Pick the Right Search Engine Optimization Company

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the virtual world’s answer to our ubiquitous popular media advertising in the offline world. However, the best thing about SEO or in a larger part SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is that it is incredibly effective and the ROI can be actually tracked and monitored unlike that of any offline campaign. Although SEM can be easy to learn and implement, it is entirely another matter if you want to have experts do this for you to save time and the effort of going a million miles on foot trying to learn the seemingly difficult and ever-growing science of search engine technology. If you want to focus on what you know best, it might be time to have this very crucial activity outsourced to a competent partner who does business in your best Interest.

So how exactly does one go about bashing the lemons and find the hidden jewels?

1. The Approach: How exactly do they do their job? What is their way of going about getting your websites the rank they deserve? Whatever they might tell you, just ensure that you steer clear of companies that use cloaked pages, doorway or landing pages to raise your search engine rankings. These techniques violate most search engine policy and are also called as ‘Black Hat techniques” which are shunned by the SEO community as a whole and carry severe penalties if found and caught by the search engine algorithms leading to removal from the search engine’s index.  Google will unmistakably remove your website from their index if they detect you have cloaked pages. Never, ever employ an SEO Company that uses this technique, even if your own brother-in-law owns it and you simply want to help him out!

2. Do They Give You a Guarantee?  Do they promise you rankings across the popular search engines? How about not working with your competitors while they are working for you?  Obviously, it would seriously compromise the effectiveness of your search engine optimization campaign if they are also actively promoting your competitors websites. A Good SEO company must have a policy not to work directly with your competitors. It might be prudent to find this nugget in the terms and conditions and if it isn’t there then get your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

3. The Track Record: One of the most important factors you want to check out is the company's track record and the last thing you want to do is to take the company’s self-centered facts about this -- they will skew their results in order to sell their services to you. Ask them as many relevant questions as you can and try to ‘Google’ them; find their reviews by customers or clients who would have used their services; do the “due diligence”.

4. Where is their light the Brightest? : Take particular note of the Search Engines they have achieved their best results on. Search engine marketing is a continuous process and you need a company that not only understands this, but also keeps constant tabs on your search engine positions and tweaks them whenever necessary. That company must also be able to adjust its strategy in the event that search engine rankings drop.

5. When push comes to shove, how do they do it? It\'s easy to get high rankings with unpopular words. For instance, if you used your own name as a keyword, you would a get high popularity ranking because no one else would think of using it (except you, of course). So, if they are showing you samples or reports of their previous campaigns, do a check on the popularity of the keywords. The rankings based on the popularity should be able to tell you everything you need to know about the competency of the company you are considering.

6. Have they worked on the site or just nibbled on the corners? Has the company in consideration been able to bring out good results over an entire site that the company claims to have successfully worked for, consistently? You might want to see a wide range of positions over a number of different search engines using different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request a report for any client the company claims to have done well for. This report should show good positions on a number of the most popular search engines for a variety of different, popular keywords and phrases.

7. Did they really do whatever they have claimed to have done? Do a background check with their clients, if possible to see if they have actually done the work they are claiming to have done. Some companies will use other company's results in order to get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call the company they are showing you results for, and ask for the name of their search engine optimization company.

8. Sniff around for credibility: Does the SEO Company in question have any testimonials on their website? Are they willing to let you talk to their previous clients? Try to fork out a few references and see what comes up -- if they are jittery about giving the references or the names and numbers of a few previous clients they had worked with, chances are that you are dealing with ‘Fly-by-night’ operators. A company that shies away from giving references isn’t a company that you would want to do business with. A credible SEO company must have the ability to maintain high rankings for a wide variety of keywords and phrases and across most of the major search engines. It is this competency alone that can provide for a profitable SEM campaign which should be a major part of your overall business strategy.

9. Do it once and do it forever: SEM activity must be constantly monitored and the act of doing Search Engine Optimizing is a gradual, time consuming and seamless process and for this reason alone, your SEM partner must be able to provide you regular reports of how your website isdoing. Please don’t be carried away by the seemingly terrific results that can be made possible considering a short span of time which are fairly easy to acquire. You could do a self check yourself by using the popular search engines and seeing where your site comes up. If it is anywhere beyond five pages on search engine results pages (SERPs), your company isn’t doing a great job.

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10. Do they fit into your Purse? : That probably explains the point all by itself doesn’t it? On one hand you shouldn’t be scrimping on the quality of the company just because they are obviously priced higher than everyday-volume players, but at the same time you got to have the best results for your site. One way to get the best of both is to try and shop around as much as you can for the best possible deal. You might even want to mail or call the company and ask for a discount.