How Do I Choose A Good SEO Company?
The recent banning of the search engine optimization company Traffic Power and its customers' sites by Google has prompted us and many other SEO companies to speak out about those companies offering quick fix SEO techniques which can get a site banned
Elixir Systems prides itself as a search engine optimization company that stays within the search engine guidelines, and we often have to compete with companies who are using techniques that can get a site into trouble. We try to steer all our potential customers in the right direction and remain professional about our competitors. We advise people all the time to be careful who they work with and ensure that the SEO they hire is not doing anything to get them banned. The lure of a quick profit and a meteoric rise in rankings is too much for even the most savvy website owners and they sign up with these Companies.
Remember it is YOUR site. It is no good going crying to Google when you get banned saying I did not know what they were doing. As valid as this may be it is your site and you should know what they are doing. It is your responsibility to ensure your site is following recommended guidelines. It is very difficult to define safe, effective SEO since search engines changes their rules constantly but if you stick to these simple principals on choosing an search engine optimization you should not end up on trouble.
- Where is their site in the search engine results? If the company is good at SEO then their site should be ranked well, if their site is not listed in the rankings you need to wonder why.
- Ask for step by step information on what they will do to promote your site. If there is any area which your gut tells doesn't sound right do your research. There is plenty of information available for you to research.
- What is their Page Rank? A PR of 3 is relatively easy to get with a small site, PR of 6 is harder, and above that is extremely difficult. If you're approached by a SEO company (or any marketing company for that matter) with a PR0 or an unranked site. Ask why.
- What is their customer support like? Do you receive a form email from them (did they even look at your website?), or a detailed proposal along with testimonials and other backup material? Ask for references and follow up on them.
- Does the company get referrals from their customer base. We do consistently.
- Do they know SEO or is it just a sideline to their main business (usually web design). Keeping up to date on the latest SEO information is a full time job (We know it – We do it).
- How much experience do they have? Are they recent to the field in which case do you want them experimenting on your site? You might if you know about it first and remember you may get what you paid for!
- Has the company ever turned down a site? This is moving into the area of ethics, some sites are either difficult or impossible to SEO (100% Flash sites), others border on spam (free for all link farms).
- Above all compare what the company will do, compare it to others in the same field. Some SEO companies rely on one aspect of SEO (relying on links), others offer a complete package. Remember to compare like with like. There is no point in comparing a proposal which is just going to cover Meta tags and keywords to a proposal which is a full service SEO package including content writing and a links campaign.
- Does the company provide ongoing maintenance to maintain your rankings? Search engines change their algorithms constantly and without regular monitoring and maintenance rankings will eventually slip. What is good today may not be good tomorrow.
Question, question and question again. Act on your instincts the old adage ‘if its too good to be true, it probably is” is very apt in this case. This is your livelihood not the SEO’s make good choices and you will win in the long run.
| Be wary of companies that use: |
Look for companies who use: |
| - Doorway pages
- Cloaking/IP Delivery Page
- Redirects
- Hidden Text
- Link Farms
- Submission spam |
+ Search engine friendly meta tags
+ Optimized Content
+ Quality Inbound Links
+ Hand Submissions
+ Paid Inclusion
+ Detailed Reports on changes to your site
|
Fionn Downhill
Director Sales and Marketing
Originally written: July 6, 2004
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