If you’re in the market to hire a search engine
optimization company, you probably feel bombarded with promises of #1 rankings
and instant success. But how do you know which claims are important and which
to believe, and which are classic snake oil pitches?
Let’s look at ten important items that you need to think
about if you’re considering hiring a professional search engine
optimization firm.
1. Cost
Get prepared, because search engine optimization work is very
expensive. And with few exceptions, you get what you pay for in this business.
If you find an SEO company that’s cheap and whose Web site resembles a
used car lot, trust that you’re not going to get quality work.
How much should you be prepared to pay? That’s a difficult
question, because it depends on many factors. First, if you’re going after
highly competitive keyword phrases, you may have to pay more than if your
keyword phrases are focused and finetuned. If your site is enormous, and if you
want each page optimized, the cost will be more. If you want to set up new
sites to bring in traffic, that’s a different charge. Or, if your site is
using difficult technology, the cost may be higher.
Some SEO firms now offer a pay-for-placement plan, where each
keyword has its own price category, depending on the number of search results
and degree of competition. Still other companies offer a pay-for-click-through
plan.
Another consideration is that most SEO’s require a portion
of the fee to be paid in advance. It might be 50 percent, or in some cases, 100
percent of the initial fee.
In any event, unless you’re simply wanting to hire a
consultant for an hour or two, be prepared to spend at least a thousand or two
in getting your site optimized by an expert.
2. Understand what You’re Getting for the Price
Most SEO companies offer various packages that include certain
services, and you can choose to add on additional services from there.
So, find out exactly what is included in the package price. Does
this include submitting through the pay inclusion programs? Which engines and
directories are included? How many information or doorway pages will be
created? Does this include maintaining the site after results are achieved? How
many keyword phrases do they work with? Does the cost include building link
popularity?
If you have a brand new site and are wanting “instant”
traffic, you may want to go with a firm that will purchase keywords for you
through one of the pay engines like GoTo. You’ll also want to make sure
that the SEO firm submits your pages through the various engines’ pay
inclusion programs.
Yes, these are added costs to you. But, it can take literally
months to see results through regular search engine optimization strategies. If
you have a brand new site with no traffic, or if you’re anxious to get
traffic going for a special promotion or holiday sales, purchasing keywords
through the pay engines and paying to submit to the engines will boost your
site’s visibility much faster.
3. Guarantees
If the SEO firm you’re considering has a guarantee, study
that guarantee and all of the “fine print” carefully. If they’re
guaranteeing to increase the traffic to your site, that’s fine. If
they’re guaranteeing an increase in your rankings, that’s fine too.
But, if they’re guaranteeing that you’ll get a top 10
ranking, consider this guarantee carefully. There are so many factors that come
into play when optimizing a Web site. For example, how established is the site,
or is it brand new? How competitive is in the industry?
Does the guarantee require that you choose a three-word keyword
phrase, under the assumption that it’s impossible to get a two-word phrase
ranked high, or even a single keyword? For one thing, that assumption is
incorrect. Depending on the keyword phrase itself, you can certainly get
two-word phrases ranked high, and even certain single keywords. So, if you go
with that firm, you’re going to have to choose keywords that are less
popular than what you might have chosen otherwise.
Some firms require you to sign a form stating that there are no
guarantees for top ten rankings, which keeps misunderstandings down from the
onset of the working relationship.
Here’s what one SEO explains when customers ask him about a
guarantee:
“I make an analogy about search engine placement
in order to illustrate what it is like and why it cannot be guaranteed.
Obtaining high rankings is comparable to predicting the weather. You can look
at the clouds, you can check humidity, you can watch wind patterns, etc. These
are absolutely necessary to do in order to have any idea about the weather, but
you still can't say for sure that it will in fact rain. I can do page tweaking,
submissions, link promotion, etc., and have fantastic results and be right on
the money, or it can rain on me. Doing what I do is a necessity to have a
decent chance at obtaining search positions, but I cannot promise how the
rankings will perform.”
4. Competing Clients
Some SEO firms will only work for one client in a given
industry. For example, they will only work for one life insurance client, one
furniture wholesaler, one bank, and so forth.
Why? Because they don’t want their clients competing
against each other for the same keywords.
Other SEO firms set themselves up to be experts in a particular
industry, such as online casinos or legal Web sites.
Still other firms will take on more than one client in a given
industry, but only if each client has a different set of targeted keywords.
