How to Choose an SEO Company in Bergen County

Hiring an SEO company is hard to judge from the outside. The work is mostly invisible, results take months, and the sales pitches sound alike. This checklist is for a Bergen County owner comparing two or three companies, and it works for any town in the county.

It rests on Google's own advice, Do you need an SEO?, and on its Business Profile help pages. We do not make claims here about our own rankings or results, and you should not accept them from anyone without a way to check them.

1. 01

   Read the proposal line by line

   A page that says "SEO package" tells you nothing. A real proposal lists the work, so that you can see what you pay for and compare two companies. Look for each of these:

   • An audit of your current site and profile, with what will be checked: indexing, page speed, mobile layout, titles and descriptions, duplicate pages, broken links.
   • The pages to be written or fixed, by name. For a local business that is usually one page per main service and, where you really work there, one per town.
   • Business Profile work: categories, services, service area, photos, and how reviews will be asked for and answered.
   • Citations and listings, if included, and which directories.
   • Tracking setup: Search Console, Analytics, and call or form tracking so you can see leads and not only visits.
   • What you must provide: photos, access, approvals, and by when.
   • What is excluded, such as web design, paid ads or content writing.
   • The term and the exit: length, notice period and what you receive if you leave.

   Our SEO cost guide shows how those items turn into a price.

2. 02

   Settle who owns the accounts

   You should be the owner of everything, and the company should be a user. This is where businesses get stuck when they leave an agency.

   • Google Business Profile: verifying the business is what gives ownership, and Google says that if a third party helps you manage the profile, you can add them after verification. The primary owner should be you, signed in with an account the business keeps. If an agency created the profile under its own account, ask for it to be transferred to you before you sign.
   • Google Search Console: owner permission gives full control over the property, and a property needs at least one verified owner. Make yourself an owner and give the company a lower level that still lets it do the job.
   • Analytics, the domain and the hosting: in your name, with the logins kept where you can reach them.
   • The content and the reports: the written pages and the data behind them are yours to take with you.

   Google also says that for an audit you should grant only read access to Search Console. A company that asks for the highest access on day one, before it has shown any work, should be asked why.

3. 03

   Ask what the reports will show

   A monthly report should answer one question: did the business get more customers? A page of ranking charts does not.

   • Calls, form submissions and direction requests, from Business Profile insights and your own tracking, compared with the month before.
   • Search Console data: which searches showed your site, clicks, and which pages grew or fell.
   • What was done this month, in plain words: pages changed, fixes made, reviews requested.
   • What is planned next month and why.
   • Where the numbers came from. You should be able to open the same data yourself.

   Google suggests asking how the company measures its success, and whether it will share every change it makes to your site and the reasoning behind it.

4. 04

   Ask for local work you can check

   Google suggests asking for examples of past work and experience with your industry and locale. Do not stop at a logo list. Open the site, search the business name and town, and check the Business Profile. Ask what the company did and what it did not do on that account.

   Be careful with any single ranking screenshot. Local results change with the searcher's location, so what shows in one town may not show two towns away. Ask to see the report that shows leads instead.

5. 05

   Check they understand Bergen County

   The county's list of municipalities runs to 70, and people search by town. Local work here is mostly about getting the details right:

   • Which towns you really serve. Google's guidelines treat a business that travels to customers as a service-area business with one profile for its base and a defined service area, kept generally within about two hours' drive. A list of 40 towns you never visit is a risk, not an asset.
   • Address handling. A service-area business is expected to hide its address, for instance a contractor working from home. Ask how the company will handle yours.
   • Town pages that say something. A page about roof repair in a town should mention work you did or details of that place. If the proposal is the same page with the town swapped, skip it. Our Bergen County page explains how we approach it.
   • Name, address and phone consistency across your site, profile and main listings.
   • Reviews from the customers you actually served, asked for honestly.

   The local SEO checklist covers these basics, and you can use it to test whether a proposal skips any.

Red flags

• A promised ranking or a promised number of leads. Google says no one can promise you first place in its results, and advises finding someone else if a company does.
• A "special relationship" with Google, or a "priority submit." Google lists both as red flags.
• Link packages. Google's spam policies define link spam as links made mainly to manipulate rankings, and list buying and selling links for that purpose. Sites that break the policies "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all."
• Secrecy. If the company will not say what it will do, you are still responsible for what is done in your name.
• An unsolicited email or call claiming your site has problems. Google advises treating these with the same skepticism as obvious scams.
• Keeping the accounts. A profile, domain or analytics property in the company's name.
• A long contract with no exit and no deliverables list.
• Reviews bought or written for you. That puts your Business Profile at risk.

Questions to ask on the first call

• Which pages and Business Profile changes will you make in the first 90 days?
• Who will do the work, and who do I speak to?
• Who will own the Business Profile, Search Console, Analytics and domain at the end?
• What will the monthly report show, and can I see a sample with the client name removed?
• What do you need from me, and what happens if I am slow to provide it?
• What would make you tell me SEO is not the right spend yet?
• What happens to the work if I leave?

A company that answers these directly, in writing, is easier to hold to its word. If you want us on the list, see our SEO service, or send the details and we will reply with a written proposal.