Hiring an SEO company (“search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer”) can potentially improve your website and social networks and save time. Many SEO experts and related consultants and agencies provide useful web related services, such as (but not limited to):
- Website structure, content, health, and estimated traffic
- Technical support and advice on website development
- Content development and management
- Top performing keywords
- SEO training
- Expertise in markets related to your particular industry
The optimal time to hire an SEO company is when you are planning to launch a new website or considering to revamp a website because you and your SEO consultant can ensure that your website is engineered and designed to be search engine-friendly. It is very important for your website to be search engine-friendly because many potential customers will use search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to find what they are looking for. You can also hire an SEO company at anytime to improve an existing website.
When hiring an SEO company, consider asking the following questions in order to discern if they are right for your company:
- What is your experience in my city?
- What is your experience in my industry?
- Would you share some success stories and examples of the work related to the stories?
- What exactly are your services and how will each service help me?
- What are your most important SEO techniques?
- How long have you been in business?
- Do you offer social marketing services and graphic design services?
- How may I contact you if I have questions, comments, or concerns about my website?
The gains from hiring an SEO expert is valuable to any business, but there are some unethical SEO consultants that can potentially damage your website and social networks. This is why we provided a list of questions that you should ask when hiring an SEO. You want to make sure that an SEO companies practices do not violate the guidelines and regulations of the major search engines. Violation of the guidelines and regulations can result in negative adjustment of your website’s presence in search engines or a complete removal of your website from search engine results.
As a business, you should always be wary of the following:
- Emails sent out of the blue by SEO agencies and web consultants. You should have the same level of skepticism for such emails as you would with “burn fat during sleep” diet pills. No SEO agencies can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google or any search engine company.
- Secretive or unclear explanations of what the SEO agency is doing for you. Always know what is happening to your website and social networks because you are ultimately responsible for the actions of any companies you hire. Always ask questions and request progress on what the SEO is doing to help you.
- Avoid SEOs that suggest link popularity schemes, talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, or submitting your website to thousands of search engines.
- Conduct a thorough research on the SEO agency before you consider hiring them. Here are a few warning signs that you are dealing with an unethical SEO:
- Owns shadow domains. Shadow domains funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects, meaning that the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.
- Doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
- Guarantees ranking
- Operates with multiple aliases or falsified information
- Gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware and scumware
- Has doorway pages. Doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO’s other clients which will drain away the link popularity of your website and social networks