Online business in Dubai is becoming fiercely competitive. Online businesses are striving hard to get a spot on the first page of SERPs. Moreover, new entrants and existing competitors are making life challenging for businesses that don’t focus much on marketing and search engine optimization.

Dubai is the world’s business hub, and its importance in global business is expected to increase manifold in the next decade or two. The influx of visitors and businesses is presumed to give a steep hike to the region’s economy.

If you are a business owner in Dubai having an online presence or looking to go digital, you will need to optimize your business to rank it on the first page of SERPs. If you aren’t on the first page in response to a query made about your business, the chances are that no one even knows about your existence unless someone searches for your business by exact business name. Trust us, that doesn’t happen too often.

You will have to choose between SEO or paid marketing to bring your business on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing search results. SEO is a better option than paid marketing because it is organic, cheaper, and long-lasting than paid marketing, and users trust a top-ranking non-advertised website.

There are two ways to do SEO for your site. You can do it yourself or hire a SEO company. If you are looking to hire a SEO company in Dubai, you must consider some factors before finalizing the arrangements. Let’s go through all the things you need to consider.

Let’s start here

SEO Knowledge and Expertise

The first thing to do is check their knowledge of SEO. You want to make sure that the company has a special SEO department and relevant qualifications and experience. You don’t want to pay an agency that is a jack of all trades and master of none.

You can do this by asking them about their past SEO campaigns and how much the ranking of each site has improved after they worked on it. If they know their work, they’ll be happy to share these things with you and not make any false claims about their work. Ask them about the numbers, ranking, and traffic.

Local SEO Techniques

Ask the company their knowledge about local SEO in Dubai and particularly in your niche. Small businesses need local and nearby clients more than anything, so they don’t have to bear substantial transportation costs.

Website Audits

Another critical thing to do before hiring a Dubai-based SEO agency is to ask them for an audit of your site. You must be specific about why your site is not performing well. An ideal case study will include keywords, design, website speed, user interference, device optimization, and navigation problems. Their provided audit report will be a great thing to know about their level of expertise, make sure they don’t know basic off the shelf audit reports, using such templates is a sign of weak SEO skills.

Market Status

Check the company’s reputation in Dubai. You can do this by a simple Google search: best SEO companies in Dubai. If the company knows how to do SEO, it will be on the first page. Don’t just rely on this; check the company’s repute by going through the online reviews, customer feedback, and the client list. If the agency has well-known clients, they surely know how to do their work.

Referrals

One way to select a good company is to ask your acquaintances who own businesses. Word of mouth is significant. No one would give a positive review about an SEO company if they didn’t have a memorable experience with them.

Approach/Workflow

Check the approach of the company towards their work. SEO is a multi-dimensional strategy and needs working on many fronts. Don’t go for a company if they include off-page SEO, on-page SEO, load time, page speed, better UI, technical SEO, and improving navigation.

What techniques will the company use to rank your site? Make sure they use only white hat SEO techniques. Be open to discuss the techniques with them. Get yourself up to date with white hat and black hat SEO techniques by searching them online before going for the meeting.

A responsible SEO company will give you a proper plan on how much time each area of your site will need to improve and what strategies or course of action they will adopt. You must also discuss how they measure success and against what parameters.

Target Audience

An experienced and professional SEO company will take some time to find out your business’ target audience. You, being a business owner, will already know who your customers are. Test the company by asking them simple questions like what is my business’s target audience? If they are good, they’ll already have searched about it before meeting you.

Social Media Command

Nothing sells in this world without the help of social media. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms have changed the way we do business. Optimizing your site only for browsers won’t make much of a difference. An encompassing approach is needed to increase traffic and boost sales on your site.

Payment Structure

Go through the payment terms before signing the agreement. Contracts can be tricky, and we don’t want you to get caught off-guard, and then you’ll have to pay extra charges. Therefore, ask the SEO company for any hidden charges, additional costs, and go for a categorized billing. The best payment structure is to divide the work into milestones and release the payment once the milestone is achieved.

Privacy and Maintenance

What happens if you opt to end the contract or the SEO company doesn’t perform according to your expectations. What clauses, if any, in the agreement deal with your privacy? Go through every aspect of your contract and keep in mind what legal rights the company is listing in the contract. Make sure you don’t trust them blindly. Confirm that you are the owner of all the content company uploads and all the changes made to your website are not reverted after the contract ends, or you terminate it.

What are the maintenance clauses in agreement? What services will the company provides once the contract is over? Will they give any discounts for the next contract or will they revise the charges. Discuss everything in detail before giving your go-ahead.

Final Words

Hiring an SEO company in Dubai is not rocket science. You just need to use common sense along with the points mentioned in the discussion above. If you see any red alarms, make sure you discuss them with the company’s representative and get it sorted. You can always look for another company if you don’t feel comfortable.