is going. If the fee is not going to upfront costs, such as new content and link building, then buyer beware.

3) Does someone answer the phone daily at the company? If you’re seeking a dependable SEO service, then the company should be available to service your project for multiple needs. For example, you get into work and your site is down. A dependable SEO company can resolve online conflicts effectively and efficiently. You don’t want to count on someone who doesn’t have a professional staff available to you during regular business hours.

4) Does the company have experience working in your particular industry? If not, most likely your project is going to absorb the learning curve for the company to get familiar with your niche. If a company has experience in your industry, it can save you money, get you significant results, and increase your ROI.

5) Do they provide references? If the company doesn’t provide quality references, odds are they are either faking or new to the industry. You get what you pay for in SEO. Sometimes you get lucky finding someone new yet capable, but a majority of the time after six months of working with unqualified SEOs, you will wish you had that money back.

6) Do they offer a guarantee? Nobody aside from Google themselves can really predict what the search engine rankings are going to do. Companies that offer guarantees are usually just doing so to get your business or will simply guarantee to rank keywords that are useless. If a company offers you a guarantee for rankings make sure to get it in writing and be sure that they are ranking keywords that people are actually using in searches.