Go ahead and type ‘SEO agency’ into Google.
What do you see?
You see page after page of companies talking about more traffic, better rankings, ‘measurable growth’, etc. All of that sounds good, but it doesn’t say much about what any of those companies will do once you sign the contract.
A good agency will be able to explain exactly what they’ll do. They’ll tell you which pages need more work, which keywords are worth the effort, what’s holding your site back, and what they’ll do about it. Take a look at our own Google ranking reports for an example of the kind of clarity you should expect.
All of the agencies you’ll see on this list have their own approach, but they’re excellent at what they do.
SEO Agencies Worth Checking Out
Some of these agencies are more focused on links, and others pay more attention to technical cleanup.
Here’s how they differ:
Stellar SEO
Stellar SEO makes it pretty obvious right from the start that its main focus is link building.
Campaigns can involve looking at the pages you want to rank, checking what your competitors have and you don’t, planning anchor texts, finding publishers, creating content for placements, and then tracking where those links end up.
Their strategy isn’t solely focused on just links.
For instance, in one personal injury campaign, the agency’s team cut a site that had 340 pages to 101 (70.3% of the original website was consolidated/removed). And those remaining pages also got a cleanup — they were made stronger, and internal linking and schema were improved.
According to Stellar SEO, monthly traffic went from 3,047 to 14,670 in only 5 months (a 381.5% increase!), meaning that the traffic almost quintupled, which is massive, especially when you factor in that it’s long-term lasting growth.
It’s always a big plus when you can see precise results like this one because you can look at exactly what was changed and what kind of effect those changes had.
WebFX
There’s a lot going on with WebFX. Its SEO service covers everything from keyword mapping and metadata to internal links, schema, XML sitemaps, duplicate content, technical fixes, content, and off-page SEO.
And if you look at the official site, you’ll see that the agency is unusually specific about deliverables, which means you get a better idea of what you’d be paying for.
A big part of their pitch is the reporting side.
WebFX uses its own platform called RevenueCloudFX to tie SEO back to leads, CRM data, and revenue. For you, that means that you get actual information instead of a ranking chart once a month, which you then use to try and guess what’s happening.
The company has more than 30 years of experience and over 1,100 testimonials from clients. There’s a KOA case study in which the agency reports a 260% increase in organic revenue and 198% more organic transactions.
Impressive numbers, right?
Victorious
Victorious is very focused on search; more so than many other bigger digital agencies.
They do technical SEO, content, keyword research, links, migrations, and AI searches. It’s all treated as part of the same strategy instead of making you pay for separate add-ons.
The whole thing starts with what you, as a client, want to sell. Then it goes backward into keywords, topics, competitors, and pages that need work.
This is good to know because you don’t see that old SEO habit where people would chase big volume keywords simply because they had a lot of searches.
The SimplyFun study is a great example of how the agency works. In this case, the team looked at how parents and teachers search for learning products, and then they worked on product pages and supporting content. The agency reports an increase of 638% in top 3 rankings, 380% more organic clicks, and 266% more monthly organic revenue.
You can also find the AI search results, which include a case study where Porte Brown (an accounting firm) gained 150 Google AI Overview citations. If you’ve had a drop in organic traffic recently, it’s worth seeing how agencies like this one rebuild visibility from the ground up.
FAQ
What should I ask an SEO agency before I hire them?
You should ask which pages they’ll work on first, what keywords they’ll target, which technical problems they expect to fix, and how they earn backlinks. Also, ask what will be included in reports.
How can I tell if an SEO case study is useful or not?
A useful case study will start by explaining the problem first, then it’ll move on to what the agency changed, how long the campaign ran, and what ended up being improved.
What should an SEO agency include in its reports?
In short, a report should include the work that was completed and what was changed afterward. Also, it should explain what’s next based on the results so far.
Conclusion
The best advice anyone could give you is to look past percentages and promises. To be clear, you want to see results of the work an agency did, and if the percentages are impressive, that’s certainly a plus. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Check whether the agency has already worked on a case like yours and what they did with it. Ask them what they plan to change and what they’ll show you in their reports.
Not every agency will be the right fit for you, no matter how big and experienced they are.
Jonathan Crain has written hundreds of website design and marketing article blog posts.
He is the sole owner of Pittsburgh SEO Services LLC which is a small business in Pittsburgh PA that specializes in affordable wordpress websites and digital marketing campaigns. Jonathan Crain has a marketing degree specializing in digital marketing and holds multiple internet marketing certifications. Jonathan Crain has over 25 years of experience along with managing hundreds of website projects and marketing campaigns. He also has won a variety of awards over the years from Tribune Review, Post Gazette and other publications.