Overview of the SEO market and the rating of the leading SEO companies in Ukraine

Recently, we published the “ Rating of leading web studios of Ukraine ”, which was based on a study of our competitors in the field of website creation and now conducted a similar analysis of the SEO market in Ukraine, with the same goal - to increase our company's competitiveness in this area. Our last rating turned out to be subjective and did not like many: there were statements that it was bought, that we were not able to compile ratings, what was not assessed, etc., but in fact the main result was not at all in the rating, but in the information received on the market and this part of our research, on the contrary, was liked by many! Therefore, in such a study of the SEO market in Ukraine, we immediately focus on the analysis results, and the rating is a pleasant addition that does not claim to be true.

About the review

When we started collecting information about the SEO market in Ukraine, we already knew some serious companies, having a little rummaged in Google, we found a few more, but in general, there were very few serious companies on the SEO market in Ukraine! In total, we selected 14 companies for analysis, which, at first glance, could claim to be the best and were worth analyzing. The initial goal was to analyze the largest companies and create a top 10 rating, but by the end of the analysis we realized that we were recruiting only 5 companies - the rest clearly did not reach the “top” level.

The analysis was conducted under the guise of a client, through a friendly company. We knocked to our "colleagues" and asked to evaluate the promotion of the site, to paint the conditions.

For the evaluation method used weighted coefficients. Each company was assigned a score (from 1 to 10) on the four most important parameters for the client: guarantees, price, customer attitude and work experience, after which a general assessment was derived taking into account the fact that each parameter has a different value for the client. We determined the degree of importance of the criteria on the basis of our own research, the experience of our specialists (managers, sales managers) and customer opinions. As a result, we got a rating from the point of view of the client.
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Rating of the leading web studios of Ukraine 2009

Before analyzing the results, we should take a look at the rating we got:

No	Title	Warranty	Price	Relationship to the client	experience	Score
one	PRODEX	ten	10.00	ten	eight	9.60
2	seo-studio	9	5.85	9	ten	8.41
3	Semantics	eight	7.26	7	eight	7.57
four	ideal.kiev.ua	9	1.00	7	9	6.50
five	Aweb	9	1.36	7	eight	6.39

There are still companies such as Promodo and AdLabs-Ukraine , they would have taken 6th and 7th place, respectively, but not in the top 5.

Our analysis showed that the SEO market in Ukraine is very poorly developed, there are not enough serious SEO companies, and the work of existing ones needs to be improved.

Now more about the evaluation criteria. Given the specifics of SEO, where guarantees are very important, and the crisis, when price is still important, we so distributed the importance of the criteria:

30% - Warranty

25% - Price

25% - Attitude towards the client

20% - Work Experience

The rating for each parameter can be viewed separately by clicking on the name of the criterion in the table on our website - the companies will be sorted accordingly.

The first criterion of "Warranty": we assigned him the most important role, because in the area where everything depends on the search engines and it is difficult to guarantee something, the client wants to be sure that he will give the money not just for that, but for the agreed result. It evaluated the working conditions, responsibility for the result, the possibility of concluding a contract.

The second criterion "Price": we set the same task to all companies, then transferred their prices into one currency (some made offers in hryvnia, and some in dollars) and built an inverse proportion, i.e. the lowest price received the maximum score, and the highest - the lowest. There were quite a few requests, in several related topics. It is worth saying that we did not bargain at prices, and many companies probably immediately made offers with a margin, so that later there was an opportunity to make a discount.

The third criterion "Attitude towards the client": here we took into account the level of communication between managers, their politeness, how they penetrated our goals, what keywords were offered to us (thought out, based on our goals or with the help of special software for analyzing the site in order to quickly get rid of how well they explained how quickly they reacted, etc.

The fourth criterion "Experience": in this criterion we looked at the portfolio, its size and competition on demand, the presence of well-known brands in the portfolio, etc.

In general, we liked the company “PRODEX”, “seo-studio” performed well.

