SEO and Selecting a Search Engine Optimization Provider
By
Targetem
While we always try to be positive and upbeat, when it comes to selecting an SEO Provider that will help you to achieve the results that you desire, it is, sadly, far easier to point out the things to avoid versus the things to look for. With that in mind, we have compiled a list of things to both avoid and look for when trying to select an SEO Provider.
Good SEO Providers don't need continuous payments. If your SEO Provider is telling you that there are going to be continuing monthly fees, then they're probably doing something wrong. If it's financing, then fine. But if the monthly fees are for continuous changes to your site, then it's time for you to be wary. SEO providers that are continuously changing your site are doing one of two things; they're either experimenting with your site trying to find a combination of links and coding that will give you the results that you want and wasting your time and money in the process, or they're playing cat and mouse games with the search engines.
If your SEO Provider is experimenting that means they're inexperienced and don't really know what they're doing. While this is bad enough, and can have negative effects on your rankings, the cat and mouse games that some SEO Providers will play with the search engines can be far worse. This essentially means that the SEO Provider is trying to stay one step ahead of the search engines in not letting them know the "black hat" practices that they're employing, which can have serious negative effects on your site's ranking with the top searching engines.
Meta Tags If your SEO Provider is big on adjusting your meta tags than they're either foolish or hoping you are. In the 21st century no search engine uses meta tags for ranking, at least not in a way that you might like them to. If a potential SEO Provider makes a big deal about using meta tags to help your rankings, then you should keep looking for another provider
Search Engine Submissions While it was necessary and popular at one point, the search engines don't need you to submit your site to them. They want to find your site by following links from other sites they have previously indexed. If a potential SEO Provider brings up submitting your site to Google or Yahoo (or any other search engines) they either don't know what they're talking about or they're hoping you don't. Chances are that your website is already listed in the search engines and is simply failing to rank.
Articles/Press Releases Search engines kill off non-authoritative copies of content because they don't want to index the same content repeatedly. Any SEO Provider that is creating multiple copies of content for the purpose of gaining links is just wasting your time and money, because in the end, it's not going to do you any good to get links on article pages that are filtered out of the search index because they are duplicated on many websites.
Reciprocal Links Some behind-the-times SEO Providers will promote the idea of reciprocal links. On top of helping you to lose authority score, reciprocal links can also get you into a "bad neighborhood" when the site you were linked to changes it's theme or topic to something that you don't want your site linked to. Also, the value of reciprocal links is heavily discounted because Google sees it for what it is - webmasters trying to manipulate Google Rankings by trading links with each other.
It's not all bad . . . Ok, so far this hasn't been very happy, but just because it's easy to tell you what to avoid doesn't mean there aren't some things you shouldn't be looking for in a positive light.
The 3 Things That Matter There are three very simple concepts that a quality, "white hat" SEO provider will inform you of when talking you through the process of optimizing your site: Compliance, Authority, and Relevance.
Compliance Compliance includes following the rules set out by the search engines. This means not using shady practices or violating the search engines published guidelines, eliminating duplicate content problems, writing clean code, using proper server configurations, and in general, maintaining a standard of best-practices in the coding, content and construction of your website.
Authority Score A discussion of authority score should be part of every website review. Your authority score is measured by the search engines (called PageRank by Google, WebRank by Yahoo, etc.). Authority Score is gained from the links you have pointing to your site from other pages. A quality SEO Provider will ensure that you have many quality links pointing to your site, and do so without resorting to rented links, link exchanges, link farms and the like.
Relevance Relevance is all about the topic of your page and how well it matches the search terms used. This is determined by how well you use the keywords in the content, tags, headlines, titles, anchors, etc. combined with an analysis of the link anchors pointing to the site. Links with your keywords in the anchors are called optimized links. There's only one proper way to know how many optimized links are needed, and that's to perform an in-depth analysis of the competitors quantity and quality of optimized links. By first understanding, and then one-upping your competitors' optimized inbound links, it will be possible get the results that you want.
See You At The Top When it comes down to it, finding a quality SEO Provider is really all about finding a company that knows what they are doing and has your best interest in mind. By knowing what to look for and what to avoid, you're giving yourself the best chance of not only improving your site, but of getting the results that you want.
About the author: **************************************************
John Williams is an internet marketing/SEO industry veteran, a founding moderator of SearchEngineWatch.com, a member of SEO Consultants, a lecturer/instructor in the post-graduate Marketing Program at Old Dominion University, and holds certifications from both Google and Yahoo as a qualified professional among his many credentials. He has been engaged in best-practices search engine optimization and internet marketing since 2001. Mr. Williams is the president of Target Electronic Marketing Inc. (www.targetem.com).
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