What to Look for In a Search Engine Optimization Consultant

Jun 7
07:37

2012

William Murtog

William Murtog

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As the world of IT continues to forge an intimate relationship with the world of business a new opportunity has opened up for internet entrepreneurs and professionals. With companies looking for ways to improve their competitive advantage via online presence most are turning to search engine specialists. However given the numerous number of SEO specialists online that all claim excellent results,What to Look for In a Search Engine Optimization Consultant Articles it’s hard to determine who to trust with such an important task. This article should be able to give you some guidance though when it comes to choosing the right consultant for your company.

While it seems relatively simple SEO can prove to a complicated web of detail when you get down to it. Having a search engine optimization consultant take care of your SEO is not only about convenience but simply makes good sense. There are very many ways to ensure that your company website attains prime real estate on search engine result pages, however nearly half of these methods have been black-listed by search engines.

 What you need to know about SEO:

There are two types of SEO; black hat and white hat. The former is the type that can get you to the top of the list within a day but also has the unfortunate side effect of getting your website blacklisted from the major search engines - ultimately a major loss for you in the long run. To avoid the above from happening search engines have a list of SEO guidelines on what is accepted and what is frowned upon. Some of these are:

1. Copyright Violation: This entails using content created by other sites without acknowledging the source or getting previous permission.

2. Keyword Stuffing: Using keywords is essential in getting good rankings, however overuse and irrelevant use of keywords to achieve better results is considered unethical.

3. Page Swapping: This is when companies copy pages from high-ranking sites and try to pass them off as their own by changing title tags and descriptions, then swapping the page back with one of their own once a high rank has been obtained. 

 How to identify a legitimate search engine marketing company:

1. Familiarize yourself with SEO

One of the things that you can do to ensure that you hire the right SEO Company to take care of your needs is to familiarize yourself with what white hat SEO entails.

2. Identify your needs

Next you need to know just what it is you want the SEO Company to do for your site. Do you want to increase traffic, start a PPC campaign? Once you know what you need from them, you can research companies that are reputed to give the best results.

3. Set up a meeting with those that look promising

Remember to be wary of those that guarantee instant results or results that seem unrealistic within a given time frame. Ask them to give you brief details on how exactly they are going to meet your needs. What’s their strategy? Do they have adequate experience to meet your needs? Can they back this up with references?

4. Ask for a guarantee

Before you hire the company ask them for a guarantee that within a given time frame you will get the desired results.

5. Finally, ask for a quotation on costs. It should not cost too much for you to afford nor should it be so cheap as to sound unreasonable.