Interesting Facts

1. Several large companies sent completely irrelevant requests, which did not contribute to the increase in sales.
2. The analysis included 2 companies with different names, sites and appearance, but with a more detailed assessment, we realized that it was one company.
3. A large market share was taken not by specialized companies, but by internet agencies that are engaged in internet marketing, but at the same time many of them do not have their own seo specialists, and they operate in this direction according to the classical advertising business scheme - they buy up services from other companies (it is found out on the basis of the deep analysis)!
4. One of the serious companies reported that the new site could not be in the Google sandbox (Google Sandbox), and, in addition, they know how to display sites from there (I wish I could learn such seo-magic!).
5. One of the large companies said that she would send the offer and did not send, and then did not answer either the letters or the calls ... Interestingly, after payment, they too can disappear ???
6. One of the companies said that they had problems with mail, while the website’s focus was on written requests (large email, links to the order form, etc.). When I called, I had the feeling that my letter was read right while I was on the line, and that after 2 letters, the first call and a few days of waiting ...
7. One of the top companies after 2 letters and 3 calls honestly admitted that she forgot to make us a miscalculation for keywords (it even angered a little, and I wanted to advise some medicine for sclerosis, but Google said that this is not treated, only the people the medicine)!
8. Many companies are afraid of English-language queries like fire! One of the serious companies said that, according to the English-speaking queries, there will be “world competition and prices will also be relevant,” and billed for more than $ 2000 / month. for one English query with a frequency of about 5,000 per month, even after clarifying that we need google.com.ua and that it provides results for Ukraine and an example of the results in which the top 10 were Russian-language sites, the company did not change its offer ...
9. Only one company from the analysis mentioned that SEO will increase our sales, the others don’t remember about it at all (maybe they think that their main task is to bring it to the top, and whether it will give an economic effect or not - doesn’t they care?).
10. The price spread of top companies turned out to be small, and according to our estimates, the profitability is at the level of 80-100% (excluding taxes and office), although some companies made proposals for the analysis, laying a profit rate of 400% or more, and some less than 50%. .

Raise your level

Naturally, after conducting such a big analysis, we received a lot of interesting information that helped us significantly improve our business processes and increase our competitiveness. Now we can say that our commercial offers and the level of work with clients are not worse than many top companies. However, the information obtained is interesting not only for us, but also for our colleagues, both in Ukraine and in other countries. Therefore, we decided to share some of the data in the format of general recommendations for SEO companies.

1. Customer Relations:

• The first letter to the client should contain a greeting, answers to the client's questions (if any), a company presentation, a brief description of the guarantees, a link to the work, and contacts of the sales manager.
• After the letter you need to call the client, preferably in a couple of days, so that he has time to get acquainted with the information sent. You can call immediately after the letter, briefly explain the content of the letter (this will draw attention to the letter and be stored in the memory of the client). The call must be completed with an agreement on what and when you will do next.
• You need to communicate with the client politely, calmly, try to listen to him and ask him the right questions. The most common mistake that prevents sales: start talking about your company (you will send information about the company in the letter, it is on the site, the client will see what he is interested in). For those who do not know, I advise you to read "Sales by the SPIN method" by Nick Rekhama.
• Every client has a goal, try to understand what the client wants, and adjust all interactions for these goals. If you, as specialists, see that a client is mistaken, help him find the right path.
• If you see that the client is interested in the service, try to make an appointment - personal communication greatly increases the chances for sale.
• We should not forget about the basics of marketing and branding: there should be a solid corporate identity, documents should be sent on company letterhead with contacts, emphasis should be placed on your positioning, etc.
• To manage customer relationships should use CRM.

2. Company presentation:

• The first thing to say in the context of Ukrainian SEO companies is that the presentation should simply be! Surprisingly, in the analysis only one company sent its presentation.
• It should be remembered that the presentation is a document where you can and should highlight your strengths, tell a little about your company and give contacts, but at the same time it should not be very voluminous.
• For convenience, you can make a presentation not only in PowerPoint, but also in other formats (pdf, flv).
• For example, the presentation of our Internet agency (general, especially for SEO is not sharpened): link .

