You own a website and you know the importance of optimizing your site to enhance your chances of getting found. You've tried SEO yourself, but being the busy business owner that you are, you just don't have the time to do it right. You've decided to hire a search engine optimization professional to get your website ranked well on the search engines. Now what? There are so many choices to choose from. There are firms offering to submit your site to thousands of engines and online directories for only $50. There are high end SEO firms offering to do everything and more for $1,000's of dollars.
What do you do?
Here are some suggestions on finding and hiring a qualified SEO specialist to help guide you through the ongoing changes of search engine optimization:
1. Don't respond to unsolicited emails
If an SEO firm sends out unsolicited email, also known as SPAM, how can you trust that they will do the right thing with your website. Many of these emails refer to mass submission to hundreds of websites, they may guarantee a page one ranking on Google or will talk about their technology that will get you top ranking. Chances are that if you decide to use an SEO firm that boasts things like this, they are not going to be a reputable firm. Yo may stand the chance of getting your site banned based on potential black hat tactics.
2. An SEO should not guarantee search engine placement
Unless you are paying a search engine to place you in the top of their results, such as a pay per click campaign, you can not be guaranteed to rank first. The algorithms that the search engines use change often. There are also competitors that are constantly changing their site and constant link building. The Internet is not static and it's always changing and so are the search results. It is the goal of the SEO to get your site ranked well, but there should never be a promise. If they do promise rankings, they are probably using some black hat practices that I would recommend against.
3. Get references from the SEO company
Before hiring an SEO firm, check references. Ask for a list of companies that they optmized. Check out how they rank on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. Call the company and ask how the SEO firm was to deal with. Ask how easy it was to work with the firm. Ask how long it took to get results. Ask if the search engine optimization company was quick to answer questions.
4. Know your SEO company
Will you be working with the search engine optimization specialist or will they have a hired college student working on your site. SEO can be learned, however, it's in your best interest to make sure you'll be working with and experienced SEO.
5. Your SEO firm should be your teacher
When our SEO company works with website owners, we make a point to tell them what we're doing, how we're doing it and why we're doing it. I think it is important to teach your clients about SEO so they get a full understanding of the process. If a firm is hiding what they are doing, the may be using black hat SEO which will hurt your site, not theirs. An educated client is a happy client.
