This is a guest post from Steve Ollington of SEO Company, The Optimizers Internet Marketing Ltd
If you’re looking into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your business website there a few things you need to know before considering who to go with.
First of all, a quick overview of what SEO is, for those who aren’t sure.
SEO is the process of modifying an existing website in order for it to show up higher in search engines such as Google. This is something which is achieved through both “On-Page” and “Off-Page” optimization. The main thing that needs to be remembered about SEO is keywords, your products or services are your keywords, and they are what you want your website high up for in search engines results pages.
Now, the problem with having SEO work undertaken is that to date, it is not a regulated industry, and there are no officially recognized qualifications within for you to help make your choice.
With SEO companies calling businesses up everyday and offering deals for their services, how is a company to know who to trust, and who can achieve the best results for them?
There are some rather “unethical” SEO agencies out there that should be avoided at all costs; agencies who will make promises they can’t keep and use misleading sales techniques or techno babble.
If you want to avoid getting stung by such a company, here’s a few of the “claims” they often make but shouldn’t:
- Guaranteed Page One on Google
- Claims to be calling from Google
- Claims to working with Google
- Claims of being “Accredited” by Google for SEO
- You can pay “Per Keyword”
First of all, nobody can guarantee any page or position in Google, it’s simply not possible. Search engines such as Google regularly change the algorithms that decide upon the positioning. There are just ten spots on page one of Google for any search term and nobody knows what the competition might be doing in terms of their own SEO efforts. Also, it just doesn’t work that way, SEO is not an exact science and the algorithms themselves are a closely guarded secret with many variables and factors affecting the positioning in different ways, it’s just not possible to guarantee anything.
Google do not telephone people offering SEO services because they do not work in SEO. Therefore if somebody says they’re calling from – or on behalf of – Google, they are lying.
Claims of working with, or being accredited by Google are not to be trusted. Google does not offer preferential treatment to one company over another, and certainly doesn’t work with them to tackle its own search engines rankings. There is no accreditation given by Google for SEO services; there are companies that are accredited by Google Adwords, but this is a completely different ball game and bears no relevance to SEO. However, there are a number of companies using their Adwords accreditation to gain SEO business. This is fundamentally wrong as it constitutes deception. And If they are naïve enough to put Adwords and SEO under the same umbrella then you certainly don’t want to be using them for your SEO services.
Some SEO companies will tell you that you can pay “per keyword”. This is merely a sales tactic to win your business, and will not likely produce the results you want. Here’s why; say you have ten keywords you would like to rank for:
Three are highly competitive, three are competitive, and four are not at all competitive. The company will tell you that you need only pay them for the keywords that make it to page one of Google.
The company then easily get the four non-competitive keywords to page one… as could anybody, that’s why they are called NON-competitive keywords.
The company, already being paid for the four non-competitive keywords then has two options:
- Attempt to get the competitive keywords to page one. This will require considerable time and effort with no guarantees of any results thus no further payment.
- Do nothing, keep taking payment for the terms that required no work, and move on to the next unsuspecting client using the same trick.
At this point, all you have really done is employed the SEO company to get you a good ranking for long tail, non-competitive keywords that won’t be highly searched and therefore have little value.
Another thing to look out for is companies that use what are known as “Black Hat” techniques. Such techniques may produce fast results and get you high up in the search engines for competitive terms. The problem is they are cheating, and the search engines aren’t stupid. These types of techniques don’t work for long; you may find yourself on page one for a few weeks but risk being caught and having your entire domain banned from the results altogether. Google has software and employees looking out for this cheating, and competitors, or members of the browsing public have the ability to report you via the Google spam report if they spot it themselves.
If you want to find yourself a good, credible and effective SEO company, ensure to check the past success of any SEO company they might be considering.
When checking the past results of a company that supplies SEO, check their claims yourself. If they say “We got website X to page one on Google for search term Y!”, Google search term Y for yourself and see if it comes up where they say it does.
Also, if they have managed to achieve good results, consider whether that search term would be highly searched. It would be easy to get a site to rank well for a search term that consists of several words strung together, some of which are obscure and containing a location (cutting down the competitive area). Sometimes these long phrases must be entered in that exact order too. You may get no extra website traffic from having such rankings as people probably don’t search with such phrases.
The SEO company should run searches for relevant terms that will bring a high volume of targeted traffic, but don’t just accept any old keywords. What keywords would you use to search for your products or services? Have a good think what they might be, and see if they in keeping with some of the recommendations you’re given.
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