3. Commercial offer:

• KP should be in a separate file, on a letterhead with contacts, by volume, ideally, no more than 2 A4 pages.
• This document should focus on the final goals of the client. In the field of SEO, for almost all customers, the ultimate goal is to increase sales.
• In the commercial offer there should be a justification of the price, for this you need to paint the cost for each word and describe that you will buy monthly links, the budget for which depends on the competition for each word, therefore the payment is monthly. For large projects, a separate document is made called “price justification”, where clear calculations are shown and there is an economic justification for the price.
• Remember that the client is not a SEO and often does not understand professional terms, so everything should be accessible. Or, alternatively, give a link to the dictionary with the most used terms.
• It is necessary to describe the stages and expected results at each stage. So that the client immediately represented the whole picture and did not ask after a week why his sales were not growing.
• At the end of the offer must be contact sales manager.
• After 2-3 days, you should call the client and find out about his decision.

4. Warranties:

• The most basic guarantee is the return of the advance payment for unreached positions for each word.
• It is also important for the client to conclude an agreement in which all agreements are reflected.
• Before promotion, it is advisable to conduct an audit of the site and notify the client in advance about all its flaws, so that he doesn’t have a question: “Why am I at the top and sales do not grow?”.

For other business processes: monitor quality, think about the final goals of the client, if you have not reached the position - with an apology, compensate him for it, do not blame the cost, etc.

Common mistakes

It is good when others make mistakes, and we learn from them, but, unfortunately, there is not always such an opportunity. In this analysis, we decided to highlight the most common mistakes of our competitors, so that everyone could learn from the mistakes of others:

1. Strangely enough, the most common mistake is a cold attitude towards the client! Starting from the banal silence, when the client sends a written request (and sometimes calls), but there is no answer from the other side, and ending with the answers "for a tick", when they answer at least something, just to be. Naturally, this attitude scares customers. It is always worth remembering that one of your competitors will call a client, will intelligibly explain everything, joke and smile, and in general will become a “one-time friend”, as Tyler Derdon, the hero of the novel “Fight Club”, said. Naturally, the attitude of the potential contractor (partner) is very important for any client.
2. The second common mistake was irrelevant inquiries that companies offered us. It is rather strange: professionals, and inquiries send absolutely not those that contribute to our main goal - to increase sales. A knowledgeable client will scare it away at once, the unknowing may even order, but after a few months such a move will refuse service with a feeling that he has been thrown.
3. Documents not on letterhead. Typically, the client learns from several companies the conditions and prices, and the decision is made together with colleagues. How should he identify a sentence with text and numbers, without the slightest hint of who it came from?
4. Few companies from the analysis who knew at least the basics of the art of sales. Managers of Ukrainian SEO companies do not know what the client needs or how to work with it. It is terrible to imagine how many customers they have lost because of this.
5. As usual, it was not without deceptions, when the Golden Mountains were promised to us, and it was impossible to fulfill all of the above. It is better for the client to promise less, and then do more than vice versa - promise the mountains of gold, and then think how to justify.

Conclusion

We carried out this study with a ranking of the leading SEO companies in Ukraine for more than 2 months in order to increase competitiveness in the market. As a result, our proposals now fully guarantee the client the achievement of the agreed positions and, most importantly, the growth of sales. The secret lies in benchmarking - to take the best and remove the worst, to do it all the time! If you are our colleague - use our recommendations for health, if the client is always happy to hear and see you, call-email :)

PS If you think you need to add a company to the rating, please report it, we will take it into account next time.

To all competitors who got into the analysis - thank you very much, it was very nice to learn about you new :) If you have questions about points - write, point out your mistakes.

In our, as in any rating, you can find something to complain about if you want, so please express only constructive criticism. We will definitely take into account and try to do even better next time.

The original article here: http://www.secl.com.ua/article-rejting-veduwih-seo-kompaniy-ukrainy.html - when copying a link to the original or to the home page of the site!

The article was prepared by:

Nikita Semenov, CEO of the SECL GROUP company.

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