If this is important to you, check with the SEO firm you’re
considering and see how they handle competing clients.
5. Track Record
How can the professional SEO company prove to you that they
knowledgeable and experienced in this industry?
For one thing, you can ask for a list of references from any SEO
that you’re considering. Look closely at the list to see if the sites
appear to be legitimate and trustworthy. Then, contact those references.
Does the firm hold certification from a reliable training
company like the Academy of Web Specialists? How many years of experience does
the company have? Is the company willing to show you a few reports for some of
their clients?
6. Access to Your Server
How will the SEO firm work on your site? Are you going to give
them access to your server, to where they’re responsible for uploading
pages and making changes?
Or, will they have to go through a Webmaster, thereby slowing
down the process.
Some SEO companies like to set up gateway pages on their own
server and route traffic to your site. Other SEO firms like to set up separate
Web sites on their own server as a means of building link popularity and
routing traffic. If that’s the case, who will own those gateway pages or
sites if you decide not to continue using their services?
When the SEO firm owns the pages or sites, if you take your SEO
work elsewhere, that firm can simply re-route traffic to another client’s
site. There’s nothing illegal or shady about this—it’s just a
fact of life. However, you can always choose to negotiate ownership of a
gateway page or site in the initial contract.
7. Site Quality
Professional search engine optimizers understand that getting
top rankings in the search engines is only the beginning. In order to be
successful, those top rankings have to convert to additional traffic to the
site, and ultimately to traffic that converts to sales.
But what if the SEO achieves top results for you, yet your site
isn’t designed in such a way to promote the actual sale. For example,
let’s say that the site is confusing, and visitors simply give up and
never make it to the order page. Or maybe there’s no “call to
action.”
Some SEO’s are beginning to make stipulations in the
contract that state that they are not responsible for actually increasing sales
unless they take on the responsibility of redesigning some areas of the site to
make them more “sales friendly.”
8. Finding a Trustworthy SEO Firm
How can you find a professional SEO company that you can trust?
Wouldn’t all of the best firms be listed in the top rankings at the search
engines?
Not necessarily, and here’s why. Many of the successful SEO
firms are so busy working on clients’ sites that they don’t have time
to optimize their own sites. So, they rely on word of mouth and recommendations
for their new clients, which keeps them more than adequately busy.
Plus, the firm may be in the top rankings for the keywords that
they consider important to them, but you may be looking in different areas that
they aren’t targeting.
So, just because a company isn’t in the top 10 doesn’t
mean that they aren’t a top notch firm with the experience needed to help
your site achieve success.
Back to our original question of how to find a trustworthy
company, ask other Webmasters whom they use to optimize their site. Search for
related online forums or visit newsgroups and see which firms are recommended.
Write to some SEO companies and see what type of response you get. Do your
homework before choosing the firm, and you stand a much greater chance of
choosing an SEO company who can really help you.
9. Type of Proposal
Many SEO companies will create a detailed report and offer
numerous suggestions before you ever sign the contract. Some of these companies
charge for the proposal, and others don’t. Still others will charge only
if you decide not to use their services.
Taking it from the side of the optimizer, it’s very time
consuming coming up with a strategy for a particular company. Not only do you
have to visit the site and spend some time, but you also have to run various
reports and do considerable research. Plus, many SEO’s are hesitant to
give away too much information in the initial proposal, so they won’t do
detailed reports or offer focused suggestions until an official agreement has
been reached.
In any event, make sure that you understand the process
that’s involved. For example:
- Do you have to pay for a formal proposal?
- If you hire the company, how often will you be sent
verifiable results?
- What types of reports can you expect to receive?
- How long will the process take?
- When can you expect to see results?
10. Contract
As with all contractual obligations, read the contract
carefully, including all fine print. At the Academy of Web Specialists, we
compiled a group of contracts from various SEO firms, and we’ve posted
them online. We also came up with a standard contract that incorporates many of
the ideas shown in the individual contracts. It might help you to
view those
contracts and compare what the SEO company you’re considering is
offering.
Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe (SearchEngineWorkshops.com) as well as online SEO training courses (OnlineWebTraining.com). They have recently launched localized SEO training centers through SearchEngineAcademy.com, and they have expanded their workshops to Europe with Search Engine Workshops UK. They have also opened the first networking community for SEOs, the Workshop Resource Center (WRC).
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