The following are a list of
questions you should ask a
Search Engine Optimization Company prior to doing business with them.
How often do
you submit pages to the engines?
(if they submit pages repeatedly and often, don't hire them - excessive
submissions is cause for some engines to downrank pages. You want a
company that checks the ranking of each page for each keyword on each of
the major engines first, and then only submits as appropriate.)
Do you
guarantee rankings in the number one position on the engines?
(The answer to this one is tricky - anyone can get a number one position
on one or more engines, for specific keywords (the specific keywords I
am referring to are ones that are truly unique, and ones that virtually
nobody would search for). However those keywords may not bring your
target audience to your site. If you ask them if they will guarantee a
number one position for a given keyword that you provide them initially,
and they guarantee it, then they are not going to provide you with what
you need. A good SEO company will tell you that they first determine
what the best keywords are. There are SEO's that will guarantee you
number one position listings. Personally I put them in the same category
as that guy from Nigeria that keeps changing his email address, and
promises me millions.)
How do you
determine what keywords to use?
(In the olden days determination of the best keywords was more or less
of a brainstorming effort. Nowadays there is a statistical method of
determining the keywords that will most benefit a given site. A good SEO
company will already be using the current method, and be able to explain
it in detail to you.)
Do
you do organic optimization or do you use PPC?
(Personally my company uses purely organic optimization, as it is less
expensive for our clients, and often has better results. There may be
successful PPC campaigns, but I do not know of any. I added this
question simply because you should know what the company's philosphy is
in this regard, and be aware ahead of time if you will be charged extra
fees for PPC.)
Does it
matter what IP address my site is hosted on?
(Even if your site is hosted on a "good" IP, if it is in the same Class
C address block with IP addresses that are blacklisted, it may impact
the reputation of your site with the search engines.)
What are
the specific things that have to be optimized, and what do you have to
do to optimize them?
(If that question is asked as a general question about all sites, a good
SEO will not give you an answer - for two reasons. The first one is that
the things that have to be optimized vary from site to site, page to
page, and the second one is that the things that need to be optimized
vary with time, depending on the changes to the search engines'
algorithms. So to give anyone a hard and fast list is misleading. On the
other hand, if the question is asked about a specific page and/or a
specific site, then a good SEO company will be able to profide you with
the information. That being said, understand that it does take time to
analyze a web page or web site, and the SEO should be paid for their
time.)
What about
links to my site?
(You should not "buy" links to your site, and your SEO should not buy
them. There are "link farms" that some site owners and some SEO's use
for link-building. Building links in that manner is not ethical. If a
site is providing good content and valuable information for site
visitors, then you will find that in time other sites will add links to
it automatically, because they want to provide their clients with ready
access to the information. A good SEO company should talk to you about
your associates/affiliates/site owners in businesses related to
yours/etc. who might potentially provide links to your site. For
example, if your company sells widget batteries, and you have a
relationship with a company that sells widgets but no batteries for
them, in order to provide your customers with what they need, it would
be good to have a link.)
