FINDING THE RIGHT SEO COMPANY FOR YOUR BUSINESS
by Carla Reis | July, 2006
In our first article we discussed the importance of using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website. It is important to get/hire professional advice in order to maximize the visibility of your website, and your company.
Finding the right SEO Company for you
Selecting a reputable SEO company can be challenging because there are so many different ones offering services. How do you choose? There are many factors to consider, and in this article we will talk about which questions to ask up front.
First, you need to look for the right company to handle your specific needs within your budget - does the company prefer to work only with large corporate clients, or are they more specialized in working with medium to small clients?
It's also important to select a reputable SEO firm that follows search engines’ guidelines. This is the second point. Many people do not realize that there standard rules of operation to which SEO companies must adhere. If these rules aren’t respected a website will be penalized to a point of being removed from the search engines’ database. Some examples of illegal techniques that are used by unethical SEO companies include using hidden text in your site so that the search engine can read the text in the site, but it's not visible to the human eye. That's an example of keyword stuffing. There are also "door-in pages," which allow users to come into your site through a page and then push you to another thought or product or service — things the consumer didn't initially want to visit.
A professional SEO consultant or company who jeopardizes your website by using any practice or technique considered illegal by any search engines is considered a “Black Hat SEO”. It can be difficult to spot these types, so checking references is important.
You can also identify a reputable SEO companies because they will offer a chart of SEO services, and will manually perform all optimization including meta tags development and coding review. Reputable firms will also provide monthly visibility and visitor reports, among other reports that might be needed to support SEO services. Remember, when selecting a Search Engine Optimization provider, the services to be included in your SEO campaign should be clearly defined.
Next, while SEO software programs are available, ask whether the firm a) has a strong knowledge about Search Engine Optimization, b) performs manual title and meta tags development and c) handles an effective link building campaign. These are terms and concepts that will be explained in more detail in upcoming articles. For now, just note their importance in evaluating an SEO provider’s services.
There is one final distinction in services that you should be aware of when you’re selecting an SEO company. Search Engine Optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Search Engine Marketing (SEM) goes beyond SEO as there are other factors involved other than just ranking higher in the SERPs. SEM looks at your website as a marketing tool, taking into consideration: Visitor Retention; Usability; Call to Action, and; Persuasive Architecture. These are a few more terms that we will explore in more detail in upcoming articles. 
Carla Reis
President
Quest Quality Solutions
www.questqualitysolutions.com
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