Due to lack of customer knowledge and to a small number of unscrupulous SEO service providers, there is definitely some truth in the above statement. How often have you hear comments like "SEO Is The Modern Version Of Snake Oil" Or promises such as "We Guarantee You And Your Company Page 1 Rankings For Less Than $100 A Month". Beware of any absolute Result Guarantees - they are impossible to achieve without fraudulent or misleading practices that will deliver minimal value as a return on your investment. Writing for Furniture World Magazine, SEO consultant Katherine Andes advises "Beware of SEO Charlatans!". I recently read an interesting article at PC Mag.com by John C Dvorak. Titled "SEO Fiasco's: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimisation". I've no doubt that Mr. Dvorak's traffic fell from his experience, but I don't think it was because he was employing snake oil tactics - more like he didn't realise the impact his changes would have - and that's where you need your SEO Professional.
So What Can You Do About This?
For a start you can define a structured way of getting the information needed to make an informed decision on selecting an SEO Professional.
My recommendation would be to go through a formal selection process involving the following steps:
Prepare a Requirements Document
Issue it to a selected group of companies
Analyse the responses and select a short list of potential service providers
Review 3 references of successful SEO projects for each supplier
Make your final selection decision based on the above factual information
How Can You Prepare the SEO Requirement Document?
You can follow this simple 5 step guide and complete each section as indicated.
Step 1: Define Your Objectives and Who you are Targeting:
You will need to state the objective of the website (Generate leads/make online sales/increase awareness/branding etc.). You need to specify whether the site targets businesses, consumers or both
Step 2: Define the SEO Service Your Need:
State your definition and ask for confirmation as follows:
"To optimise the specified website for a target country and a set of specific keyword phrases to ensure that specific pages will rank as high as possible in organic search". Please confirm that your service will conform to the above definition.
Step 3. Specify Your Keywords and Target Country:
If you know the keywords that you wish to optimise the website for then you should provide the website URL and list up to 10 key words and a target country. Ask each supplier to comment on how they would propose to verify your selected keywords. If you do not know what keywords to use then specify 5 trade competitor websites and specify that you need to know how they would provide keyword research assistance to help you to outperform them.
Step 4: Specify What is Required:
Specify what if any tracking system is currently used and any assistance needed in implementing or enhancing the current system.
Step 5: Ask the Following Questions:
Ask About Performance Guarantees?
Watch for any guarantee that relates to keyword positioning on page 1. If you get a guarantee on a % increase in targeted traffic for certain keywords, make sure you have a veto on selecting the keywords. You should only select keywords that are both relevant and popular. There is no benefit in getting a 100% increase in traffic for keywords with very low search volumes.
Ask For Confirmation That Your Competitors Are Not Already Customers?
It is reasonable to ask that the service provider will not work for any of your top 5 specified competitors.
Ask What is Expected of You?
Your SEO project will almost certainly require new content to be written. Ask who will do this work, will the company provide this as part of the service with approval by you of all changes made?
Ask How Many New Pages Will Be Added During The Project?
If the answer is yes that indicates a higher quality SEO approach.
Ask About External Link Building?
Ask what rate of building new links is proposed (The total number of new external links per month). Link popularity is very important for assessing how quickly your page rankings are likely to improve.
Ask if you will receive a monthly report that will enable you to see which new links are added each month and to examine that links for relevance. Relevant links are those that contain keywords in or around the link. These are the type of links you should be looking for as these will get you higher link popularity with the search engines.
Ask For Samples Of Your Monthly Reports?
Ask for a sample of the report that they use?
The key things to look for are:
Monthly keyword visibility and rankings movement (Showing a time related trend)
Last months onsite content issues addressed
Offsite external links activity and progress
Traffic volume and trend (Overall and by keyword)
An activity plan for next month
Ask About The Charging Model?
Ask for details of pricing and if it contains a performance related element. Here are some thoughts on measuring the return on investment that you may find helpful when discussing pricing with your short listed SEO service providers.
Good luck with your selection process.
Bill Egan is Sales & Marketing Director at Interleado, a start-up SEO Software Company. Interleado specialise in intelligent SEO software delivered as a service. The service supports Internet marketers, search professionals and website owners in promoting websites through organic search. The flagship service is the "All-in-One SEO Workbench" containing a rich set of tools to speed up and simplify the process of promoting websites through search engine optimization. The Workbench analysis on-site content and back-links to prioritize the tasks needed to improve a website's visibility and authority
Monthly reports track will track progress in SEO project implementation and continually recommend the next set of prioritised tasks that will deliver faster SEO results and higher search engine visibility and keyword rankings. You can open a free 30 day account to find out more and try out the SEO Workbench at: http://www.interleado.com/
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