Many people and businesses believe that there is a “secret” method used to become the top website. Surely there exists some rapid way of securing top placement results and getting all that juicy targeted traffic?
Yes there is, if you don’t know what your doing, so choosing a reputable company or individual to perform your works is essential.
The result of “blackhat” or unethical SEO is inevitably blacklisting and a ban from the search engines meaning you revert back to ZERO nevermind a complete lack of results in the meantime.
Always ensure that the application of SEO is done legitimately by checking out your service provider or SEO specialist thoroughly via their client list, testimonials, philosophy of process and application and their on-line reputation. It’s a simple matter of asking around, something you would do with any business in any type of industry.
If anyone ever claims to “have a contact at Google” or guarantees you amazing results overnight, then walk away, no… in fact RUN!
Some of the things to be wary of are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking
How to find a quality SEO service.
There are a variety of way to source a good quality SEO company and some of them are not immediately obvious. Mopst people looking for SEO services will immediately do a search on Google. It is also not necessicarily true however that a good quality SEO company will be at the top listings for search terms either, although this would certinaly go a long way to qualifying them as reliable service providers but also this would imply that they are expensive and possibly beyond your allocated budget.
One of the most reliable places to begin would be a business forum, on twitter or indeed by asking some of the top Bloggers (usually individual SEO experts) who they would recommend, if it is not apparent already on their site and by gathering this feedback and recommendations you can begin to formulate and decide on who would provide the best quality service for you and your business against your budget.
On the subject of Budgets, make sure you establish a realistic amount for your SEO. A completely pointless exercise is contacting any provider without having a budget in mind. The reason for this is that the whole campaign or schedule of works will be dictated by this budget over time in order to establish how the works will be deployed.
Countless times I have had people ask me:
“How much does SEO cost?”
the only reasonable response and the one people do not want to hear is the only truthful answer:
“How much have you budgeted to spend?”
As Second advantage to establishing a budget is that you will be aware and comforatble with the allocated cost of the SEO. This allows you to factor the cost into your overall business expenses and avoid any surprises. The only reason that you would deviate from your allocated business plan, in this case, is if the required works you establish change dramatically or extra works are required on top. Again, a good service provider will be able to assess, account and advise for this in advance without disrupting the work already in progress and then incorporate it into the overall campaign.
SEO Budget Comparisons
The final advantage of establishing a budget, and possibly the most important in the initial stages of choosing a provider is the ability to compare quotes across different companies. By establishing a budget and approaching three seperate companies you can then state clearly what you wish to allocate to the campaign and they can respond clearly to the services provided for that amount.
For example, call any three companies and ask the question “How much is SEO?”.
In response you will get one company offering it for 1,000 Euros, another for 12,000 Euros and a final for 50,000 Euros. You are left totally in the dark in regards to which company will actually give the best value for money.
By approaching them with the statement:
” I have a budget of 10,000 euros, what services can you provide against this for the next 6 months and what results would you expect to achieve?”
The three responses you will get back will be a lot more detailed, more relevant and more COMPARABLE.
The key point here is the comparability. Because you have defined the parameters of the project more accurately via this simple statement the responses will be more accurate and as they are constrained by the budget and time frame then the decision on which service provider to choose is made so much more simple.
